CD Reviews

Inner Constellation, Volume One

NEMU Records

Bruce Eisenbeil, acoustic and electric guitars; Jean Cook, violin; Nate Wooley, Trumpet; Aaron Ali Shaikh, alto sax; Tom Abbs, acoustic bass; Nasheet Waits, drums

Inner Constellation, a 47 minute-long mammoth take broken into 27 tracks, sucks you in right away with a rumbly electric guitar riff. The texture quickly picks up with the addition of the rest of the sextet. The first 10 tracks or so are loaded with energy and activity. Occasionally, long tunes emerges over the seething textures and each of the particular members get their own time in the spotlight.

Starting around track 7 (the tracks are not meant to be structural, but more for convenience) through track 10, the energy dissipates and the music starts to mellow out and sound less like Fernyhough-drank-too-much-coffee. To my ears, this is a welcome change. I get entranced by the barrage of music but my brain gets saturated. The thinning of texture happens at just the right time and is brought about in a very organic way. I love the in medias res opening and what follows. At first, it might sound like the members of the sextet aren’t really listening to each other. As these big-picture shifts of mood happen, you realize just how connected they all are. The individual tracks are interesting in and of themselves. The start of each track really sounds like the beginning of something, yet, in the context of the larger piece, these changes are subtle and easily missed.

The next large section is full of impressive performances by all members. I was floored at the fluidity of technique across the board. Each soloist typically starts with a straight tone but gradually morphs into thick, distorted, growly timbres. The transition to those timbres is so convincing that it never felt like a gimmick or a technique used simply “because they could.” They do it because they must. The texture starts to pick up again around track 20 but never quite reaches the same frenetic energy of the opening. It doesn’t need to. Instead the music shifts to a more serene and thin place. The most serene music, tracks 24 – 25, are incredibly beautiful. Inner Constellation is an amazing labyrinth of sonic imagination and performance.

After this magnum opus, the CD has three brief (approx. four minutes each) free-improv trios: Rain in the Face, Cues to the Vagabond, and Receding Storm. It seems like the CD is a bit off balance with these three shorter pieces following the long, but they are not to be missed. These works are delightful, engaging, and captivating performances. Rain in the Face, with its snap pizz and muffled scratchy string sounds, is my favorite. I want a whole album of these shorter pieces. Luckily I know where to go to find them…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 19th, 2007 at 2:10 pm and is filed under CD Review, Jay Batzner. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.