New Music From COIMS, Soloriens Native Unity Quartet featuring Marshall Allen
COIMS
The Realisation That Someone Has Been Stood Behind You Your Entire Life
(Eh?)
The new album from COIMS, released on cassette on the Public Eyesore imprint Eh?, is the sound of getting lost in time and space and not feeling particularly concerned.
The Bristol, U.K. duo has used the words “eco” and “primitive” to describe its perplexing, abstract, and fascinating pieces that take an odd pleasure in wandering and meandering, coaxing or prodding vibrations from various sources, melding the organic with the electronic, and making striking sounds using non-traditional percussion.
At times, the album features an eeriness, with sparse metal clangs and string-like drones, where other moments inspire comparisons to animalistic noises; a tuba-like squeak suggests the sound of a rambling elephant, while a low squawk could be the unsettling cry of some lumbering dinosaur wandering a green, leafy jungle looking for a place to lie down and die.
Percussion rolls vary from a slow dirge to tense, swift taps while shattering cymbals and scrap metal clinks offer an anxious element; as synthetic notes are introduced, the aforementioned dinosaur roars and tears its flesh, revealing the electronic components hidden underneath.
On the cassette’s second side, solely comprised of a single track entitled “Over the weather and under the hill”, a weird electronic note solo acts as a salvo followed by rapid tone pulses, as if suggesting complex calculations being furiously made in some science fiction universe. Then emerges a melody that could be a song to summon aliens, and odd singing samples are used in some indistinct, arcane language.
A tick-tock tension is generated with pitter-patters and tremolo tones while low, rapid spatters act like a burst of firecrackers to spark excitement. Oddly, for a short amount of time, a sense of rhythmic order and not chaos builds energy and suspense, and the aural trampling leaves its strange footprints in a stranger wilderness.
Soloriens Native Unity Quartet featuring Marshall Allen
Aerials and Antennas
(Feeding Tube/Ornesco)
Contemplating the vast expanse of the universe can make a person feel small and insignificant but from another perspective, it can fill a person with imagination and a desire to explore with a curiosity regarding the unknown and a courage to overcome fear.
Along these lines, this writer was dismayed by a recent conversation where a colleague explained that he felt no motivation to step foot outside the U.S.A., explaining that there was already plenty to see in this country.
This critic would like to compare this line of thinking to limiting one’s movie-watching to just one genre—say, action films. Sure, there may be enough quality action films for a lifetime of viewing, but wouldn’t life be more interesting with a comedy or suspense film or documentary once in a while?
All of these things came to mind when listening to the new, live album Aerials and Antennas from Soloriens Native Unity Quartet (released on vinyl), where the key theme—spoken and unspoken—is going beyond. Beyond life, beyond death, beyond the planet.
Band leader and saxophonist James Harrar recites words by Sun Ra and himself at the album’s opening, setting a tone of embracing the unknown with lines like, “Come with us to other worlds / You have nothing else to lose.”
The most famous member of the quartet is reedist Marshall Allen, the current leader of Sun Ra Arkestra, who at the age of 92 (at the time of the performance in Nashville, in 2016) sounds unfettered with regards to creativity and energy levels.
‑Joined by the rhythm section of percussionist Kenito Murray and bassist Maxwell Boecker, the group wastes no time in traveling to a strange place on side A; with the band’s free-jazz expeditions, the idea is not to leave a hummable tune in the listener’s head but to make an impression regarding the complicated mood and feeling.
While the first side is spirited and complex, sometimes featuring EVI (electronic valve instrument) synth-like sounds from Allen and Harrar, the second side is even better with frequently shifting moods and diverse sound palettes.
Murray’s deliberate and liberated percussion, with jingle bells and assorted rattling, form a bed for echoing, bluesy sax swatches before moving toward an expansive spiritual jazz vibe, with eastern flavors and scales from Harrar’s electronic koto and Allen’s flute.
Harrar’s wordless, floating vocalizations give way to more wild, raucous territory, anchored by Murray’s driving beat, leading to spacious resolutions, an intense sax climax, and a speedy rhythm section vamp, with the proper momentum to launch the listener into other realms.