A Bunch of Peter Brötzmann Videos: Part Three
And on to the third part of the video we've been following, and the last segment of the Brötzmann saga for now.
This one starts off somewhat slow, with more vague trade offs between the players, but then it starts building up. Brötzmann really wants to make his sax pay for whatever it did with some of his more trademark altissimo. So far, this one is easier to follow than the other two.
Lovens playing is the quickest, most sporadic, and interesting of the three videos. The band goes on in the typical Euro free jazz fashion until Brötzmann takes the lead again. However, this is less of a solo and more of a continuation of what he was doing before. Things slow down and Lovens throws down a recognizable beat (as opposed to a constant clattering/crashing) while Brötzmann plays along to it with squeaks. I think this is a sign that there is
some semblance of structure because of the syncopation being pretty impeccable on this part.
Thins speed up again and I can barely tell what's going on. Now that's your typical Brötzmann track but this avoids melody and harmony even moreso than before. Back down to a slower rhythm and Schlippenbach wows us with what starts off as a classical(ish) solo. He has some incredible talent and shows his chops for semi-tonal music here. Damn is he fast. The rest of the group joins in again and it's great. Lovens making love to his cymbals without forgetting to pay attention to the other drums. Kovald's bow hangs on by a few horse hairs as his bass plays more of the high squeaky notes. Lastly, we have Brötzmann's blistery sax playing to tie it all together. We reach a very dramatic climax and the show ends.
This is a great quartet. They definitely have a lot of good chemistry when it comes to playing all the wrong notes the right way. I've always found free jazz to be a bit more enjoyable when I'm witnessing the music coming together spontaneously than listening to the recording. While this can be said with any genre, I think free jazz is the culmination of this mentality. As a musician myself, it's easier to identify with this music as it is difficult to make (don't let the "my five year old could play this crap" comments below the videos fool you, their child must be a genius or something).
My next entry will be an album review on a different genre, unless I decide on something because f
uck structure. For this closer, I'm not going to post an art piece, but an intriguing image from the Hubble telescope.
Quote:
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It is suspected that in this case, Hubble had locked onto a bad guide star, potentially a double star or binary. This caused an error in the tracking system, resulting in this remarkable picture of brightly coloured stellar streaks. The prominent red streaks are from stars in the globular cluster NGC 288. It seems that even when Hubble makes a mistake, it can still kick-start our imagination.
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