Album Notes

Reuben Radding - double bass Matt Bauder - tenor saxophone, clarinet Andrew Drury - percussion Nate Wooley - trumpet All music published by Pine Ear Music (ASCAP) Recorded September 17th and 23rd, 2005 Engineered by Reuben Radding at Studio STATS, Brooklyn, NY Mastered by Michael Marciano at Systems Two Graphic design by Mark Lerner Cover photo "Field Silhouettes" by Susan Bowen (www.susanbowenphoto.com) Reuben Radding was born in Washington DC to a family of classical musicians, and relocated to New York City in 1988 where he studied contrabass with Mark Dresser and quickly became a busy stalwart of the Downtown scene. His powerful sound and sensitive listening has contributed to countless ensembles ranging from Jazz, to Classical, as well as ethnic genres, and he has been featured on over 30 recordings on labels such as Leo Records, AUM Fidelity, Tzadik, and Clean Feed. Reuben Radding has also performed or recorded with John Zorn, Marc Ribot, Elliott Sharp, Stuart Dempster, Robert Dick, Saadet Turkoz, Wally Shoup, Wolfgang Fuchs, John Oswald, Ursel Schlicht, Dylan VanDerSchyff, Dave Douglas, John Hollenbeck, Ned Rothenberg, Scott Rosenberg, Anthony Coleman, Nate Wooley, Butch Morris, and many others. ============== R E V I E W S ============== "Local bass great, Reuben Radding seems to keep pretty busy in a variety of projects, from duos to trios to quartet. New reeds-man, Matt Bauder, co-led a quartet with Anthony Braxton last year (Cd on 482 Music), as well as leading a couple of other bands. Former Seattle-based drummer/composer, Andrew Drury has two fine discs out on Innova & Red Toucan, as well as a duo disc with Jessica Lurie. Nate Wooley remains one of downtown's most distinctive trumpet players. 'Fugitive Pieces' is a fine, mysterious sounding quartet date. Heavy low-end drones, breath-like mouthpiece wisps, minimal percussion, ships passing in the distance is what we hear in "The Stone Carriers". "Phosphorus" is a strong quartet improv, quite focused, fascinating and free. I love this way this disc is recorded, closed miked, so that every sound is of equal weight. Often the sounds shimmer and the textures slowly mutate, difficult to tell who is doing what, yet it all remains strangely evocative and most successful." - Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery ----------------- "Radding’s prior release on Pine Ear, the solo recording “Intersections”, was fairly solidly in the jazz tradition at least as that tradition has sprung out of the more adventurous work of bassists like Dave Holland and Mark Dresser. “Fugitive Pieces”, a quartet date from September of last year, pushes things in a decidedly more purely free improv direction; one can certainly still pick up jazz-like traces but at least one foot and a couple of toes have been planted in the neighboring yard. Radding’s accompanied by Matt Bauder on tenor and clarinet, Andrew Drury on percussion and Nate Wooley on trumpet, a classic enough instrumental line-up but right from the start, the fluttering textures of the winds, the non-rhythmic scraping of the drums and the leader’s typically massive, booming arco let you know not to expect the usual avant jazz free for all. That said, it’s a difficult leap to make. Merely utilizing extended technique in an unstructured framework is no guarantee of musical success. For this listener, it has to feel like the resultant music is what the musicians involved really want to do—the commitment has to be implicit. “Fugitive Pieces”, the works generated from graphic and text scores, hits the mark more often than not in this regard though, as the album is sequenced, it takes a little while to really hit stride. Heard on its own, a piece like “Vertical Time” works extremely well, recalling the sort of dark, brooding interplay heard on that last cut from Braxton’s “New York, Fall, 1974” (I’m forgetting the Composition No., always thinking of it as Side Two, Cut Three), perhaps with Leo Smith replacing Kenny Wheeler. As with the earlier disc, I do pick up more than a tinge of the cardigan’d one’s flavor here and there, no bad thing. Wooley at times does indeed sound like some unholy offspring of those two trumpeters, pairing Wheeler’s fluidity with Smith’s acidity and Radding, as usual, sounds like he’s using a bass about ten feet long and three deep—his sound is that large and full. All of the first six pieces, ranging from one to nine minutes in length, are pretty solid and enjoyable, varying their tack enough to easily maintain interest though, as mentioned, “Vertical Thoughts” was the one that jumped out an impressed me. But they all seem to be leading toward the final track, the 32 minutes plus of “The Gradual Instant”. I don’t know if its length was preordained but I suspect there might have been some such general understanding among group members as right from the get go, everyone seems to be listening much more, not to be so intent on immediately contributing, creating air between the instruments and imparting volume to the piece. Then again, perhaps it’s in the nature of the graphic score being consulted. Whatever the case, it expands to fill the time rather than pushing things along and results in a fine, heady chunk of music. You know things are working when you hardly even think about this or that unorthodox technique is being employed. It doesn’t, and shouldn’t matter. The essence of the music takes over--it floats, rumbles and sails along and it’s over before you know it. Strong piece. As before, I’m curious to hear where Mr. Radding ends up heading. In the meantime, a good, solid outing." -- Brian Olewnick, Bagatellen.com ----------------- This quartet disc’s title is wonderfully apt, for there is a furtive quality to many of these pieces. Working at the intersection of European free improv expressionism and post-reductionist playing, Radding and his colleagues (Matt Bauder on tenor sax and clarinet, Andrew Drury on percussion, and Nate Wooley on trumpet) achieve a real sense of atmosphere. Specifically, it feels like wandering into a deep, woody hollow with vibrant moss glowing richly beneath a dark canopy of branches. Wooley and Bauder don’t play in anything resembling a linear fashion, instead drawing from a lexicon of coos, flutters, wheezes and moans. Similarly, Radding and Drury rarely use their instruments as rhythmic generators, choosing instead to rub or bow them as pure sound sources rather than functional devices. Taken together, the four create a gritty, earthen music that explores details and minutiae. There’s also an evocatively alien quality to the music, like when Radding’s bass tolls like a bell and sends the horns scurrying for cover on “The Stone Carriers.” Some pieces, like “Phosphorus,” are more busy and skittery; they recall the Spontaneous Music Ensemble in one of its more exultant moments. But the burning embers of pieces like “Terra Nullius” (whose breath explorations and soft rubbings sound like the sighs of some unseen entity) are what bring me back to this disc. And this is an intense, incendiary quality that’s all over the half-hour finale, “The Gradual Instant.” Here, all the basic thematic elements of this group seem to coalesce in a way that seems slowly to render the music’s furtive, latent properties more manifest. Here’s hoping Radding's label serves to bring his music to wider attention, for on the strength of this excellent recording it's just the ticket for improv junkies. --Jason Bivins, Dusted Magazine An increasing number of musicians and listeners are looking upon traditional free jazz as a stylistic cul-de-sac, and bassist Reuben Radding confronts the problem head on with this new disc on his own Pine Ear imprint. Assembling an ensemble of players at the vanguard of process- and texture-oriented improv, Radding spearheads a program of music that borrows from electro-acoustic and ambient musics, even though the instrumentation at first glance suggests a conventional jazz combo. Percussionist Andrew Drury makes use of a multitude of bowed and scraped surfaces, alternating clattering metallic dissonance with quietly precise patter. Trumpeter Nate Wooley’s dessicated drones and hollow breath sounds bring to mind the work of fellow tone scientists Greg Kelley and Axel Dörner, though he also produces some striking dynamic contrasts by throwing in more recognizable patterns. Tenor saxophonist/clarinettist Matt Bauder rarely sticks to a strict note-based lexicon either, instead gravitating towards harsher tonal extremes. Radding is often similarly abstract, but his sound remains enormous: his mighty pizzicato and thunderously humming arco still possess power enough to rattle the rafters. Six tracks, two of them little more than fragments, build up to the finale, "The Gradual Instant", on which Wooley's trumpet becomes a variable-speed metronome, and Radding's bass suggests the creak of wind-blown rigging on a sea-faring clipper. Drones and grainy scrapes abound, as well as lulls into near-silence. It’s a standout performance, and the piece's marathon 32-minute length feels fully justified. A word of praise is due too for the cover art by Susan Bowen: the images of junkyard materials recombined into new architectural configurations beautifully complement the music. –Derek Taylor, Paris-Transatlantic An odd, foreboding venture that sounds like a young Gershwin scoring Nosferatu at gunpoint. - Earshot Jazz