Pearring Sound is the moniker affixed to music led by alto saxophonist Jeff Pearring, and that sound is jazz that’s sometimes playful and always daring. The prior album True Story presented Pearring Sound as a quartet with Ken Filiano on bass, Carlo Costa on drums and Pearring’s mentor, the late, great Connie Crothers on piano. Nothing But Time changes everything but for Pearring himself, the group now a trio with Adam Lane on bass and Tim Ford on drums.
This is Pearring Sound’s first studio album and the namesake uses this occasion to take advantage of studio magic, even within the context of recording only material made up as they were playing it, with no overdubs and the like.
“Plugin Heavy” is light years away from anything on True Story, and not just because of Lane’s slap bass, but some sound manipulation transformed this song into something akin Ornette’s Prime time band with some LSD sprinkled in (the concluding “Plugin Light” serves as a reprise). The electronica excursions return for the “Sweet Sci-fi” suite, which is retro-future enough to make Sun Ra proud. And “Effective Translation” finds the three jamming on a funky bass riff with Pearring sax heavily contorted by efx.
Nearly everywhere else, it’s the unvarnished acoustic avant-garde stuff. Adam’s bowing double-bass provokes a dark mood for both “Gather and Go” and “Talking Outside Time,” but Ford active drumming keeps things becoming a dirge, even instigating a steady groove on the former tune that Pearring skillfully mines. “Sunday” is posited on a lovely bass melody, and Pearring’s lithe, easygoing sax flows naturally to complement it. Duke Ellington’s “Blue Pepper” is the only cover here, with Pearring establishing the Middle Eastern melody before improvising on it. The rhythm section is nice and loose, picking up on every little whim and running with it.
“The March of the Aggressive Pedestrian” sort of straddles the two worlds Pearring Sound inhabits on this record, with no production alterations but Adams’ electric bass pacing a rumbling march that takes on a rock persona more than it does jazz.
So yeah, Nothing But Time might be schizophrenic, but that schizophrenia is proudly worn on its sleeve. Throughout all the different permutations of Pearring Sound lies Jeff Pearring’s devotion to music that tosses convention on its head and spontaneity on its feet.
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