Oh what happened to you?
Mike Hugg and Ian La Frenais
Whatever happened to me?
What became of the people we used to be?
I hate it when classic trios are no more. Case in point the Vijay Iyer trio that had the pianist leader with bassist Stephan Crump and drummer Marcus Gilmore. They left some great albums behind. More obscurely though in most cases is what each trio member did next. Not that Iyer has suffered from lack of name recognition. The Harvard professor is long since in the icon, giants of jazz, bracket and a major figure in jazz globally. Gilmore this year has been touring widely and made a fine Live at the Village Vanguard album. Crump remains a Henry Grimes-esque avantist and Otherlands trio is a fine vehicle for him. Drummer Eric McPherson you will know for his work with Fred Hersch and good on Hillai Govreen’s Every Other Now. Blisteringly compelling saxist Darius Jones has profile for his work with Matthew Shipp and Matana Roberts. There isn’t the central focus you get on the classic Iyer records but exact comparisons aren’t a good idea and idiomatically what’s here is a world away from even Crump and McPherson’s work with the avantist Kris Davis. The extra looseness and lack of a single centre of gravity is just as interesting and Star Mountain is an album that contains lots of great ideas charismatically interpreted. While avant garde it’s not overly self-conscious or perversely edgy look at me! It is instead like a giant work-out pushed along in highly mobile fashion often more tortoise than hare by the tonally rugged Crump who can do beyond the bar-line creativity and playing time-no-time like it’s child’s play. To defer again to the Hugg and La Frenais song:
Never go back you tell me, it’s the worst thing you can do
But I must go there till I find out where it is I’m going to
There’s no fear of mining past glories anywhere here. Otherlands trio know where they are going to by playing these co-operatively written pieces that embrace risk in their very DNA. How much is spontaneous composition I have no way of knowing but certainly spontaneity in the sense of sounding like freedom is easy to discern.
A utopia of sorts Jones plays a blinder and if a fan of his or if you like the music of say Sam Rivers you will not just have to have this, you will need to own this Queens studio recording that’s like state of the art progressive free-jazz post doctoral research made flesh and bone.
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