Label: Amalgam, 2020
Personnel - Timotheé Quost: trumpet, electronics; Ishmael Ali: cello, guitar, electronics; Bill Harris: drums, electronics.
Paris-based trumpeter Timotheé Quost, Chicago/NY-based cellist/guitarist Ishmael Ali, and Chicago-based drummer Bill Harris are adepts of long-form improvisation. Their first recording, Dawá, showcases the complexity of their sounds, which exist beyond genre or convention. Free improvisation fuses with conspicuous electronic rudiments, leading to three structurally unpredictable tracks delivered with explorative momentum and textural panache.
The eventful “Capsaicin” squeezes in tingling digital noises, cluttered rhythms, and trumpet’s squeaks, cackles, and air notes into an intensive sound design. Continuous, pitch-swooping interferences accompany both the pizzicato and the arco cello explorations. Terse trumpet murmurs develop into complete phrases and fixed rhythmic ideas fly atop avalanche-style drumming and guitar textures outlined by strumming and plucking techniques. The sounds made me picture curious chemical reactions.
Usually opting for dismembered and shapeless forms, it’s pretty clear that the trio’s sense of epiphany lives from a free flow combination of disparate sounds rather than any sort of lyrical approach. “Camphor” proves what I’ve just said by lingering a long time in this singular enigmatic world where sequential metallic noises and electrified drones with impulse interference stimulate our imagination. The ebbs and flows on the last third of this piece accumulate free jazz shapes with no tempo concerns. That’s when Quost’s ostinati and casual phrasing ramble through the irregular undulations provided by active cello and frisky drum charges. Percussive blowouts help expanding strong electromagnetic fields in the piece's concluding segment.
Despite of the chirping sounds and high-pitched arco cello scrapes at the outset, “Claret” seems to have been influenced by heavy industrial sounds. The busy scenario is built upon lashing rhythms, insistent noises, and prolonged beeps. At some point, you have mallet drumming profundity supporting the trumpet’s extended techniques, but in the final moments, it’s Ali’s eccentric open guitar chords in contrapuntal communication with Harris’ effusive snare drum attacks that support vagabond trumpet lines.
Consistently interactive, the trio applies refreshingly unfamiliar ingredients to their electro-acoustic abrasions, playing them with both moderation and asperity as convenient. It’s a fact that some phases work better than others, but overall, this record should please listeners trying to escape conventions.
Grade B
Favorite Tracks:
01 - Capsaicin ► 03 - Claret