by S. Victor Aaron
Know any good music in Baltimore? I do. The city that has spawned or raised such diverse, quirky talents such as Cab Calloway, Frank Zappa and David Byrne is currently the home to a new one: Quartet Offensive.
Formed just two years ago, Quartet Offensive plays music where crunchy rock, jazz and whack jazz intersect. It’s a crossroads of styles where you can find John Zorn’s Naked City, The Vandermark 5, Tim Berne’s Bloodcount and Nels Cline. That’s a great place to be, as far as I’m concerned. Incidentally, QO is a five-piece band, not a quartet. Although originally, they were when formed by Adam Hopkins (bass) John Dierker (bass clarinet), Matt Frazao (guitar) and Nathan Ellman-Bell (drums). Eric Trudel (tenor sax) later rounded out the current lineup.
Having gigged enough to get their sound solidified, Quarter Offensive went into the studio late last year and cut a record entirely of originals they call Carnivore. It’s an album erupting with attitude, spontaneity and some pretty good musicianship.
It’s important for an album to get off on the right footing and the guys at Q. Offensive are cognizant of that. That’s why the record starts with the Led Zeppelin-meets-Scorch Trio ruckus of “The Dirty Dollar”. Hopkins wrote that one and two other, more rambunctious jaunts, “O.D.” and “The M.B.S.,” the former featuring some furious skronking from Dierker and then Frazao, and the latter boasting some spirited group improvisation.
Frazao is responsible for a couple of knotty compositions, “Yo Banana Boy” and “The Sheep Ate The Flower.” “Banana” is fitful funk that’s wide open to allow each of the soloist lots of room. The schizophrenic “The Sheep” starts innocuously, devolves into free form honking and blurting just one minute in, then moves on to a peacefully probing passage or two before launching into a 7/4 interlude with some sweet unison lines by Frazao and Trudel and a sweeping finale.
Trudel, by the way, contributed “Heavy-Light,” an introspective, slowly-unfolding piece. And yet, it’s still edgy, thanks to Frazao’s bent guitar noises and effects, as well as Trudel’s own impassioned performance at the end of the song. Gentler pieces like “Goodbye, Cavendish” and “Jelly” prove that the band is still effective with creating moods and executing well as a group even when they aren’t gettin’ wiggy with it.
In spite of each song being of distinct character, the whole album is unified by a reckless swagger and an improvising spirit. That’s accentuated by the fact that the record was recorded without edits within a 24-hour period, which gives this “live in the studio” disc the best of both worlds. Quartet Offensive may have only been together for a couple of years, but it’s clear that they were more than ready to make this record.
Carnivore, distributed by Morphius Records, is available beginning today at your favorite physical or online record retailer. Visit Quartet Offensive’s MySpace page here.
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