photo courtesy of Northern Spy Records
Anytime there’s a new release out that involves cornet player Rob Mazurek, it warrants attention because it’s certain to be interesting and unlike jazz you’d hear anywhere else. Across more than a half dozen Mazurek-helmed projects, he veers from acoustic advanced bop to electronic primal fusion to meditative pure sound. One of his earliest incarnations after he first went down the experimental path in the late 90’s was his collaborations with drummer Chad Taylor, forming the Duo version of Mazurek’s various Chicago Underground projects. That pairing remains very much alive and their last outing Boca Negra was one of the better out-jazz releases of 2010. Now comes their sixth album Age Of Energy and along with that, a move to a new label, Northern Spy Records.
Very few are doing electro-acoustic better than the Chicago Underground Duo, because very few mix the two musical sonic worlds together as organically as they do. Recorded live with minimal overdubs, Age Of Energy continues their long tradition of exploration, explosions and meditation. Lacking a bass, the void is either filled by the repeating motifs of analog-ish electronic sounds or just not addressed at all, leaving a huge hole in the sound that leave Mazurek and Taylor all kinds of room to maneuver when creating both serenity and commotion. The music always seems to know where it’s headed and the destination merely becomes the starting point for another mind trip.
All these things are present on “Winds And Sweeping Pines,” a twenty minute epic that occupies nearly half of the album, but is in reality four songs, or rather, segments combined as a single piece. Unalloyed electronic ambience is joined by Taylor’s rock rhythms for a while, moving through some moments of unsettled foreboding and then a new laptop-generated repeating pattern over which Mazurek improvises and Taylor thunders down the quickened beat in a freakish fashion.
“It’s Alright” is a gritty electronic wash as Mazurek sings the title through a trippy tremolo effect much as Tommy James and the Shondells did for “Crimson and Clover,” and then proceeds to play his horn over the same mic. Not all the alien sounds created by the two have to involve electronics: “Castle In Your Heart” features Taylor creating an African styled ostinato on mbira as Mazurek’s muted cornet dances lightly around it. “Age of Energy” (YouTube above) is constructed from a programmed synthesizer-type patterns set to simple chord changes, freeing up Taylor to thrash about his kit and Mazurek to finally cut loose on his heavily reverberating horn.
Creating in the moment like their AACM brethren but with the lo-fi electronic effects of an indie act and other creative mashings, the Chicago Underground Duo continue to make the case for all the original sounding music that is possible by just two, open minded and innovative musicians.
Age Of Energy, a Northern Spy release, drops March 13.
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Thanks for the thoughtful review — nspy