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| 4.076 Ft
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| 1. | Clea's Bounce
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| 2. | Waltz For K.P.
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| 3. | Enfant
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| 4. | The Fools
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| 5. | Ephemera
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| 6. | Mask
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| 7. | Forgiveness
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Jazz
* Jeff Gauthier - Violin
* Alex Cline - Drums
* Nels Cline - Guitar
* David Witham - Piano
* Joel Hamilton - Bass
Mask features Jeff Gauthier on electric violin, Nels Cline on guitars, David Witham on piano, Joel Hamilton on bass and Alex Cline on drums. This is Gauthier's third CD as a leader and first for Cryptogramophone. Mask features works by Gauthier, Nels Cline, Alex Cline, former Goatette member Eric von Essen, and harmolodic legend Ornette Coleman. This is Gauthier's strongest and most original statement to date, and heralds his arrival as yet another important jazz violinist with a French name.
* Gareth Jiffeau - Graphic Design
* Rich Breen - Engineer, Mixing
* Tom Baker - Mastering
* On his third outing as a leader, violinist Jeff Gauthier offers a stellar blend of compositions that push at the boundaries of defined musics, while not consciously breaking any of them. Accompanied by brothers Alex and Nels Cline on drums and guitars respectively, pianist David Witham, and bassist Joel Hamilton, Gauthier's Goatette is a blend of jazz exotica (not in the cheeky sense of the word, but the most profound) that winds through not only his own compositions but those of Ornette Coleman ("Enfant"), the late Eric von Essen, and Alex Cline. "Clea's Bounce" opens the disc with a riveting 5/4 time signature shimmying through the middle by Witham before Gauthier enters with a funky and angular melodic line that Nels Cline underscores, creating a new rhythmic line. Next comes the von Essen tune, "Waltz for K.P.," in a slippery jazz waltz tempo with numerous harmonic twists along the impressionistic melody, which seems present and invisible at the same time. Witham's chromaticism is especially beguiling here, and it lilts then accents then floats above the rhythm section. Coleman's "Enfant," from the Ornette on Tenor album, is given an interesting treatment here. The ensemble looks at this piece in light of harmolodics, a musical theory of harmony Coleman hadn't articulated until over ten years after this piece was recorded. Witham moves through the various open-ended harmolodic chords as the rest of the ensemble interacts with them before Gauthier and Nels go after one another on a theme. The next two tracks are among the most beautiful on the recording: "The Fools," by Nels Cline, is a haunting, 12-string piece with a wide-open, almost impressionistic figure that is filled in impressively by Hamilton's bass solo. The other is Gauthier's own "Ephemera." Again Cline plays 12-string and the feel is one of Oregon's music from the mid-'70s (Music of Another Present Era -- Cline odes a mean Ralph Towner on the 12-string) with shards of Keith Jarrett's chromatic method modalism and the deep lyricism of Bill Evans. The ensemble plays together in such a moving, fluid way the work becomes meta-textual, reaching outside music to embrace different cultural artifacts and languages in order to turn them back into collective expression. In this way, this track is the hinge of the entire album, bringing in the voices of not only jazz, but of folk music and those not yet created -- speaking in poetic, sensual languages and whispering in nuances that are unmitigated by jazz, folk music, or improvisation, yet exist because of them. "Mask" is a four-part work which is too complex -- yet glorious -- to go into here; one would need an entire essay to devote to the beauty and mystery of its articulation. With the final work, Alex Cline's "Forgiveness," a seemingly simple tone poem, the album meditatively comes to a close on the theme of silence and peace. What better way to cap an exploration that while universal in its appeal is also full of vulnerable individual and collective expression? With this album as only the latest evidence in tow, Cryptogramophone is issuing some of the most exciting, appealing, and unclassifiable music today.
---Thom Jurek, All Music Guide [April 2, 2002]
* The Californian avant gardist continues his long association with Nels and Alex Cline. Although some have found the violinist's approach to be too amiable and soft-centred, nothing featuring the Cline brothers could ever be straight ahead, and here there's a strong core to Gauthier's melodicism -- even in the most lyrical grooves, which show a predilection for waltz and 6/8 time. The title track is the most ambitious at 18 minutes, referring to half-remembered themes in a dreamscape; Nels Cline's "The Fools" is elegiac, while "Enfant" is a free improvisation spun from the Ornette Coleman composition of that title. A beautiful release.
--- Andy Hamilton, The wire [April 2, 2002]
* The best word for this recording is impeccable. The ensemble playing is lock tight, the soloists are eloquent; the seven pieces (five of them composed by group members) are literate and stimulating. The music seems to reveal new twists and turns, nuances, and depths of expression long after familiarity would normally have set in and begun to blur the edges. Even the CD cover art, a series of full color photographs of tribal masks, is gorgeous. Leader Gauthier is an elegant violinist, with a light, lyrical touch. He is sufficiently assertive on up-tempo numbers (and even indulges in a few avant gardisms on Ornette Coleman’s "Enfant"), but he saves his real passion for the waltzes and ballads, where his playing vibrates with subtle but deep emotion. Guitarist Nels Cline is seemingly a musician for all styles and seasons. He is nimble and eloquent on the slower numbers, flexes his muscles a little on the funky stuff, provides eerie, surreal effects of several sorts, especially on the title piece, and even displays great acoustic twelve string chops on several tunes. Piano, drums and bass also shine, both individually and as parts of the collective whole. The creative energy of Alex Cline’s drumming allows him to excel both rhythmically and as a colorist. Pianist David Witham, like other members of the group, sacrifices surface individuality for the greater good. He plays pitch-shifting electric piano on several tracks, and is alternatively funky, angular or mellow on acoustic piano, as the occasion demands. Bassist Joel Hamilton, who has a rich, dark tone, gets to step out a little on "The Fools," where he briefly switches to arco bass and duets with Gauthier’s violin. All this talent, a great band - and terrific tunes, too. Gauthier’s long, episodic title track has a complex but dynamic theme, and it moves through a wide range of moods and emotions. "Ephemera" has Nels doing his best twelve-string Ralph Towner impression on a piece that joyously soars like Towner and Oregon’s signature "Icarus." (The Goatette is quite often reminiscent of the Oregon group at its best, with Gauthier’s violin assuming the role of Paul McCandless’s oboe.) As composers, the Cline brothers both score big on "The Fools" and "Forgiveness" (Nels with the former, Alex the latter), which are poignant, expressive ballads. Throughout, Gauthier and his group show how it should be done, rooting themselves solidly in the jazz tradition while at the same time extending and revitalizing it. Not to be missed.
--- Bill Tilland, BBCi [May 17, 2002]
* As much of a pop cultural center as Los Angeles may be, its creative artists feel far from the pressure exerted by the East Coast cultural establishment to be smarter, cleverer and hipper, and consequently they do what they want. Or that's my explanation for the unashamedly pretty music on Jeff Gauthier's Mask. The beuaty is often stark, as on Nels Cline's "The Fools" or on the exquisite stillness of the closing "forgiveness" written by Goatette drummer Alex Cline, Sometimes it's bright and Methenian, like the big sky tribute to the late bassist Eric von Essen, Ephemer - for Eric." This is a lovely music presented without an agenda or an axe to grind, just for our enjoyment. Is the music on this CD ultimately as avant garde as some New York stuff? Well, if it is, it's not as self-consciously so. But it's no less fearless. It takes guts to play this pretty. Playing pretty - now that's an avant-garde notion.
---John Chacona, Signal To Noise [Summer, 2002] |
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