Tim Berne tribute albums by guitarists are a thing. First, Gregg Belisle-Chi made a record of all-Berne compositions with Koi (2021) and then along came Gordon Grdina with Oddly Enough in 2022. Each of these guitarists revealed as much about their advanced interpretive skills as they did with the prowess of Tim Berne as composer, and they revealed the openness of this music despite their density.
(Yeah, I know, pianist Matt Mitchell did a record of all-Berne songs before any guitarist did.)
But there may be no more logical guitarist for leading a set of recordings of Berne songs than Marc Ducret, the most prolific of all as a Berne guitar sideman. An association that goes all the way back to around 1990, Ducret has been a member of probably more Berne bands than anybody, starting with Caos Totale and moving on through Big Satan, Science Friction, Bloodcount and Snakeoil. All this is a way of saying that there is arguably no guitar player who knows Berne tunes more intimately like Marc Ducret does.
So now, we have the most logical of Berne covers guitar album with Ducret’s Palm Sweat: Marc Ducret Plays the Music of Tim Berne.
You would think that the impetus for this album was automatic, given Ducret’s long and close association with Berne, but that wasn’t necessarily so. Berne handed over a stack of raw pieces and sketches he wrote that were so fresh, the composer hadn’t even played them himself. Ducret was on his way back to his native France to seclude a bit while the world was enduring wave after wave of new covid strains. Thus, the vast majority of these tunes are not only Berne tunes, but are also Berne tunes being both performed and recorded for the first time. A few selections were chosen from the Snakeoil oeuvre for good measure.
The base tracks were all recorded by Ducret in his home studio, and he played a vast array of guitars, basses, percussion, and a curious assortment of other instruments. Additional guitar, horns, cello and percussion were captured in a standalone studio nearby with the help of a few other musicians.
Ducret did a lot to put his own mark on the material, sometimes combining separate compositions, other times inverting the melody and still others, as he described it, “stretching a melodic line into a series of pitches and dynamics.” In short, he effectively composed on top of the compositions.
Nearly no one will detect those things, but they certainly pick up on odd arrangements and format that are so outside the box, they’re not even in the same town as the box. Several tracks have left me wondering what I just listened to, and that’s meant in a positive way, because whatever sounds strange, also sounds right.
The first track was clearly an occasion where Ducret rolled together several Berne strains. “Curls / Palm Sweat / Mirth of the Cool” starts with overdriven guitar on each channel strumming out the two-chord figure and more metal guitars randomly intruding to offer short, sharp quips. Astute listeners will pick up faint echoes of Julius Hemphill’s “Dogon A.D.” Then, like on a Frank Zappa record, there’s an abrupt cutover to totally different melody in a softer, richer resonance. Some rumbling of a drum heralds yet another section, the pattern carried out again by overdubbed guitars attacking it from opposing angles. Is there any sign of Tim Berne himself in these interpretations? Yes! His signature chord progressions are such that can be abstracted, contorted and chopped up, but never truly obscured.
Listening to one track does nothing to prepare you for the next one. The Gregg Belisle-Chi approach (solo acoustic guitar) is employed for “Rolled Oats” and Ducret similarly pulls the curtain back on the fragile beauty at the heart of many Berne-penned scores. Two takes of it are put into this album.
The overlapping guitars do return for “Shiteless 1,” spinning out together a math-y strain and suggesting a Fred Frith or Henry Kaiser sort of recording. But Ducret introduces first malformed speech extracted from the composer himself and then horn accompaniment, which might be the last thing expected, but it serves add balance and that segues into Ducret’s extended feedback techniques that create a drone effect. The second rendition of this song (“Shiteless 2”) runs much shorter and barely share any similar traits from the earlier one largely because it’s slowed down and Christiane Bopp’s sensitive trombone assumes the lead voice.
“The Iceman” is closer to how I imagined Ducret’s Berne record would sound like. Playing a single, unadorned and unaccompanied electric guitar, he plays Berne’s chart ‘straight’ (if that is possible); at least it sounds like Berne more here. But just to effectively put that sheet music to guitar takes a tremendous amount of acumen — as Belisle-Chi and Grdina had already demonstrated — and Ducret is likewise up to the task.
“Stutter Step” spends more than half of its ten minute running time as a long, drawn out murmur disrupted by metallic notes, like a slow motion Tony Iommi. But that’s just a set up for the second half, where the drone and reverb are turned off and Ducret plays those signature Berne lines on acoustic guitar with the brass playing a harmonic counterpoint. It’s one thing to hear this music, but another thing to hear it played this way.
Fabrice Martinez’s trumpet and Marc’s son Bruno Ducret’s cello joins the leader’s acoustic guitar for “Static,” forging another oddly compelling alchemy for the first segment of the song. Later on there’s a tender pairing between father and son, settling into a groove and ending with hand clapping and a chant.
We often hear about recordings ostensibly made without regard to rules, preconceptions and guidelines in pursuit of a mode of expression that’s pure and original. Marc Ducret’s Palm Sweat actually sounds exactly like it was made that way.
That’s the Tim Berne Way.
Palm Sweat: Marc Ducret Plays the Music of Tim Berne is being co-released by Out of Your Head Records and Berne’s Screwgun Records. It’s going to drop on March 10, 2023 and will be available here.
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