New Music From Theon Cross, Jessica Pavone
Theon Cross
Fyah
(Gearbox)
The general perception of the tuba is that it’s useful for comical sound effects—think of the brass tune that gets played on The Price Is Right after a contestant loses a game—or creating a soundtrack for parades of creatures of impressive girth.
The truth is that the tuba is the often overlooked backbone of any brass or concert band, and in the right hands, it can be a more versatile and nimble instrument than one might think (the Canadian Brass’ impressive rendition of “Flight of the Bumblebee” comes to mind).
This is certainly the case with the London-based jazz tubist Theon Cross, whose debut full-length album Fyah isn’t merely a showcase for his instrument; it simultaneously looks back and looks forward, embracing both jazz traditions and more modern synthetic treatments and rhythmic styles.
The opening track “Activate” explodes with Moses Boyd’s booming, agitated drumming and a bass punch from Cross’ tuba, which sounds like it’s run through a harmonizer for a thicker sound; as a duo, it sounds like a panicking person flailing and trying to escape from a tar pit, and then Nubya Garcia on tenor saxophone hops around like a taunting boxer.
On “Radiation”, Cross’ complicated and slightly distorted bass line provides a slippery groove as Boyd lays down a trippy funk rhythm, and Garcia and Cross nonchalantly slide into call-and-response exchanges.
Cross’ sound can be guttural and friendly at the same time, from a low grunt to a higher, almost delicate bubble-pop; sometimes there’s a muddy quality to it, as if trying to replicate a synthesizer’s tone, while at other times there’s a woody and lightly percussive quality, similar to a plucked contrabass.
The album hardly lets up in its exhilarating second half, with the dance-oriented “Candace of Meroe” sporting extra percussion and wah-wah electric guitar flourishes, with a fast Fela Kuti afrobeat vibe to it.
“Panda Village” is driven by its jittery, post-jungle drumming, generating a lot of sound and textures from the core tuba/sax/drums trio, and its cool-down ending offers a segue into the easy listening, smooth-jazz track “CIYA” that features an interesting guitar solo from Artie Zaitz that oddly sounds like a scampering electric piano.
Fyah has many strengths—its bold, bass-heavy, subwoofer-testing sound, its unabashed spotlight on the tuba’s versatility, and Boyd’s inspired drumming, incorporating stimulating dance and funk patterns into the jazz realm.
Jessica Pavone
In the Action
(Relative Pitch)
NYC violist Jessica Pavone has composed evocative chamber music, released several duo albums with guitarist Mary Halvorson and played in ensembles formed by avant-jazz heavyweights Anthony Braxton and Henry Threadgill, and she goes even further into music’s fringes in several bands, including the intense no-wave band Normal Love and the disquieting duo Dark Tips.
However, some of Pavone’s most intriguing work is found on her solo viola albums, on which a certain rawness is often balanced with (or pitted against) a more formal sonic experimentation.
Pavone’s new solo instrumental viola album In the Action employs distinct approaches on each of its four tracks, and the opening note of the first track, “Oscillatory Salt Transport”, is the most familiar note in classical concert settings—an open A, used for tuning purposes before the orchestra begins its program; but here, it goes from the familiar to the unfamiliar relatively quickly.
String harmonics are played roughly—not the delicate ring that harmonics typically have in classical music, but a shrill, harsh tone, and Pavone alternates between strings to play the same pitch with increasing speed, getting frenetic with violent sawing motions.
The 10-minute piece unfurls methodically, as Pavone proceeds from wispy and uncertain gliding to generating a peculiar rhythm with a bow that dances and hops across the strings briskly.
“and Maybe in the End” seems to be the result of tweaking effects pedals just right to generate a special formula for sound transformation. In this case, the original sounds are major-key pizzicato chords, sounding a bit like a ukulele, and the sound processing involves heavy reverb and distortion; the manipulated sounds have enough separation from the source to create huge, menacing shadows that are their own entities.
The inconsistent capitalization in the track name “Look Out - Look Out - look Out” perhaps suggests ambiguity where one phrase (the words or the sounds) actually begins among a repeated pattern; to clarify, “look OUT!” (a warning) could be heard as “outlook” when repeated, or even the word “lookout”.
Sonically, the track features thick, oppressive tones that have been treated to the point where they don’t sound like they originated from an acoustic string instrument; the sounds fold in on themselves with the loudness of aircraft, shape-shifting like a murmuration of starlings.
“In the Action” oddly resembles elements of country music with chords based on an open string, and the repetition becomes more machine-like, like a robot fiddler.
Eventually, a pulsating synthetic sound blob enters, offering a pulse that seems to pump alien blood, and Pavone violently slaps her bow against the strings, even getting percussive sounds with the wood of the bow, and tears away sharp, piercing notes with severe distortion, ending a fascinating album that concentrates less on melodic variation and more on interesting timbres and real-time sound manipulation.