In 2013, we discovered a new punk-jazz trio Tiger Hatchery who was at the time making its recording debut on the fabled ESP-Disk label. We lauded their debut Sun Worship as “an album worthy of the ESP-Disk’s legacy of unbound, anti-commercial music.”
It’s been five years but the potent trio of Mike Forbes (saxophones), Andrew Scott Young (bass) and Ben Billington (drums) have returned for their second offering for ESP-Disk. Breathing In The Walls is distinguished from its predecessor not by approach but simply by concision: instead of three extended tracks there are nine, with all but two running less than four minutes long. If anything, these short-and-sweet songs suit Tiger Hatchery’s punk ethos better.
The head banging is relentless on tunes such as “Exoskeletal,” “Pothole Pleasure” and “Scorch the Earth” as Forbes picks up on sax where John Zorn left off. Young is playing electric bass, yes, but with his amplifier so overdriven, most people are likely to assume he’s playing guitar instead because he shreds that way. And Billington must have been completely spent after going full bore for three (or less) minutes straight.
Think they’re are going to slow down for a song that call “Not Chill”? Not a chance. Young’s bass is a runaway train, easily keeping up with Billington’s off-leash drums, and playing darn near the same way. “Triple Penny” is also a squall-fest but sprinkled with the action suspended for Young’s prickly bass moments.
“Drawing Down The Moon” does change it up from the speed-thrashery elsewhere to make it meter-less convo among the three. Forbes wrings out some contorted squawks out of what is probably a baritone sax. “Breathing In the Walls,” (parts 1 and 2) isn’t a mauler, but it’s a dark, uneasy peace that’s in keeping with a doom jazz aesthetic.
You don’t have to find an alternative to jazz just because you want to get your yah-yah’s out. Tiger Hatchery’s Breathing In The Walls reduces the freaky fun to bite-sized pieces because any bigger bites than those would likely make your head explode.
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