From Bulldog
Cuong Vu - It's Mostly Residual (2005)
Well, this was an interesting listen. I gave it a spin about five times throughout this past week and my initial favorite tracks and moments are still holding up. Since I'm trying to find out what kind of jazz appeals to me the most, this was a good trade. The music here can be described as a modern jazz-rock fusion, but that is to oversimplify things and not tell the whole story, because rock here is transformed after the post-rock experience and jazz is torn between Pat Metheny-esque melancholic, ambient melodies and free jazz/avant-garde iconoclastic approach. This works best when Cuong Vu, a trumpet player, the main man himself and his company that consists of a guitarist, bassist and a drummer, engage in an adventurous, intricate interplay that transforms the music in such a way that it's no longer jazz nor rock. Those are the strongest moments of the album, evident in my favorite track
Expressions of a Neurotic Impulse. It starts with fast, short, repetitive trumpet riffs that drive the composition forward and are quickly accompanied by frenetic rhythm section (drumming here is amazing). When the guitar shows it infuses this linear, driving composition with abstraction and a hint of chaos. This makes for a strong tension. Eventually, the whole piece is broken and we're entering a world of guitar noise and cacophony. The improvisational interplay from all players here is great, especially when Vu's trumpet starts to scream in agony in an attempt to escape this chaos. That's the highest point of intensity, after which the composition goes back to that playful, linear drive it started with. Just great.
Another stand out for me is
Brittle, Like Twigs, a funky driven track that almost sounds like something from Tortoise. There's also losing of a drive here and venturing into the free jazz freak-out and coming back again. That tension of building up and breaking is more or less present in all tracks especially when build up is made of melancholic melodies. They don't always break completely, but the tension is there. The perfect example of this is the title track
It's Mostly Residual.
The only problem I have here is a rather long build up in two longest tracks that could have easily been shorter,
Patchwork and
Blur. The Metheny-esque ambient melodies are not compelling enough for me to listen to them for that long. I can't feel some deeper beauty there and they work best when juxtaposed against an improvisational danger. It is essentially the same problem I sometimes have with too long build ups in post-rock. In this case, there is also a feeling that the music can't always decide will it follow a more traditional fusion or will it transform itself through a total avant-garde approach. But, like I said, there are some very good moments in these two tracks too, especially in
Patchwork. Oh well...
All in all, this is a very good album that I would recommend to anyone who is interested in jazz, fusion and avant-jazz. Thanks Bulldog.