Jane Ira Bloom on soprano sax. Allison Miller on drums. Recorded remotely from each player’s home studios, because that’s 2021 for musicians. Five Tuesdays in March and April bore the following fruit.
And no, it isn’t all noisefest, although they aren’t shy about such—when Bloom lays into multiphonics for “The Wild Frontier” like she’s evincing the atmosphere stripped from Earth, Miller follows and flows in with bells, toms clattering like too-strained slats on an old bed, and, from there, the relative sanity of rhythms plus counter-rhythms. Bloom penned lead sheets or something similar for four tunes here; the rest is the two summoning content and form simultaneously in the twinned labor that’s long distinguished free jazz.
You feel this record as multiple outings, the demarcations of tunes, feeding a through-line flowing; but like a panoramic river trip, you savor specifics. Miller lays off the bells, then rolls back in with the full array alongside stunning kit stickwork. Bloom waxes mournful, sulky, uncertain, cheery, finding clarity in a short phrase bitten off shorter, then down to two or three notes. Miller romps through the middle. Bloom decides that if the sun isn’t out, you best make believe, and she flies off on a jaunty run, phrases sprouting, this time, from the shorter spurts. Miller rips off a bevy of dry ticks, then turns to the boom of the snare. Bloom climbs a cliff and finds seven ways to jump down.
We need more like this. But frankly, we always need more like this.
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