July 15, 2022 might go down as a pretty nondescript day for you unless perhaps if you’re a fan of avant-garde jazz. That day, the noted alto saxophonist and jazz non-conformist Tim Berne dropped a new album on us without warning. A document from a turbulent live set from early 2015, Decay was recently discovered by Berne (it’s not known at this time if he scraped it off the studio floor or not) and he did the only proper thing to do, which was to hand it off to David Torn for mastering and then make it available to the public. After some seven years, Decay is now finally in the wild.
Berne freely assembles numerous permutations out of a wide circle of musicians with which he connects, and often a combination might last a single tour, a single stand or even a single performance. But his Decay quartet was actively kicking around in 2014-15 during peak Snakeoil, his main concern at the time. Indeed, Berne’s side project is spun right off of Snakeoil: it included drummer Ches Smith and also guitarist Ryan Ferreira, who right around that time joined the Snakeoil quartet to make it a quintet. Snakeoil doesn’t have a bassist, but for the Decay band, longtime collaborator Michael Formanek was enlisted.
There’s nothing offhanded about these performances — not that Berne and his comrades were even so inclined — and most of these Berne-penned songs hadn’t been officially released on record previously. New-to-us band with new-to-us songs makes this more than some keepsake, with the added bonus of hearing Berne sidemen of different eras co-mingle.
“Ola’s Mood” begins the way a lot of Berne tunes do, with Berne alone bleating a series of notes that only later you realize is part of the song’s construction and it later becomes evident that Ferreira is well attuned to it. Formanek and Smith, too, as the rhythm is so closely tied to the melody. With the parameters established, Formanek, Ferreira and then Berne improvise around them as the motif underneath moves. That sets the table for the rest of the fare, a band that plays so freely while keeping within the scheme laid out by Berne.
When Berne goes on his solo run during “Imperfect,” so is Formanek if you listen closely enough, but he’s still holding down the low end duties. When Berne recedes, the music transitions into an ambient barren soundscape, leaving the bassist to carry on the song virtually on his own and his pulses pushes the proceeding forward with a softened touch as he creates mini-melodies out of thin air.
“How Hip Is The Ocean” shows that when a dense-packed Tim Berne motif is slowed down, it assumes a whole different character, and the spacious aspect of the song enables you to hear more of the subtle accenting that Smith is doing just beneath Ferreira’s effects-driven tone-warping. Smith’s off-kilter groove on the “The Fantastic Five” finds a perfect companion in Formanek, something you can’t get from Snakeoil as good as that band is. Ferreira applies doom-laden intonations, a sentiment carried over to Formanek and Berne.
“Surface Noise” later showed up on Snakeoil’s The Fantastic Mrs. 10 but this is an earlier version and instead of pianist Matt Mitchell and Smith doubling up on Berne’s design to kick off the song, it’s a pairing Berne himself along with Ferreira’s mad robot guitar (which actually sounds pretty cool). That’s followed by the percussive genius of Ches Smith, who can apparently create symphonic drum presentations on the fly.
“A Third Option” likewise found its way into The Fantastic Mrs. 10 as simply “Third Option.” This particular portrayal is coarser; not the composition itself but in the way it’s presented. As is often the case, the song comes close to being a transcribed solo, and just playing it ‘straight’ requires loads of chops. Berne has that to spare, but also brings a human feel borne out in his rugged tone and the band around him is perceptively engaging ever more closely with him until loose playing coalesces into tight assembly. Of course, the latter rendition doesn’t benefit from a bass solo, and Formanek provides a stunning one here, demonstrating just how deep he can burrow inside Berne’s intricate scores. Ferreira does David Torn-like work casting out pedal-driven soundscapes as salient backdrops.
Some rather good jazz musicians have never led combos as good as this one that once served as a moonlighting diversion for Tim Berne. It was good enough to beg the question of why hadn’t the Decay combo made a record from their time together. Now, that question needn’t be asked anymore.
Pick up Decay now from Screwgun Records.
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