1 out of 5

Label: Astral Spirits, Monofonus Press

Produced by: ?

Here’s a review by someone who never listens to free jazz for a free jazz album: I don’t get it.

Here’s a review by someone who does listen to a small handful of improv and experimental records: I get the spirit, but not execution.

I am positive that someone schooled in this branch of music might be able to lay out some judging rules for me, which one might apply to say if a particular session is good or not. I think that free jazz is partially about the experience – the being there – so there’s also the possibility that not having any live shows (or this particular live show) on which to draw / against which to compare puts me at a loss. ‘Cause all I have is conjecture: that free jazz is about flights of fancy, and that, ideally, you’re plucking out some otherwise-unachievable something by popping two or more players together in the same room. Like a lot of experimental, it’s conceptually about what you get out of it, and maybe not exactly what you put in.

But if we key in on these being experiments, well, that suggests that… not all will bear fruit, yes? Sometimes you’re just “proving” the negative. And I guess that’s where I am with The Fog, which has seven tracks of alto sax and drums inspired by that titular London weather, and that’s something else with which I’m not familiar, so maybe my lack of immersion in “A Sooty Spectre” and “Pea Super” and the like is a result of that.

Or… or, this is just two dudes who might as well be in separate rooms, on separate continents, playing their instruments. Opener ‘Blinking, Wheezing And Choking’ and B-side opener ‘With A Haggard And Unblest Air’ go rather all-out – tons of wild toot-toot-tootin’ and ta-ta-ta-ta-ta percussion tapping and fills – and from a movement perspective, these are probably the most compelling, but there’s also no real synergy here. It’s just chaos. And I feel like this becomes clearer as we sift through the less loud tunes, which somewhat alternate each player taking a lead, but, again: these dudes don’t actually feel like they’re vibing off of one another, so it’s more like a “lead” means someone’s playing faster and louder than the other.

Even then, if I felt like there was anything tonally that told a different story, whatever the different types of fog are, I suppose, that could be a way of getting my hooks into this thing, but… I dunno. Each instrument, though going hog-wild or hog-non-wild minimalist (breathy toots; paced ta-taing) ended up doing approximately the same thing within those modes. And I realize how dismissive that is, and that adding anything more identifiable may go against free jazz’s spirit, but I’m going even more basic than that: any section of any given track might as well have been any section of any other track. There is no story. And perhaps most disappointingly, at least in terms of where I was trying to understand the music, is that aforementioned gap between the duo: sometimes one dude seems to be feeling out a conclusion and legit just ends their playing, then, like, realizing the other is still going, abruptly picks it back up. Yeah, over in more “traditional” improv, you each kind of poke your way through ebbs and flows, but I think I rarely hear someone totally just take a cue that’s not there at all.

That happens when you’re not really playing with one another, though, or so it goes in my free jazz-ignorant telling.