New Music From Jeff Crompton, Little Snake
Jeff Crompton
Shooter
(jeffcrompton.bandcamp.com)
Sometimes, a little bit of abstraction goes a long way. When talking about politics, religion, human rights, even the weather, there’s always going to be a Facebook troll or some knuckle-dragging foe of whatever the cause may be, who can and will shout you down.
All of this is said to illustrate a subversive brilliance in how Atlanta-based alto saxophone player Jeff Crompton has couched what he needs to get off his chest with his latest 10-inch song cycle, Shooter. There is no pretending the subject matter isn’t as plain as the armed gunman taking aim on the album’s cover.
Crompton is a Southern jazz and blues historian, composer, improv master, and retired public high school music teacher. Of course the spike in school shootings and public massacres over the last few years weigh heavily on his mind. Shooter’s anxiety-ridden title track, and the ominous “Slow March (Through A Dark Place)”, articulate with tonal purity the feelings of confusion, frustration, and existential dread of the times.
However, to address these societal woes by any other means—in direct conversation or via social media—renders them as political bait, subject to misguided criticism, debate, and bad grammar to a degree that deflates the importance of tackling the subject with care.
With Shooter, Crompton beats the system, you have no choice but to listen and soak in the darkness he channels into each number. “Peace On Earth”, “Light”, and “There Is a Balm in Gilead” swirl, swell, wail, and fade with subtle minimalism—one horn, one man with both feet planted in a balance of hard-bop jazz and the avant-garde.
The music is transcendent in its restraint, but always colorful and urgent, evoking a sense of loneliness and an intense longing—the kind of reconciliation that defies words.
Little Snake
YATDC
(Brainfeeder)
In his book titled “M: Writings ’67–’72”, composer and music philosopher John Cage writes, “Syntax, like government, can only be obeyed. It is therefore of no use except when you have something particular to command such as: Go buy me a bunch of carrots.”
Press play on Little Snake’s latest offering, YATDC, and let Cage’s words sink in. There is beauty, absurdity, and inspiring logic embedded within producer Gino Serpentini’s kaleidoscopic splatter of electronic textures, discordant piano lines, and disembodied voices.
The album’s 10-minute+ first single, “I. OYU3.33REA”, casts aside the rules of familiar musical order in what could be perceived as a new language of sorts. The remaining three songs, “II. ETH2.22”, “III. 4.62287ARMED”, and “IV. REACTOR0.93713” draw as much influence from Jackson Pollock’s painting “Convergence” as they do from the music of Mouse On Mars, Aphex Twin, and Flying Lotus.
It is FlyLo’s Steven Ellison who enabled the Calgary, Alberta-based producer Serpentini to spread his brand of machine funk far and wide via Brainfeeder Records. YATDC is the third offering to arrive via the Los Angeles label, following 2019’s Lost In Spirals and 2018’s Enter.
Along the way, Serpentini’s production deconstructs jungle music, drum and bass, math rock, modern composition, and noise to arrive at a wholly new sense of rhythm and atmosphere. Upon first exposure, the motion in which all of the music’s many working parts move together comes across as jarring, maybe even a bit alien.
But YATDC quickly reveals itself to be a deeply pleasing listen. As such, these four songs make great ambient music for long drives, comfortable gatherings, the art gallery…maybe not the dance floor so much.
Still, Serpentini’s style swings with its own futuristic, organic-synthetic language that’s knotted up, albeit elegant, and poised to reveal so much more.