Every musician has a first-time-I-heard-so-and-so experience to recount, in which he or she describes the profound event of first hearing an idol's playing. Getting to actually perform with one's heroes can be even more life changing. But to be able to work continually with a visionary genius of the order of Lowell Davidson, apparently, is transformative to higher order of magnitude. As evidence, consider the ways John Voigt (bass), Joe Morris (guitar), Tom Plsek (trombone) describe Davidson in the liner notes to this CD:
Voigt: "What I learned from him...was like being an apprentice to a shaman. Experiences would go into...my subconscious, where they would grow and take me to a place outside my ego."
Plsek: "He was perhaps the most puzzling, intriguing, intense, complex person I have ever had the privilege to perform with."
Morris: "The rhetoric he used about music was rarified, dense, recondite, the highest and most inspired I have ever encountered."
Morris also notes that "he often declared that new sounds had the capacity to reformulate the biochemistry of the brain. He said once, 'It's about evolution.'" Using the term "LSD" in the title of the album to refer to "Lowell Skinner Davidson," then, seems appropriately evocative of the profound shifts in the understanding of self and reality often attributed to the ingestion of psychedelic chemicals.
"MVP" as a shorthand for these players also has appropriate connotations. Each of the players worked extensively with Lowell Davidson before his death. Morris in particular has continually cited Davidson's impact on his understanding of music, starting with the liner notes of his first album Wraparound, and perhaps most notably in his seminal trio record Antennae. The pieces on the latter record were all Morris originals inspired by Davidson's approach, including the haunting masterpiece "Stare into a light bulb for three years," the title of which refers to one of Davidson's legendary feats of compositional asceticism.
The importance the players bring to whether this music does justice to Davidson's vision relates to the nature of the compositions. Although we do not, unfortunately, get to see the "scores" for ourselves, some of them are described in the liner notes, and several of the titles take a stab at doing the same. (One of the scores is apparently depicted on Voigt's site: http://art-energy.org/johnmusician.html ). The high degree of interpretation the pieces apparently permit would therefore seem to allow for anything from the highly inappropriate to what we find on this album: the work of devotees with a serious commitment to realizing Davidson's understanding of musical form.
The music these three players produce is staggeringly original. The CD begins with perhaps the most structurally surprising of the collection: "Blue sky and blotches." Voigt begins the piece playing solo. He massages the strings with his bow, producing both roars and sighs. Plsek and Morris eventually chime in with slightly overlapping solos of their own. There seems to be no rush to get to the blend of sounds that the trio works with for most of the album. This is interaction on another level. The spacious approach evokes an almost mystical sense of the performance setting and of the reverence the players have for the music they are playing.
Then — boom! — in comes "Particles" as the second track. The late John Stevens referred to his more minimalist-but-busy improvisations as "insect music," and this piece belongs nicely in that "genre." Voigt's bass creates a cavernous backdrop as Morris' and Plsek's staccato, almost non-tonal lines bob and weave like insects in flight. The singularity of the approach to this short piece suggests that the band does not allow itself to get sidetracked from what they perceive to be the demands of the compositions. And the contrast between these first two compositions is indicative of the sense of drama on this CD.
Joe Morris is in fine form throughout the album. He plays acoustic guitar throughout, and the range of unamplified detail he wrings from the instrument is a marvel. The angular lines of his jazzier playing appear here and there, but his choices consistently surprise. His use of a serrated pick to produce bowed sounds fits perfectly into many of these compositions, but Morris is able to move easily between these riti- and kora-like sounds and traditional picking.
While many of Morris' ensemble releases have featured playing styles that are more identifiably jazz-like (at least to those aware of players like Cecil Taylor and James Blood Ulmer) this CD imports the more open-ended improvisational techniques of his solo records into a group setting. This development has been too long in coming. On tunes like "Index Card #1," "Index Card #2," and the epic "Double Sheet," Morris — along with his bandmates — evinces essential qualities of great free improvisers: close listening, availability of a set of techniques that fit the music, avoidance of using those techniques as a crutch instead of interacting in the moment, etc.
For those who appreciate George Lewis' trombone style, Tom Plsek may be a lesser-known gem. Plsek relies heavily on the kind of "Yankees"-era extended techniques for which Lewis is known, but very much makes them his own. He tends slightly toward the reactive/imitative approach of, say, Evan Parker, compared to Morris and Voigt, but this inclination provides a good balance on this CD. And kudos to Morris and Voigt for not cracking up during Plsek's brilliantly flatulent interludes on "Gold Triptych."
Overall, the music here is self-assured yet highly idiosyncratic. It is almost as if one has stumbled upon some forgotten civilization and heard their strangely beautiful folk music for the first time; or looked at another way, it is as if LSD, through MVP, has actually managed to create a music all his own. Joe Morris wrote in his liner notes to "Antennae" that Lowell Davidson was "only following the ancient tradition of attempting to create music that was an element of nature and nothing less than that." MVP LSD is a magnificent extension of this tradition.
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