Mitchell, Roscoe / Sandy Ewen / Damon Smith / Weasel Walter - A Railroad Spike Forms The Voice
SKU
ug-Exploade 82
Roscoe Mitchell (saxophones)
Sandy Ewen (guitar)
Damon Smith (double bass)
Weasel Walter (drums)
“Full of masterfully cranky improvisational challenges and squabbles forming and resolving in a really unusual sound universe.”
““Don’t follow.”
That’s the admonition saxophonist and composer Roscoe Mitchell (b. 1940) was known to give his students at Oakland’s Mills College in one-on-one sessions. In musical communication and creation, not following or directly responding to others is central to Mitchell’s philosophy and approach. As he said to me in a recent conversation, “I just let things develop with my intent, with my work, and I’ve never been a person that went around looking for people to play with. I mostly just work on my music and let things unfold, being that I’m a true believer in that you set your own environment and then you let it unwind on its own. I think the main thing is to concentrate on your music and the various ways that you develop it.”
Building on a decades-long tenure as one of creative music’s leading minds, Mitchell began teaching at Mills in Fall 2007 and retired in 2019. He also taught at CalArts, the University of Wisconsin in Madison (where he now lives), and the University of Illinois. Spurred by artist-educators like Mitchell, Mills’ graduate program in Performance and Literature, which includes Improvisation as a core tenet, has been a key component of the Bay Area music community.
Mitchell is unflaggingly focused on his own practice as a soloist and composer, the latter often including large-scale works for orchestra. His predilection for collaborators that he can regularly practice or study with results in fewer one-off meetings that could shake things loose. That said, he is adamant about “always learning” and the importance of constant reflection and growth cannot be understated. Therefore, this collaboration with the working trio of guitarist Sandy Ewen, bassist Damon Smith, and drummer Weasel Walter is among the more intriguing meetings to emerge in his discography. It presents a situation that is both new and an example of each musician’s devotion to their art, spurred on by curiosity and conviction. A Railroad Spike Forms the Voice (its title drawn from a poem by late and longtime Mitchell collaborator Joseph Jarman) was recorded in April 2014 at Oakland’s Duende, a restaurant and venue run by free music connoisseur and chef Paul Canales. Smith and Walter had been part of a workshop performance Mitchell directed at Mills (though neither attended the school). The saxophonist reconnected with Smith and was introduced to Ewen’s music at a 2012 workshop in Houston. As the bassist relates, “Roscoe criticized everyone there except for Sandy. She was doing her thing, and he said to a saxophone player ‘why don’t you play like her? I can listen to what she’s doing for hours, this is great.’ When he asked what Weasel and I were up to, I told him that we just made a trio record with Sandy and he said he’d like to hear it.” According to Ewen, Mitchell played their first trio album (ugEXPLODE ug53) for Mills students as an example of quality improvised music, and that sowed further seeds for an eventual meeting.
This is a recording that is monumental in scope, singular but also parsable. There are sections that hark back to the disjunctive spars of early Art Ensemble of Chicago recordings – at 26 minutes in, Smith walks alongside laconic, acrid alto saxophone tendrils, their movements punctuated by kit jabs and gradual guitar creep. Unhurriedness is not something one expects with Smith and Walter, and it’s not deference either. Their ears put the proceedings into a state of mindful creation and allow any ensuing fireworks a sense of necessity and logic. As Mitchell untethers long soprano lines and puckered subtones, a froth of allover patter and meaty scribble emerges underneath and around him, but one can parse the latticework of activity into numerous converging (or parallel) threads and components. A tug-of-war between low bass gurgle, crinkling guitar strings, and high-pitched, hoarse sopranino cries acts as both one and three organisms in gloriously present interaction, nodding at one another but tending a greater fire. Not only do Ewen, Smith, and Walter not follow or ping-pong off of Mitchell, but they don’t do this with one another, either. A Railroad Spike Forms the Voice is a sprawling essay on communication and connection, its title apt: these four creative minds have set forth on a unified steely path, punctuated by decisive beauty and realness. We’re lucky to be able to participate from our vantage point.”-Clifford Allen,
Brooklyn, March 2021
- Labelug-Explode
- UPC198000057220