The Wire: Soundcheck
Rob Mazurek & Exploding Star Orchestra/ Small Unit Spectral Fiction Corbett Vs Dempsey CD/DL Rob Mazurek Milan Clean Feed CD/DL Star Splitter Medea We Insist!
Over more than three decades veteran trumpeter Rob Mazurek has never stopped adding tools and methods to his improvisational practice, relentlessly stretching an early investment in post-bop fundamentals. Over the years he’s added electronics, keyboards and even voice to his arsenal, and along the way he’s forged a kind of modular approach within an ever-expanding array of ensembles so that new concepts and compositions can bleed into or swap out of any given group, rigorously transformed by the personnel within those outfits.
Spectral Fiction was created by a scaled down sextet version of his long running Exploding Star Orchestra, recorded live in Chicago the day after the full band had performed a special concert in support of last year’s Lightning Dreamers. Over the course of two lengthy new pieces Mazurek directed the killer group – cellist Tomeka Reid, bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, drummer Chad Taylor, pianist Angelica Sanchez and vocalist Damon Locks – within organically flowing, improvisation driven sequences loosely related to themes carved out by the larger unit. Channeling the groove orientated sound worlds of early 1970s Miles Davis, the sextet surges and recedes around the futuristic freedom seeking texts of Locks, clinging to and cleaving form in the most organic fashion. The daytime performance seems charged by the energy of the preceding night’s set, with a palpable internal rapport marked by sublime intuition, as phrases and colors merge and divide like cellular matter.
Milan is the latest transmission of solo work focusing on Mazurek’s long-time obsession with sound projection, creating richly saturated sonic canvases. Performed as a live radio broadcast in the titular city, the musician used piano as a resonating device, feeding all of the sounds through the keyboard. With the sustain pedal fully depressed throughout the concert, Mazurek shepherds a dense sonic weave, whether contemplative or ecstatic, blowing tart, inherently melodic trumpet lines over thundering lower register piano chords, unleashing primal vocal howls while triggering various bells and shakers, or melding electronic beats with noh ensemble samples. The music flows continually, casting a ritualistic spell.
Star Splitter is Mazurek’s duo with Italian trumpeter Gabriele Mitelli – something of a stylistic disciple – and on their second album, the pair function like hall of mirror refractions of one another across a single work. The duo juggle trumpets, electronics, and raw vocalizing in a shapeshifting sound quilt that veers from spacious deliberation to densely raucous rapture. Despite the shared instrumentation, the musicians blend disparate aesthetic tendencies, sometimes coalescing but more often generating a visceral friction through differences that push and pull.
-Peter Margasak
