Recorded in one afternoon in November 1998,
[there the eye goes not;] (title courtesy of Joseph Campbell) features Boston-based
Mike Bullock on bass, with soprano saxophonist Bhob Rainey, pianist Brenda Hopkins Miranda, and percussionist
Tatsuya Nakatani. The opening "Price/Pound" splinters into life after a two-minute introduction from
Bullock. It's tight, frenetic music, combining the centrifugal energy of free jazz with the focused in-the-moment attention of free improvisation. Rainey's soprano is beautifully captured at a time when it was moving away from the studious microtonality of his erstwhile teacher
Joe Maneri toward more abstract sonics of his Nmperign project with trumpeter Greg Kelley. Hopkins Miranda's playing on "Rain" is sensational, moving effortlessly from tiny cellular structures to swathes of expressionistic clusters, sounding like a wonderful cross between
Howard Riley and
Karlheinz Stockhausen's "Klavierstück X," while
Bullock's strong, rubbery bass pulls the music around like molten toffee, and
Nakatani sprinkles it with tiny shards of bright metallic percussion. The spacious lyricism which opens "State Lines" wouldn't be out of place on an ECM album, but don't be fooled:
Nakatani's scraped cymbals and
Bullock's groaning bowed work soon take the music further out. The enigmatically entitled ";" is an austere duet for sax and bass, and on the final "Pitch/Acceptance,"
Bullock is left alone to explore an eerie twilight drone world recalling
Joëlle Léandre's classic interpretations of Giacinto Scelsi, a pensive and thought-provoking end to a fine album. ~ Dan Warburton