Send This Sound to the King is the second CD from saxophonist Alex
Weiss and Outhead. They are an arthouse quartet
blending the free-minded jazz of Ornette Coleman, Archie Shepp and Roland Kirk
with the post-beat sounds of the Lounge Lizards and Morphine. It will be released onOctober 14 on Chahatatadra Music.
The
group - alto/tenor saxophonist Alex Weiss, baritone saxophonist Charlie Gurke,
double-bassist Rob Woodcock and drummer Dillon Westbrook - has a low-slung,
roughhewn aesthetic that's equal parts free-jazz and art-punk, brimming over
with vim and vigor. Guest guitarist
Peter Galub provides spiky six-string atmosphere to several tracks, and
multiple voices are heard, male and female. Send This Sound to the King is the
sound of both edge and allure.
Outhead
- the quartet of alto/tenor saxophonist Alex Weiss and baritone saxophonist
Charlie Gurke with double-bassist Rob Woodcock and drummer Dillon Westbrook -
pursues a low-slung, roughhewn aesthetic that's equal parts free-jazz and
art-punk, brimming over with vim and vigor. Outhead's second album - Send This
Sound to the King, to be released October 14, 2014 via Chahatatadra Music -
juxtaposes catchy melody and swinging grooves, headlong caterwaul and dreamy
spoken word. Guest guitarist Peter Galub provides spiky six-string atmosphere
to several tracks, and multiple voices are heard, male and female. Send This
Sound to the King is the sound of both edge and allure.
Outhead's
new album is the follow-up to the band's 2008 release, Quiet Sounds for
Comfortable People, which was a favorite of Downtown Music Gallery's Bruce
Gallanter for its "inventive dynamics" and "fabulous
groove." He heard a kinship with Ornette Coleman's two-sax band with Dewey
Redman, while Weiss lists Archie Shepp and Roland Kirk as further references,
for both their stentorian roar and the theatricality of their '60s work. The
sly humor and sheer accessibility of Send This Sound to the King makes Outhead
akin to John Lurie's iconic downtown New York band the Lounge Lizards, while
rock fans may even hear echoes of the baritone-driven, post-Beat stylings of
vintage indie-rock trio Morphine at times. Yet for all its hip influences and
antecedents, Outhead is above all an individualist outfit, playing music that isn't
quite like anything else out there.
During
its Bay Area beginnings, Outhead rocked store fronts and improvised soundtracks
to nature films, along with playing the coolest clubs. With band catalyst and
Send This Sound to the King producer Alex Weiss now resident in Brooklyn,
Outhead operates on both coasts; basic tracking was done by the quartet in
Oakland, with Weiss overseeing overdubs in New York. Weiss was a protégé of
free-jazz pioneer John Tchicai and a longtime member of the ensemble at the famed
St. John Coltrane Church in San Francisco. What he learned at the elbow of
Tchicai helped feed his philosophy for Outhead. Weiss says: "John Tchicai
had a level of playing and feeling music that was very high, but he had this
great open-mindedness about playing with all kinds of people, valuing real
connection between musicians. He was also out to push the envelope in terms of
sound - he always felt that experimentation was essential to an artist's
growth. Those are the sorts of values that Outhead is about."
The
loud, raw energy of punk rock was another keen influence on the ideas of the
young Weiss about what a band could sound like. By the time he ingested his
first free-jazz album - New York Eye & Ear Control, with Tchicai, Albert
Ayler, Don Cherry, Roswell Rudd, Gary Peacock and Sunny Murray - "it made
perfect sense to me," he says. "Free-jazz and punk rock shared a
primal sonic energy. I also felt a kinship between punk and free-jazz in that
they were both about standing your ground about what you think is right -
aesthetically, socially, politically. Both genres took a firm stance against
the conventional wisdom of the majority view. I eventually figured out that I
could translate the energy of punk to my saxophone and ideas about the
unconventional to a jazz band."
If the
captivating blend of Weiss and Charlie Gurke's saxophones sounds like second
nature, it's because the two musicians have played together in myriad ensembles
over the years, from a big band to a saxophone quartet, and even salsa groups.
"We tag-team together really well with our lines and improvisation,"
Weiss says. "Without keyboard or guitar, we're free of any harmonic
constraints and can be really inventive melodically, and harmonically. Our
compositions complement each other, too, I think, with Charlie's more rooted in
jazz tradition and mine a bit more unorthodox. We're lucky to have this
hard-grooving, heavy-hitting rhythm section to play over. Rob and Dillon are a
real opposites-attract combination, with this Wagner enthusiast of a bass
player meets a construction worker-poet as a drummer. But they're like bedrock
together."
Weiss
leaves it up to that drummer, Dillon Westbrook, to sum up Outhead: "The
band is a bit of a happy accident, as all four members come to the core idea of
chord-less quartet from different places: Alex from long association with
various acoustic improvisers on both coasts; Charlie from study of a wide range
of music, including the tradition of saxophone quartet composition and
arranging; Rob from straight-ahead jazz, classical music and his studies with
Mark Dresser; and me from growing up on 1980s and '90s New York downtown music,
along with noisecore and straight-ahead jazz. Somehow or other, the
configuration of Ornette Coleman's second great band, with Dewey Redman replacing
Don Cherry, became a charmed meeting place for us. The group managed to mold
its own identity within this framework, bringing out the best of each of
us."
Outhead's
second album kicks off beautifully with the majestic, melody-rich "Ode to
John Denver, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Death," a woozy
rubato spiritual by Weiss in a classic Albert Ayler mode, with a droning
foundation of harmonium and arco bass for an East-meets-West feel. Next comes
"The Chairman," a laconically catchy tune by Gurke that's blessed by
Woodcock's grooving, textured bass playing and guest electric guitar by Peter
Galub, who lends a rock'n'roll feel to the track - particularly with his
fantastically wild, wailing solo near the end. Weiss' "The
Palimpsest" makes a nod to John Zorn's Masada songbook; the composer's
alto leads with the faintly Middle Eastern melody and a cry in his tone, though
Gurke's baritone soon entwines serpentine around it for their characteristic
sax blend.
"Glass
Houses and Gift Horses" is a headlong rocker by Weiss, with a deceptively
sophisticated form. The composer plays tenor, while Gurke's solo takes
advantage of multiphonic effects and the overtones possible on the baritone.
Westbrook, who has a Masters in Fine Arts degree in poetry, wrote the music and
verses for the artfully produced soundscape "A Made Truth," with the
sexual subtext of the words made plain in the initial sly recitation by Sarah
Horashek and then undercut oddly and humorously by Eunjin Park's less-native
way with the same lyrics. "Trotsky" is a groovy free-bop number by
Charlie in the early Ornette Coleman manner, the harmolodic icon being a prime
influence on every member of the band. The album's offbeat closer, "Uncle
Ho," features music by Charlie and words by Alex, with a chorus of women's
voices taking a key role. Roland Kirk's Volunteered Slavery is a key influence
here, though with more demented humor in the words than political fire. The
sound of Alex and Charlie's twinned saxophones is a textural highlight, as on
the entire album.
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