Violinist
Jeff Gauthier has been quietly making records for about eight years. His last project with the Jeff Gauthier Goatette comprised of guitarist
Nels Cline, his brother, drummer
Alex, bassist
Joel Hamilton, and pianist/keyboardist
David Witham. As on 2002's shining
Mask,
Gauthier and his band delve deep into exotic textures and musics here, not as trope or gimmick, but as compositional and improvisation modus operandi. We're not talking
Les Baxter or
Martin Denny, we're talking genres. There's classical, which becomes the steady meandering melody line in the opener "Ahfufat," as
Nels goes mental in the background and
Alex offers a triple time signature for everything to drop from before the work pulses toward something else entirely -- a particularly knotty jazz-rock. It's beautiful, barely held on the rail, but is also light and airy. As has been
Gauthier's and
Nels and
Alex Cline's wont, a fine post-fusion jazz tune by the late
Eric von Essen is present, "Solflicka," and is performed with elegance, grace, and a harmonic sense of adventure with
Gauthier leading the way. The foreboding sense of terror in
Bennie Maupin's "Water Torture," with its built, and then extrapolated upon series of tensions, is easily one of the most frightening in recent vanguard jazz history.
Hamilton's bass anchors a deafening space that is touched upon by fleeting, angry instrumental flourishes before being indulged with a skeletal, and brief, melody. It becomes pure cinematic dynamic as
Nels' flurries in the background become almost indecipherable from
Witham's keyboard textures. "Don't Answer That" is post-bop à la
Eric Dolphy and
Mal Waldron.
Witham's piano work here is just stellar. The multivalent journey in "Rina, Pt. 1" is part gypsy jazz, part funky open-mode
Miles, and part folk song with a great head -- also written by
von Essen. The set ends on
Nels Cline's ballad "A Corner of Morning." It commences with spacious abstraction played in wispy phrases by all instruments; it's improvisation with a pronounced yet restrained drama, and it is absolutely serene. When the lyric whispers in, it's like
Bill Evans constructing one of those gentle harmonic towers as
Witham and
Nels enjoin and rejoin one another in counterpoint. Three-fourths of the way in,
Gauthier signals both another period of abstraction and its new melodic frame, droning against
Nels' changes before an absolutely heartbreaking solo in open mode as
Hamilton and
Alex dust the backdrop, accenting the space as the place of encounter and transformation. More accessible than
Mask,
One and the Same is for those who like their vanguard jazz on the safer side. It is a logical step forward for
Gauthier, given
Mask's textural and dynamic investigations, but a large one nonetheless, and one of the more haunting new jazz releases to push itself forth from that sonic garden in a long while. ~ Thom Jurek