Out of idle curiosity I just looked in the Oxford Companion to Jazz, an 852-page tome edited by the estimable Bill Kirchner, to see how many references there were to the World Saxophone Quartet. Answer: four, spread over seven pages, including a central section of Peter Keepnews' survey of "Jazz since 1968." How many entries for the ROVA sax quartet or its individual members? Answer: none. Perhaps this is just a sign of how the WSQ has become primarily a matter of jazz history (even if the post-Hemphill band continues to plug away), whereas ROVA is if anything in its prime right now, spitting out discs like Resistance and Electric Ascension which continue to break new ground. Totally Spinning is a more modestly scaled offering than either of those albums, a post-Mingus exploration of blues and roots (actually, you could imagine WSQ fans responding to this one), though the Piranesian structural complexity is echt ROVA. Jon Raskin and Steve Adams composed all but two pieces and get most of the major solo space; Raskin’s work on the baritone is particularly impressive – check out his Harry Carney/Pepper Adams balladry on "Cuernavaca Starlight (For Charles Mingus)", for instance, or the marvellous unaccompanied solo on "Let’s Go Totally Spinning", in which he maintains both "lead voice" and "accompaniment" on a single horn in kind of a crazed internal dialogue. There’s also a cheeky miniature by Fred Frith, "Kick It", and (most significantly, for those listeners interested in following ROVA’s preoccupation with game-pieces and cued improvisation) two performances of "Radar", Larry Ochs’ "arrangement" of ROVA’s many cued-improv strategies. The second piece in particular shows how "Radar" permits themes and textures to be "stored" and later returned to: the piece includes a raucous exercise in neurotic repetition, a round-robin of face-pulling exercises, and a brief murmuring interlude; the coda rapidly juggles all three textures. My favourite piece, though, is Raskin’s "It’s a Journey, not a Destination", a long seriocomic narrative piece – the absurd contrast between Raskin’s monstrous baritone and Bruce Ackley’s prim soprano is put to good use – that eventually winds its way to a stately passacaglia. Totally Spinning seems to have been sitting around for a while, presumably because of Black Saint’s difficulties in recent years – the first two tracks are previously unreleased material from the 1996 Bingo sessions, and the rest of the album dates from 2000 (according to Ochs – the liner notes get this wrong). It comes off almost as a holiday compared to the sterner restructuralism that populates ROVA's catalogue, but there’s nothing wrong with that – and the musical intelligence and playing are as sharp as ever.– Nate Dorward // Paris Transatlantic
                            Read more...