ROVA surfaced in 1977, shortly after the World Saxophone Quartet initiated the model, and has chugged on for more than a quarter century, marking out its own territory, one that deals with jazz and contemporary "classical" music in roughly equal parts. This disc samples a bit of each and, if the excitement has waned a bit over the years, it will still more than satisfy ROVA fans.
The title track is a kind of tape collage piece in that it's formed out of the shards of various pre-recorded and live fragments, stirred together into a fairly convincing stew. This is a technique that is somewhat akin to the xenochronous stylings of Simon H. Fell and even, more removed, the constructions of John Wall. It appears to be a group effort (one wonders how choices were made) and indeed results in a cohesive whole even as the techniques and sound areas explored vary widely over its length, retaining the sense of a free improvisation. The second piece, 'The Drift' (I would've thought Steve Lacy might have a standing copyright on a title like that!) is a bubblingly funky number with the low reeds strutting their stuff, the high ones trilling riffs that refer to New Orleans, marches and birdsong. It's the sort of piece that WSQ used to bring off with aplomb and, if it ultimately lacks much of the pure blues feel that the other band was capable of generating, it has an extra degree of compositional complexity that makes up the difference. The final worked is written by Leo Smith and falls roughly in the area he's been working for the last several years: long, sustained tones overlapping each other to form a delicate matrix that owes just a little bit to Morton Feldman but is also not all that far from his very early work with Braxton, Jenkins and McCall. For most of its 22 minutes, it remains in that territory: beds of long notes undergirding solo flights by various members of the group. About 17 minutes in, however, it suddenly coalesces into an exciting, tight mesh of hocketing rhythms with abrupt stop/starts and expressive flares and screeches. It's a side of Smith's writing I hadn't previously experienced and it serves to bring the piece, and the disc, to a satisfying and surprising close.
ROVA fans will enjoy 'Resistance', those only knowing WSQ should avail themselves of this alternative and those for whom the idea of a saxophone quartet is still unusual could do worse than to begin opening their ears here.
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