GRID - DECOMPOSING FORCE
GRID - DECOMPOSING FORCE
NNA Tapes 2020
Doom Jazz is how NNA Tapes have chosen to market GRID, the
Brooklyn-based experimental trio comprising Matt Nelson on saxophone, Tim Dahl
on bass, and Nick Podgurski on drums. Promotional material for Decomposing
Force, their second full-length release on that imprint, continues in
likewise vein. What’s doom jazz, you ask? Signifier of inter-generic
distinction or aesthetic/mood? Dahl’s band Child Abuse sounds like death math
zuehl jamming with Otomo Yoshihide’s malfunctioning sampler in a Dantean
pachinko parlour. It’s exhilarating stuff once the synapses have melted/moulded
to its wavelength. But where is GRID coming from? Somewhere even less
categorizable, more variable and unbounded. Blackened, noisy free rock?
Dahl toured with Teun Verbruggen as part of The Bureau Of Atomic Tourism
in 2014, but Chaos of the Haunted Spire, the Belgian drummer’s duo with
saxophonist Andrew Claes, might be a closer point of comparison for the GRID
sound. The open mic interplay is more organic than the COTHS combination of
virtuosity and auto-sampladelia, but no less rich in dark ambient mood
mechanics.
Bohren & der Club of Gore would personify Doom Jazz as category
amongst some circles. They’re slow and ventilated where GRID is frenetic and
viscous. Bohren’s deconstructed cocktail rhythms and Morton Feldman pacing flow
like larval gumbo whereas GRID is looser, speedier, more abundant in incident
and narrative arc. They’re a perfect illustrating foil for spoken-word Lydia
Lunch on 'Stranglehold: The world according to Herbert Huncke', a single
released in November 2019. The trio’s slow burn coalescence is an abandoned
aquifer into which Lunch’s descriptions of precariat artist living and soured
honey intonation swirl in noir chiaroscuro.
Precursors in jazz practice date back to 1968 with Peter
Brotzmann’s Machine Gun pushing the Coltrane/Ayler/Sanders
school of multiphonic exploration further towards noise as principle.
Borbetomagus, another touchstone, similarly use volume and extended technique
to dissolve timbral distinctions. Depending on how much of Snuff Jazz you
can bite off at once, GRID have the benefit of electronic processing that turns
harsh raw frequencies into mercurial droneworx. Borbetomagus O))), anyone?
Dahl’s forbiddingly ambiguous progressions on ‘The Weight of Literacy’
certainly suggest stoner doom cadences, evident as well in collaborations with
Maria Faust and Ava Mendoza in her group Unnatural Ways. Harmonic root keeping
in those contexts. When an arrangement to provide said root is absent, as with
GRID’s molten improv, the listener’s imagination is left to scaffold and brace
fleeting sonic impressions into definable architectonics. If said listener’s
knowledge of jazz is deficient against awareness of 70s psych and prog, a
melange of possibilities nevertheless comes front of cortex. The Stooges at
their most O mind freeform somehow magically time stretched to become nimble
bluesy avant-sludge? The strobophobic feedback miasma of Les Rallizes Denudes
efflorescing in UFO-era Guru Guru’s free psych power trio force
field? The guitar group associations are unavoidable with Nelson, a player
whose breath mastery allows for more nuanced over-blowing than the adrenaline
stampede common to more maximalist free jazz.
‘Brutal Kings’ opens the album in that recognizable realm with
skittishly obstreperous sax lines, tumultuous bass and scattered drumming. The
FX come in and the improv venue disappears in a hail of mirrors. Distortion
gives a tremolo bar-like bend to Nelson’s portamento stretches. His lugubrious playing
on ‘The Weight of Literacy’ suggests Caspar Brotzmann filling Randy Hansen’s
role as Hendrix ghost whisperer on the Apocalypse Now soundtrack;
all phosphorescent trails and Arc Light rumble.
Podgurski’s drumming is as elastic as Rashied Ali’s experimental free
rock playing in Purple Trap. YouTube videos of GRID live suggest comparisons to
Chris Cutler’s untutored posture; the technique looks somehow awkward as though
the drummer’s deliberately trying to force himself to play in a way that impedes
recourse to reliable patterns. Meter is sketched around the periphery of the
Nelson/Dahl mind meld rather than imposed. No blast beats: jazz metallers
beware.
Maybe doom jazz remains the best compound descriptor if visionary
atmosphere’s your guide. ‘Cold Seep’ could be the soundtrack for a drilling
expedition on an alien planet. The hunt for resources continuing precariously
against inky backdrop, machines failing against alien conditions in siren
protest. Howling oscillators out of Zeit-era Tangerine Dream.
Cancer cell logic trying to get a foothold in dust that doesn’t recognize its
code. A distress signal has been sent, but it’s hitching a ride with Rebecca
Ferguson’s character in Daniel Espinosa's 2017 cosmic horror movie Life,
trapped in a spacecraft spinning out of control and in the wrong direction
home.
If there’s one minor drawback with Decomposing Force it’s
in a slightly less defined sound field compared to their Weasel Walter mastered
debut. Enough of the trio’s sonic force still comes through to suggest its
evolutionary potential. The void’s the limit, really.
https://grid.bandcamp.com/album/decomposing-force
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