Once I got over my initial disappointment that this was not in fact an all-out reed-fueled blast ŕ la Milford Graves' "Babi Music" or the Blue Humans (both of which featured Doyle's raw tenor bleeting), I gave this disc a chance and found a few gems in the rough.
Doyle is joined on two different live dates by James Harrar on Kora, percussion and winds, Ed Wilcox (of Temple Of Bon Matin) on drums, voice, harmonica and whistles, Adam Agra on banjo and guitar, and Jay Reeve on electronics. The music in general is "free-folk" of the kind I imagine conjured up my many an aggregate in many a living room across the country. The kora and banjo circle around plinky melodies as Doyle and Wicox vocalize from different corners — Wilcox offering lullabies and Doyle ranting and hooting and singing in tongues. Add to this the "Hearts Of Space" guitar and electronic processing and it does have the air of a handful of disparate stylists tossed together like slumgullion.
This creates a strange sort of tension as the players try to find a common ground without moving toward each other, and occasionally they do, as on track 3 (they are all untitled) when the horns and big guitar all hit a giant chord together and hold it, after many minutes of walking in different directions. It's a willful forced cohesion, a bit like witnessing a square peg being forced into a round hole, and that can be a beautiful thing. Wilcox's drumming is all stumbly and almost clumsy as he approaches, and then abandons, the groove. At several points the percussion becomes almost overwhelming, shot through with a weird distorted popping and crackling, as though a recording mic has slipped it's cradle and is now resting on the edge of the bass drum, (an unintentional reference to the Doyle/Glover/Graves record).
On the whole I was really hoping for more of Doyle's patented rough-housing - after an initial sax honk he doesn't pick up the horn again until track 3, at which point he sashays into "Frere Jacque" before spinning off into freer territory. Indeed Doyle seems a bit tired here, letting his orchestra mates spread out without him for long periods of time, and the closest correlation I can draw is with some of the free-freaking of the Merry Pranksters. Perhaps there's a hint there...
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