I was familiar with the name Rick Countryman but had never listened to him before now. In hindsight, I am not sure why doing so took so long. His name seems to pop up every few months associated with a new release, and he has been at it for decades. More importantly, at least on this release, he has shown himself signally contemporary while carving out a distinctive sound and approach.
Enough about Countryman as soloist/leader for now. The album is titled Unanimity, being of a single heart, mind or spirit. Although one frequently focuses on the saxophonist as the front-man in configurations such as this, the leadership on Unanimity is collective and balanced. Although the pieces fit, however, they do not do so cleanly. The effect is like a craggy outcropping. There is no jigsaw puzzle precision, as this is improvised. However, when one hears the whole, they can take in the unique beauty of the jagged range for, rather than despite, its lack of clean lines or polish. For his part, Countryman does a lot. He can wring out breathy and tweaked phrases or let out drips and drops and full-on showers of free bop melodies. Even when he hits on something fresh, he seems in too much of a hurry to linger long on a single melody or line of inquiry. Drummer Christian Bucher takes a similarly restive approach and more frequently walks in step with Countryman than bassist Simon Tan. Meanwhile, Tan fills out the bottom. I hesitate to assign strict roles, but Tan keeps the music grounded, with his deep and heavy struts and bowing, and insistent, elemental clomp. Then again, it is difficult to determine who is following whom at any given moment. Through it all, the point seems not melody or speed, or moving in one definitive direction or another, but exploring a mood and palette.
I am not sure whether this recording was just one of those special meetings where everything seemed to work, or this is what these long-time collaborators have been doing for years. Either way, on Unanimity they do it right, with a single aesthetic vision but together and separately pursuing various divergent routes to get there.
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