Last year, Fataka issued a recording with the unlikely seeming trio of Tilbury, John Butcher and Thomas Lehn. It worked much better than this listener expected and the label is back with another, perhaps even more eyebrow-raising collaboration, placing the extraordinary AMM pianist and Feldman interpreter with the free jazz duo of John Edwards and Mark Sanders. In the earlier recording, I felt that the younger musicians deferred to Tilbury, allowing the pianist to set the overall tone and pace of the proceedings, which was all to the good. Here it's more of a mixed bag.
There are two lengthy tracks, over 38 and 29 minutes respectively. The first begins wonderfully. All hushed tones and lightly prepared piano, it's not so far afield from classic AMM territory. Tilbury, as ever, displays beautiful tone and phrasing, eliciting subtle, muted clangs from the prepared keys, offset by bright arpeggios from the unaltered ones while both Edwards and Sanders provide considered coloring, reticent and apropos. The music lingers in that area for most of that track, dipping into deep rumbling tones at times, unfortunately moving into a more spiky, frenetic pattern in its closing minutes, where it sounds more like a Keith Tippett trio — not the worst of all possible worlds, but absent the normal Tilbury magic.
The second cut is in more standard free improv territory at the start, Tilbury adopting an ever more slightly jazzy approach, a mantle that's an uneasy fit. While not as frantically active as much of the genre, there's less a sense of listening and more of a desire to fill the aural space regardless of necessity. There are respites now and again (a lovely bit of Tilbury about 13 minutes in) but always laced with a kind of nervousness or horror vacui. Granted, this may appeal to listeners more in tune with the usual mode of operation on the part of bassist and drummer but it's a little oil and water mix. It eventually calms down somewhat, but the piece as a whole never quite coheres the way much of the opening track did. One can look at this as a feeling out process; all well and good and it's inherently interesting hearing Tilbury, in his mid 70s, still willing to venture into unlikely collaborations. If projects like this end up being part of a work in progress, that's fine. As is, it might not be totally satisfying, but it's always gratifying to witness the search.
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