VARIOUS ARTISTS
No Ideas Festival
Concident Records/NI-001
Spring Garden Music #011
ten pounds to the sound #002


Famed for its tough tenor saxophonists like Booker Ervin or Bob Willis’ Western swing, the musical eyes of Texas have never really focused on experimental players – even Ornette Coleman had to go to Los Angeles, of all places, to develop his ideas.

Recently however, mirroring what’s happening in other places, a community of microtonal/minimalist/Free Music experimenters has appeared in the state, mostly in Austin with extrusions elsewhere. The No Ideas Festival is an outgrowth of this development, with this two-CD set a record of its second configuration. Taking place over four days in Austin and Houston, the shows features ad hoc groups including locals and visitors from Boston, Portland, Ore., San Diego, Philadelphia, Oakland, Calif. and Berlin, Germany.

Results are mixed, with some performances sounding like a version of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and others challenging, yet as generic to the state as its cattle or yellow roses. Aggregations based around a combination of acoustic horns and strings fare best this time, while an over-reliance on electro-acoustic interface and/or too many percussion instruments tends to leech dynamism away from cooperation. Additionally, perhaps because the improvisers had time to become comfortable with one another over three nights of Austin improv, the Houston CD, recorded on the festival’s final date, is superior. Almost 23 minutes longer, the Austin disc could have been shorter still with material excised.

Featuring only three differently constituted groupings, the Houston confab tilts towards acoustic bands as well. Tracks four and five, for instance, highlight a first time meeting between a trombone, alto saxophone, guitar and percussion. Houston trombonist and educator Dave Dove, is a follower of composer Pauline Oliveros’ lower case concepts. Former Torontonian, now Austin resident guitarist Kurt Newman has worked with saxophonists Mats Gustafsson and John Butcher, while Nuremberg-born, Berlin-based percussionist Michael Griener plays with dancers, actors and poets as well as improvisers like bassist Günter Christmann and Gustafsson. Senior member is reedist Jack Wright who has played with more than 60 partners in the U.S. and in Europe, including, French soprano sax player Michel Doneda and Boston saxist Bhob Rainey.

Wright may dislike the comparison, but one of the reasons the almost-24-minute improv succeeds is because of its ties to Free Jazz. Reed smears, stretched percussion string abrasions, double-tongued trombone notes and spiccato string explorations begin the meeting. Soon amp-distorted, descending flat picking, burbling, brass lip action and sax ejaculations that resemble the honking of a clown’s horn come to the fore. Scraping friction from his kit allows Griener to wiggle percussive waves that move the piece along, with both he and the guitarist exhibiting bell-tolling timbres at different points.

As Dove uses smears and Wright tongue slaps, Newman’s individually frailed textures and sequenced amplifier sideband sounds help define the improvisation. Resolution is reached when the saxophonist’s snaky vibrations meld with buzzing squeals from the guitarist’s amplifier.

Newman and Dove, hook up with Oakland, Calif.-based clarinetist Matt Ingalls, make Austin’s almost 11½-minute track six the standout on the other CD. Ingalls, who has worked with guitarists like John Shiurba and trombonists such as George Lewis adapts to the other timbres so that by the end it seems as if this microtonal group has been together for years. Irregularly vibrated harmonies spark between the trilling clarinet and the snoring trombone, with the guitarist clinking timbres by accenting odd sections of his axe. Soon Dove is vocalizing undulating lines from his mouthpiece as Ingalls crabwalks pure-toned filigree on top of that. Surprising with a series of chromatic runs, Newman provides the mid-tempo bedrock on which the ‘bone’s slurred grace notes and the reed’s flutter tonguing can best be displayed.

An even more traditional Free Jazz grouping – reed, brass, bass and drums – is featured on Austin’s first two tracks, a collaboration between Ingalls, San Diego-based trombonist Tucker Dulin, Boston bassist Mike Bullock and Austin-based percussionist Nick Hennies. Ingalls and the drummer have also worked with many East Coast microtonalists, while Bullock and Dulin were both part of Masashi Harada’s Ensemble in Boston.

Here, Dulin seems to drip colored air from his horn as Ingalls produces a light-toned, woody continuum, Hennies crashes his percussion and Bullock manhandles his bass. Loop-like, the rhythm section continues as horn parts swell in volume and intensity. Hennies’ offbeat and clattering rhythmic sense defines the second track as Bullock’s resonating bass thwacks and Dulin’s grace notes unite. As the bassist keeps a shuffled arco line going Ingalls converts his tongue circulation to a squeal as it’s joined by ‘bone resonation.

Without Ingalls, the three also score on Austin’s second track. Scraped and sawing bass string friction follows encircling drum patterns and buzzing cymbal action pushing the trombonist into several unusual chromatic slide positions.

The Houston CD’s remaining track is really the only one including electronics that makes the grade. It features Boston’s Linda Gale Aubrey on electronics and samplers, Berlin’s Sabine Vogel on flute, Portland’s Bryan Eubanks on soprano saxophone and analog tape, Houston’s Maria Chavez on turntables and Austin-based drummer and No Idea organizer Chris Cogburn. Vogel’s experience in electronica-fascinated Berlin – where she works in bands with Griener and Australian drummer Tony Buck – and Eubanks’ interest in slightly modified open-circuit electronics and variable sound fields may contribute to this. However, an earlier matchup in Austin is all hiss and abrasion.

In Houston however the yawning chasm of sound was wide enough to consolidate looped sequenced from Aubrey, vinyl insertions and scratching from Chavez along with reed tongue slaps and an overlaid screechy flute tone. As a climax, Eubanks’ breathy harmonica-like textures meld perfectly with gong-like ring modulator sidebands.

Newman’s resonating spring coiled guitar plinks, rolling nerve beats from Grenier, growling pitch vibrations from Wright and Vogel’s sometime intermittent flute accents pump up with polytonal ripples enliven some of the Austin tracks on which they’re featured. But others, especially a nearly 13½-minute percussion workout that adds Austin’s Brian Ramisch’s pounding to rumbles from Griener, Cogburn and Hennies must have been better in thought than execution.

Not that this should turn anyone away from this two-CD set. Like all good improvisations, NO IDEAS gives participants a place to soar or fail. Ignore the bad stuff and instead concentrate on the many free improv currents in the Lone Star State.


-- Ken Waxman


Track Listing: Austin CD: 1. One 2. Two 3. Three 4. Four 5. Five 6. Six 7. Seven 8. Eight

Personnel: Austin CD: 1. Bryan Eubanks (soprano saxophone and analog tape); Chris Cogburn (percussion); Linda Gale Aubry (electronics and samplers); Maria Chavez (turntables) 2. Tucker Dulin (trombone); Mike Bullock (bass); Nick Hennies (percussion) 3. Sabine Vogel (flute); Jack Wright (soprano and alto saxophones); Michael Griener (percussion) 4. Sabine Vogel (flute); Tucker Dulin (trombone); Kurt Newman (guitar) 5. Chris Cogburn, Nick Hennies, Brian Ramisch and Michael Griener (percussion) 6. Dave Dove (trombone); Matt Ingalls (clarinet and bass clarinet); Kurt Newman (guitar) 7. Bryan Eubanks (soprano saxophone); Matt Ingalls (clarinet); Jack Wright (alto saxophone) 8. Dave Dove and Tucker Dulin (trombones); Chris Cogburn, Nick Hennies, (percussion)


Track Listing: Houston CD: 1. One 2. Two 3. Three 4. Four 5. Five

Personnel: Houston CD: 1. & 2. Tucker Dulin (trombone); Matt Ingalls (clarinet); Mike Bullock (bass); Nick Hennies (percussion) 3. Bryan Eubanks (soprano saxophone and analog tape); Sabine Vogel (flute); Chris Cogburn (percussion); Linda Gale Aubry (electronics and samplers); Maria Chavez (turntables) 4.& 5. Dave Dove (trombone); Jack Wright (soprano and alto saxophones); Kurt Newman (guitar); Michael Griener (percussion)