JASPER VAN
T'HOF/JOEY BARON
Un Incontro Illusorio
Challenge
CHR 70093
What's so unusual about an organ and drums duo, you ask? Didn't people
like Jimmy Smith, Johnny "Hammond" Smith and Don Patterson turn
out scads of organ records in every type of combination all through the
1960s and 1970s?
Well
yes, but the conception of this CD is a little different than those hunks
of funk. For a start, Dutch keyboardist Jasper van t'Hof initially recorded
these 17 tunes in 1998 on what seems to be a single keyboard, traditional
church organ in the Chiesa de Santa Maria delle Rose in Bonefro, Italy.
A little
less than two years later American drummer Joey Baron taped his percussion
parts in an Amsterdam studio, and those were then dubbed on top of van
t'Hof's initial improvisations. The result while definitely unique isn't
wholly successful and not for the reason you'd imagine. In this POMO world,
there's nothing sacred about insisting on recording live off the floor,
even in jazz. Mixing two or more individually recorded sounds together
is pretty standard in the industry and, a recent CD by Spring Hill Jack
blending tracks from New York and London, shows that this manipulation
can even work for improv.
Nonetheless,
even after you've become accustomed to the wheezy tones of the ancient
organ, you're still conscious of the time and space separation between
the two instrumentalists on some tracks. However, it's a tribute to the
skills of both the organist and the drummer that so many others fit together
seamlessly.
You
would expect this sort of experiment from Baron, who in his time with
musical chameleons like alto saxophonist John Zorn and guitarist Bill
Frisell established himself as percussionist who could play just about
anything. Van t'Hof, on the other hand, made his reputation as a fusion
player, with recording and playing partners like drummers Gerry Brown
and Alphonse Mouzon and saxophonists Ernie Watts and Bob Malach. Recently,
nevertheless, he's tried his hand and won awards for his playing of traditional
modern jazz. And this disc further showcases his versatility.
As
a quick rule of thumb, it's usually those improvisations that go on a
little longer, such as "Balsam" -- the longest at almost six
minutes -- and "Blue March" that come across the best. However
even something like "A Bad Knife Shaving" whose scarcely more
than one minute of protracted organ crescendos is broken up by inventive
cymbal and rolling floor tom work, shows that if inspired enough Baron
can practically knit a new melody from whole cloth.
Other
pieces like "Bluff Waltz" and "Umhblabla," fail for
different reasons, which in the main relate back to van t'Hof. On the
first he treats the church organ in such a way that it sounds like a low-grade
calliope. On the later, the recording of the instrument is too muffled
to mix with Baron's studio-produced sound.
For
sheer novelty's sake, many folks could be interested in investigating
what happened here and it's certainly an experiment that deserves to be
tried again. Bizarrely, its creation will also give some caustic reviewers
pause next time they write that a certain musician on a disc sounds like
he was recorded at a different location than the others. Maybe, as this
session demonstrates, he was.
--
Ken Waxman
Track
Listing: 1. One O Four; 2. Eather; 3. Les Deux; 4. Helium Speech; 5. The
Ultimate; 6. No Pray; 7. Bluff Waltz; 8. Hymen; 9. Balcony Zone; 10. Douala;
11. A Bad Knife Shaving; 12. Balsam; 13. Naves and Choir; 14. Bam Booz;
15. The Esteem Proceed; 16. Umhblabla; 17. Blues March
Personnel:
Jasper van t'Hof, church organ; Joey Baron, drums