Flow Trio: Set Theory – Live at The Stone
Author: Daniel Spicer
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Musicians: |
Joe Morris |
Label: |
Ayler |
Magazine Review Date: |
June/2011 |
Catalogue Number: |
AYLCD-107 |
RecordDate: |
24 April 2009 |
Some musicians just exude seriousness – and Joe Morris is one of them. He'd already earned a reputation as one of the most vital free-jazz guitarists operating anywhere in the world when in 2001, aged 45, he decided to pick up the double bass. Flow Trio is the vehicle with which he explores his bass playing, in the company of another couple of New York heavyweights. Broadly speaking, the model is Albert Ayler's Spiritual Unity trio: loose-limbed yet propulsive free jazz, but with Ayler's mystical yearnings largely replaced with a street-tough machismo. Morris has a blunt, insistent yet somehow melodious attack that frequently settles into the sort of circular trance-groove William Parker is so good at. Drummer Charles Downs has a light but urgent touch – keeping things ticking along with flickering brushes – while Belogenis' tenor see-saws on the edge of harmonics, bullish without bluster. Throughout three long improvisations (the title track is close to half an hour) the energy never flags, the ideas never falter, the attention never wanders. World class.
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