Music

Reviews:

"BSC is an ensemble curated by soprano saxophonist Bhob Rainey and features his nmperign sparring partner Greg Kelley (trumpet), as well as stalwarts of the thriving Boston improv scene: James Coleman (theremin), Howard Stelzer (tapes), Elizabeth Tonne (voice), Mike Bullock (bass), Vic Rawlings (cello and electronics) and Chris Cooper (guitar and electronics), augmented for the occasion by visiting Berliners Axel Dörner on trumpet and Andrea Neumann on (in?) her customized inside piano. Recorded live in Boston's Church of the Advent on August 28th 2001, Good is a single extended group improvisation lasting just over 37 minutes. Though I'm never one to advocate pushing the CD format to its maximum 79-minute limit, another half hour of music as fine as this wouldn't have gone amiss - then again, the Bostonians have rarely gone beyond 45'. Maybe they all still drive around listening to C90 cassette tapes (nothing wrong with that, either). The last Boston-based improv big band outing that came my way was Masashi Harada's Condanction Ensemble on Emanem (which also featured Rainey, Kelley and Bullock), but Good could hardly be more different. A more pertinent comparison would be with the debut album of the Berlin-based Phosphor octet (Potlatch P501, which also includes Dörner and Neumann), but both in terms of overall structural coherence and pristine mixing, Good gets my vote. It is also more traditional in its willingness to follow tried and trusted rise-and-fall structures, a consequence perhaps of working with a large ensemble: smaller Boston combos (Bullock and Rawlings, Stelzer and Jason Talbot, and of course nmperign) are more extreme in their use of silence. The climactic passages, when they arrive, are intense without ever being bombastic; the first (at roughly 11'30") subsides into an exquisite exploration of isolated upper register sustained tones at the 14-minute mark (recalling James Coleman's outstanding Zuihitsu outing on Sedimental), in which Tonne is particularly effective. Elsewhere, Kelley's guttural gurgles and Rainey's breathy rustles are instantly recognisable (there's some splendid interplay with Cooper's guitar after about 28 minutes), but solo voices, however distinctive they may be, remained firmly anchored in an ensemble texture of remarkable cohesion. Good indeed it is."

- Dan Warburton, Paris Transatlantic