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An enthusiastic response to the debut CD by [Br]om (Moscow)
The Moscow avant-jazz outfit known as [Br]om was founded three years ago, in order to maximize the expressive potential of a bass, saxophone, and vocal trio - living and working in a particular city. As we'll see, the radical sounds in this post are all designed in response to their urban context(s). [Br]om's earliest members, en route to local cacophony, came together after a variety of experiences with Moscow noise-core outfits, so the experimental range was bound to be considerable from the outset.
And indeed, the raison d'être of [Br]om even in those early, halcyon days was to outdo the paltry level of risk-taking on the Moscow underground scene. Whatever existed on stages around the capital, [Br]om intended to surpass it. Following a few live and demo recordings, thoughts gradually turned to the feasibility of a full-blown album - and, sure enough, that major publication saw the light of day a couple of months ago. The tracks on display here come from[Br]om's debut, eponymous CD.
Free jazz, jazzcore, punk, post-bop, hip-hop, and noisecore...
As subsequent jam and/or live sessions have taken shape, hoping to find even greater formal liberty, the band members like to speak of their ongoing efforts in terms of physical, if not corporeal progress. A body of work - quite literally! - comes together: "Our fleeting improvisations and structured 'jazz-nightmares' start to acquire their own flesh and blood." Whether this is an issue of (more) mobile freedom or some latter-day Frankenstein remains debatable. In either case, though, the soundtrack to wayward, worried thoughts is assured - by what the performers refer to as a deliberately "aggressive aesthetic." Life in Moscow demands a feisty response, at the very least.
[Br]om: top to bottom - Dmitrii Lapshin, Oskana Grigor'eva, Anton Ponomarev
These stories of medical or monstrous transformation have led - not surprisingly - to multiple changes in the line-up. Formal experimentation is transferred from the stage to a team roster and, according to that same rationale, an excessive or "pugnacious" style is likely to rearrange its exponents especially often. The music demands new and fearless practitioners, like any daunting landscape.
[Br]om's team-sheet has included such well-known artists as percussionist Ol'ga Nosova, who is currently collaborating with Aleksei Borisov. Today - at least for the foreseeable future - the band members are Anton Ponomarev (sax), Dmitrii Lapshin (bass), and Oskana Grigor'eva (drums). A structural principle remains in place - that of [Br]om's traditional instruments or tools - but the faces come and go. That same framework, of three sparring performers (themselves responding to local tedium), is viewed either as a process of increasingly violent juxtapositions or an uneasy union: "[Br]om's catalog is a patchwork of various moods, spun from a number of styles. These are jazz, hardcore, and free improvisation. Everything's bound tightly to an aggressive rhythm section and a wailing sax."
Everything's bound tightly to an aggressive rhythm section and a wailing sax
This abstract, deliberately antagonistic response to surrounding reality might be likened to what we hear from the St. Petersburg "avant/ surreal/ psychedelic" collective, Madlene. Their own jammed or improvised output also blurs the line between fantasy and fear, drawing occasionally upon the symbolism of the saxophone - in the band's side-project "Madlene's Sax Trip." In Russian jazz traditions the saxophone has always had a troubled status, associated by the Stalinist establishment, for example, with an alien (American) influence that should be absent from "orderly" social culture. The sounds of personal passion - or anxiety, in fact - had no place in the collective.
Madlene's arguably formless - and often cacophonous - instrumentals are located in this realm or disjuncture between selfhood and surrounding reality. One recent composition, by way of illustration, is called: "Everything Is So Slow. Even the Stars, Even the Sky." Related titles such as "Marionette," "Mask," and "Whirligig" only strengthen the imagery of disorientation. Private experience yearns to move beyond tedious normality - yet is unnerved by what's found there - in a realm of "jazz nightmares." Experimentation is both an object of desire and of concern.
Perhaps the most striking example of this jazzcore response to urban tedium has been a compilation from Siberia, entitled "Garage or Culture?" (Garazh ili Kul'tura?). We've looked at earlier editions within this raucous series of albums - and on this occasion, compiler Anton Gudkov (aka Booby Mason) is focusing upon avant-garde and noise collectives from Omsk, almost a thousand miles from Moscow.
I don't like Omsk - in fact you could even say I have a fantastic loathing for the place
One of the most interesting reactions to the CD has come from the local press. Here, and speaking about this 18-track compilation, Mr. Gudkov said in conversation with a Siberian journalist: "I don't like Omsk - in fact you could even say I have a fantastic loathing for the place. I hate Omsk for its incredible provinciality, for its dimwitted inhabitants, and for the dirty streets... not to mention other kinds of junk." Quiet sounds are not to be expected, therefore.
"Garage or Culture?" (Garazh ili Kul'tura): Omsk edition
Somewhere within the fog of discontent, a few words of rational consideration are eventually evident: "Nonetheless, [despite my dislike for this place], I have always gone to local concerts - and known about a few good artists. The kind you'd be proud to refer to as 'bands from my town...'" Three dull spheres of modern music are avoided in filtering any wheat from the chaff: "Hairy, unwashed heavy-metal bands; pop-punk songs (made by gurgling infants); and over-dramatic indie groups..."
The result of that editing process leads us to Siberian figures such as saxophonist Petr Starodumov, shown below and who works in various "post- or free-jazz" ensembles around the region. His solo efforts are usually confined to the group known as One, while he also contributes to side-projects like MoreoveR. Both of those endeavors, and their typographical whims, are offered here.
You'll be enveloped in - if not swamped by - waves of noise from the sax
Local journalists have assessed this clamorous, spontaneous, and improvised depiction of Siberian life in ways that are remarkably similar to [Br]om's noisy reaction to Moscow tedium. From Omsk we hear: "Here is true creativity in the psychedelic sense of the word. You'll be enveloped in - if not swamped by! - waves of noise from the sax. It's followed by a fundamental bass groove, solid rhythm section, and guitar flourishes in a 'neo-heavy rock' vein." None of which are designed for the peace and calm of primetime media.
Petr Starodumov (left), playing with MoreoveR (Omsk)
Although this text develops a little pathos towards its conclusion and begins to speak of "music made outside of time," the author does at least make one justifiable and important assertion. Starodumov, she says, plays material "That's relevant to its place [or location]." A very cold and "loathsome" place, apparently.
If we were looking for an equally grand - yet less abstract - idea with which to counteract the oppressive nature of Siberian trials and tribulations, we might be disappointed. Another of the Omsk bands on this compilation, Soul Kitchen, offers us a track entitled "The Juvenile Sea" - or "Sea of Youth," perhaps. Presumably that's a reference to Andrei Platonov's 1931 story of the same name. If so, then the subtext is less than optimistic.
All that's left inside us is dust (Platonov)
As is often the case, Platonov's narrative concerns some fantastic (even hellishly grand) aims of socialist construction. The story revolves around meat farming in a barren wilderness. This is a location burdened with an overwhelming sadness (or "toska"), no matter the volume of surrounding propaganda. Social planning, in other words, is thwarted by the dead weight of depressing actuality; institutionalized effort against it leads only to perverse distortions of nature. In the light of these depressing conclusions, we shouldn't be surprised that Soul Kitchen tend towards the introspection of shoegaze. When society fails so badly, solitude has much appeal.
As a result of these conflicts with civic planning or "promise," the most fitting response is - arguably - the kind of "jazz nightmare" we hear from several of these bands. They all hope to displace tedium or state-sponsored enterprise with a profoundly subjective noise and disjuncture. The extreme unpredictability of these compositions, which is consciously developed, arises from a deep-set cynicism over what local actuality has offered - at least since 1931.
It's hard to play against a general decline.
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