Pretty much a harsh noise album. The passages of sound where the instruments in the credits are identifiable as themselves are few and far between. Mostly wet sound coming off of whatever live electronic processing is going on. There are some nice bits about 15 mins into the first track. I also liked the framing device for the second track, sound of piezo mic’d cardio and/or respiration.
“Compositions by Mats Gustafsson (STIM/NcB). Baritone and bass saxophones, organ, live electronics, bass drum.”
Say you’re walking along, and you only have your phone or your iPod or your walkman.
You start having a heart attack. Your heart stops.
If you’re lucky enough to have “Cuts Up, Cuts Out” on your device, quickly flick to that album, turn your device up to 11, and lie down.
I feel certain that it will restart your heart.
If not, well, it’s a pretty great soundtrack as you speed up and away from this mortal plane.
Cuts is a group along the lines of a less polite “Last Exit”.
Take no prisoners noisey improvisation super group involving Reedist Mats Gustafsson, Masami Akita (aka Merzbow), Balazs Pandi of Zu, and, of all people, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth.
If those people don’t mean anything to you, you probably won’t enjoy this music. Or, if you only know Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth’s Dirty, rather than his contribution to the Dietrich/Sauter/Moore album “Barefoot in the Head”, this may come as something as a shock to your system.
If those people mean something to you, you probably already know, as the press release suggests, “‘Cuts Up, Cuts Out’ is a snapshot of the four musician’s uncanny groupthink during a live performance at the Church of St John at Hackney at the end of September 2016. Spanning the highly exotic manifold of music dimensions of free noise, free and spiritual jazz, power ambient and grindcore, ‘Cuts Up, Cuts Out’ will cathartically renew and elevate the listeners Geist from the inside.”
Sustain by Chaos Echoes (Echœs) and Mats Gustafsson.
Bandcamp Link: Sustain
Different groups have been taking different runs at “heavy” music with Saxophones. I’m not familiar with Chaos Echoes, aside from this album, so I don’t know how representative it is of their other music. Gustafsson, though, is always heavy in his own way, and this is no exception.
They build an atmosphere of dread and tension, haunted house horror movie music, but withhold the release. Especially on the second track, where minute after minute after minute Gustafsson pointedly avoids resolving the band’s chords, hanging on 6ths, 7ths, 2nds, and squonks until the song just fades out, unrequited.
Pretty cool, and, yep, pretty heavy. (My only real complaint is, with a total run time of about 25 minutes, this album is way too short for my taste. More, please.)
If there is anyone who has enthusiastically carried forward the technical aspects of Albert Ayler’s playing into the 21st Century, it is Mr Mats Gustafsson. “Again” is something like the 20th album from Gustafsson’s trio, with Paal Nilssen-Love and Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, The Thing.
And, while Gustafsson’s playing sounds a bit like Ayler, The Thing doesn’t really feel like Ayler. There’s a sort of macho, athletic, gymnaticism, to The Thing’s playing, where Ayler was more spiritual, even when he was trying to be commercial.
So, if you need another The Thing album to add to your collection, or maybe you aren’t that familiar with them, “Again”, is a fine place to start for some invigorating free-ish jazz for your morning commute.
