Hard on the heels of the last Thollem McDonas/Nels Cline confab that went up for sale comes the long-delayed release of Gowanus Sessions II.
Just three weeks prior, I was writing about how guitar great Nels Cline and keyboard savant Thollem McDonas had now made four trio albums together. That’s not entirely true; a fifth one was made eight years ago, they just took their time getting it out. Maybe that’s because they wanted to present their partnership with different third members to highlight different dynamics. The first one involved Downtown NYC bass legend William Parker in a marathon improv jam from January, 2012 that produced two albums’ worth of material.
Gowanus Sessions I came forth rather quickly, like, three months later. Then, Thollem and Cline banked that other half of the material as they bonded their talents with the late accordion player Pauline Oliveros (Molecular Affinity) and drummer Michael Wimberly (Radical Empathy and the afore-reviewed Reality and Other Imagined Places). Eight years after the original Thollem/Cline get-together, it’s time to come full circle again.
Gowanus Sessions II is the remainder of that 2012 Thollem/Parker/Cline session, enriched perhaps by the perspective of hearing those two other trios. Using Reality as a point of reference — only because we were just discussing it three weeks ago — there’s a huge chasm in the sound architecture just from replacing Wimberly with Parker, and it’s not just because sticks with an acoustic piano for the entire ride. Parker is masterful in his fluidity and his innate sense of where things are headed.
As with the second Wimberley trio release, this album consists of two extended pieces running close to twenty minutes a piece, which suits them to a “t” because they get to take the slightest cues and build out complete ideas, collapse them, and restart the cycle again several times within a single performance.
For about the first eight minutes of “Life In the World,” things are rather hushed, and Cline ekes out slightly odd timbres from his guitar; some from effects, other wrung by sheer technique. Thollem and Parker, tread gingerly, picking chords out of the air together and meshing with Cline’s mild eccentricities. Things get a little hectic, even tornadic, right around the midpoint, as Parker’s bow and Cline’s similarly sounding scraping mash up against Thollem’s frantic piano to create a cacophony worthy of their collective legacies. And just like that, it all fades into total silence, barely broken by Thollem’s tinkering inside the piano. Later, Thollem engages in a little organic minimalism as Parker dances his plucked bass around it.
“World In a Life” starts with much the same formula: Parker on arco bass responds to Thollem’s trills as Cline lurks barely in the background with evil on his mind. His demonic tones force its way up front but Thollem and Parker refuse to give ground and ultimately, that leads to some friction that creates the gratifying sparks. There’s a passage where the piano/bass interaction borders on supernatural, quickly succeeded by a bowed bass/guitar back-and-forth that borders on alien.
And then, as is sometimes the case, Thollem reels the trio back to the ground and introduces a new motif for them to build upon. Cline’s prodigious use of effects are all over two performances, but get its own protected spotlight around eleven minutes in, presaging a violent eruption a few minutes later. Parker afterwards is heard making unusual sounds, too, but organically.
Thollem/Parker/Cline’s Gowanus Sessions II hits the street January 31, 2020 courtesy of that home of experimental improvisation, ESP-Disk.
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