Label: ESP-Disk, 2025

Personnel - Larry Ochs: tenor and sopranino saxophone; Joe Morris: bass; Charles Downs: drums.

Saxophonist Larry Ochs teams up with Flow Trio’s rhythm section—bassist Joe Morris and drummer Charles Downs—for this fully improvised session. Despite the trio never having played together before, they generate moments of noisy frisson, though not enough to make the material truly memorable.

From the outset, they push toward the ‘outer’ limits, frequently skirting the aggressive edge of sound in a freewheeling display of musical camaraderie. The opening track, “Yay-Hidee-Yonk-Yoh”, is high-caliber, shifting from a layered blend of bowed bass, sweeping sopranino phrases, and fluid drumming into a more grounded interplay of bass pizzicato, low-pitched tenor, and awkwardly marching drum patterns. The second track, “Yonk-Hidee-Yo-Yay-Yay”, begins with bass and drums bleeding into each other, creating a homogenous tapestry over which Ochs delivers an expressive vocabulary filled with pungent tenor growls and infectious aplomb.

“Hiddee-Yay-Yoh-Yonk-Yohhh” continues the pattern of playfully odd titles but is brimming with wry gestures that spread tension throughout. Jarring saxophone bursts punctuate the frantic free playing, while the rhythm section maintains a solid comping presence. However, the album tends to feel dense and somewhat repetitive, lacking standout moments. That said, the tangled title cut, “Every Day-All the Way”, introduces early sopranino flights and serrated arco bass textures before attempting a fresh build midway, evolving from a soft mutter into an unstructured sonic mesh.

Unpolished and raw, this date grows somewhat tiresome by the second track, leaving an impression of potential left unrealized.

Favorite Tracks:
01 - Yay-Hidee-Yonk-Yoh ► 05- Every Day-All the Way

Label: Clean Feed, 2019

Personnel - Larry Ochs: saxophone; Nels Cline: electric guitar; Gerald Cleaver: drums.

If you want to figure out how music can be so ferocious and intimate at the same time, you should try What Is To Be Done, a compulsory trio record featuring saxophonist Larry Ochs, guitarist Nels Cline, and drummer Gerald Cleaver. The album brings a special motivation since it marks the 500th release of the Lisbon-based avant-jazz imprint Clean Feed.

The three musicians have been gigging together for quite some time but never had recorded before as a group. Saxophonist and guitarist were temporary partners in the Rova’s Electric Ascension bands, while Cleaver records with Cline for the first time, taking the opportunity to tighten the musical bond with Ochs after their duo album Songs of the Wild Cave (RogueArt, 2018).

They let the music breathe in the introductory section of the mercurial “Outcries Rousing”, where we hear elongated, electrified guitar chords sustaining a bashful saxophone. Moments later, Ochs wallows in a rasping rumpus with just Cleaver’s magnetic backbeat underneath. Even when Cline joins again, causing a darned detonation of acid-rock and proto-funk, the musicians find their own space, stretching their imagination to reinforce the collective’s integrity. A rare dark atmospheric passage seems to motivate Cline to subvert the sonic milieu. He dishes out twangy, spasmodically electro strokes synced with methodical percussive thumps. This segment evolves into an avalanche of sound created by continual noise guitar, fraught and resilient saxophone trajectories delineated with dark tones, and the catchy, athletic pulses from Cleaver. He is a fantastic rhythm sculptor, who also excels in the following structural block marked by prog-rock invention and electronica slipperiness. Running over 20 minutes, there’s a lot going on here, and the trio even stops by power-metal territories before Ochs detours toward East, throwing in sumptuous, Arabic-flavored phrases.

“A Pause, a Rose” is initially tinged with folk influences, affected by cascades of draggy electronic effects, and ultimately buoyed up by a lovely, fragmented trippy rhythm that produces glorious results with the guitar and soprano sax atop.

Like the opening track, “Shimmer Intend Spark Groove Defend” goes above 20 minutes, relying on the intense capacity of communication between the trio members, who work from many different angles. Exhibiting seamless transitions while pummeling with impressive force, this track includes relentless primitive rhythms, eerie drones, agonizing groans and spiraling phrases on the saxophone, and a variety of guitar textures comprising serene loopy vibes, loud spiky liberations, grungy tautness, and psych-rock stabs.

This is a tiny treasure of a disc, where you find no subterfuges and every section becomes a fresh discovery.

Favorite Tracks:
01 - Outcries Rousing ► 03 - Shimmer Intend Spark Groove Defend