5 out of 5

Label: Monofonus Press / Astral Spirits

Produced by: Andrew Barker (recorded by)

I’m a sucker for a label that has a distinct design scheme, and a clear framework for their output. I might not like yer music, but I’ll respect the craft and give you a look. …And should my sampling of three or four albums prove interesting, well, then you’ve probably earned yourself a buyer as well.

This explains how I ended up with a huge backlog of Monofonus Press / Astral Spirits stuff, since they meet those initial requisites, and then I happened on a pretty hot spell of jazz / experimental stuff that was up my alley and convinced me to buy a whole bunch of cassettes. Unfortunately, sometimes my loyalty burns me, as my sampling proves to be a rarity rather than a rule, and that occurred with MP / AS, as a fair amount of this jazz / experimental stuff turned out to not up my alley – erring more towards free jazz freakouts and minimalism – leading to me framing those reviews with “this isn’t my bag so I probably don’t understand it.”

Silver linings, though: being diligent about those backlog listens inevitably sparks some of the initial inspiration, as I’ll stumble across a release I would’ve otherwise tossed out with the bathwater, such as Andrew Barker & Daniel Carter’s Polyhedron.

This wind instrument / percussion duo do things I surely would, at an aural glance, classify as being outside of my bag, with dips into a type of fiddly skronk form of jazz that normally turns me off, and titles that purposefully nod to artists I do not have enough familiarity with to comment, but in both cases, there’s so much precision, control, and distinctiveness to the playing that it counters my judgements.

As to the former, it’s not the skronk itself that bothers me, it’s moreso the longform lack of structure that generally accompanies it; oppositely, when players in that form go minimal, it’s like the same problem to the opposite effect – the silence goes (to my ears) nowhere fruitful. Polyhedron employs both of these effects, but with purpose, and momentum. Tracks start, generally, slow, but have a sense of direction – calming horn toots and rolling percussion that are getting to a point, even if that point is more punctuated expressions of the same.

For the latter, while I still couldn’t tell you if these name-checks are done accurately, I can say that each track arrives with a particular feeling, while Barker and Carter also clarify that they’re in control: this is an album, sequenced to flow from relatively linear to open-ended to rocking and back, where you can hear the tweaks to the playing styles but also recognize that those tweaks are subsumed by an overall approach. It’s… exciting. And I imagine it’s especially rewarding if you do recognize the musical nods.

A lot of times, when I am “surprised” by liking an album, I still have to caveat it somehow. But Polyhedron was not such a case. I didn’t have to tune my ears in to listen; the music grabbed me, while also being true to the style of Monofonus’ oddball jazz offerings.