Matthew Shipp Trio | The Conduct of Jazz (Thirsty Ear)
The pianist supreme known as Matthew Shipp satellites just outside that artistic sphere where music that gets called ÒjazzÓ isnÕt jazz and/or is just plain tedious and tame. Matthew Shipp is never boring, and is only predictable in that you always know the guyÕs going to turn your musical head in wicked novel positions. The nicely snotty and mildly inflammatory title of this fascinating new record by Shipp and cohorts bassist Michael Bisio and drummer Newman Taylor Baker just figures, too: conduct as in conduction or the way the best jazz distributes pulse and current among its players and presumably within the brains of ye close, careful listeners. Mainly, though, weÕre talking bad conduct here, that is, jazz not putting on a bow tie and behaving itself.
IÕve got a bad habit of projecting a lot on Shipp, and thatÕs because he and his music have charisma, and of course charisma invites projection. IÕve talked to Shipp a couple of times and tried to pin on him that maybe he ought not align himself with jazz at all anymore, Ôcause what he does is way beyond (my own) restrictions and clichŽs of jazz formula and canon and all that. In other words, I've got a bad attitude about bow ties and bass solos and giving the drummer some and all that calcified corn.
Well, Shipp answered me by saying two sensible things: One needs to call it jazz if one want to get gigs at jazz festivals and at jazz clubs and if you want to pull in parties whoÕre nominally into anything that gets called jazz. He reminded me too that jazz is a musical form whose main reason for being has always been about breaking rules, so yeah, in that sense he is most decidedly a jazz musician.
Anyway: This album feels short, just whizzes by in seven tracks of pure listening, head-bobbing, toe-tapping pleasure. ItÕs probing stuff, as youÕd expect, just chock-fulla ideas, curiosity and vigor ÐÐ itÕs full of life. ShippÕs bandmates offer more than just support for the pianistÕs fearsome flights, they sound like they all popped out of the same womb, connected within this music in amazingly organic and intuitive understanding of one anotherÕs hearts and minds. The first track, ÒInstinctive Touch,Ó works a lopsided piano figure up and down, bass bouncing off it as drums skitter and swish, and you witness its development in the fullness of real time. Shipp turns the rhomboid figure inside out, upside down, and all sorts of shapes and possibilities tumble out amid a weird bluesy abstraction that will, in other pieces, flirt with dark romanticism.
As with many of ShippÕs pieces, ÒInstinctive TouchÓ appears to be a hybrid of jazz improvisation with spontaneous composition, i.e., itÕs less a bunch of solos layed on top of a series of chords, and more of a mutating shape and scope wherein for the most part everyone solos and no one really solos ÐÐ itÕs about counterpoint, and how three parts combined create a fourth entity. As with most of the albumÕs cuts, the restricted timbres of the trioÕs simple instrumentation aid the perception that these spontaneous compositions are not like viewing one object under different lights; nope, picture if you will a series of different objects viewed under the same light.
In taking on ÒjazzÓ itself, the album taunts with difference while generously doling out what jazzheads most likely want. Matthew Shipp has a special way of making the most exploratory, heady kinds of things feel persuasive and inviting, almost in spite of his own tendency toward the obscure and forboding. The title trackÕs upbeat, sprightly theme shows how Shipp can bop and swing with ease and joy, but, better, with a thirst for almost microbial metamorphosis and, best of all, a steely sense of direction. ÒBall in Space,Ó ÒPrimary FormÓ and ÒBlue AbyssÓ sound like new modern jazz standards. ÒStream of LightÓ is ShippÕs solo turn of contrapuntal two-hands-in-different-directions, and its seemingly endless variations mustÕve felt to Shipp like finding the most multi-faceted cut diamond on Earth. Closer ÒThe Bridge AcrossÓ is a 12-minute-plus opus that brings the band back in to further excavate mines, spelunker in caves and take the odd mad dash up unknown alleyways.
ÐÐ John Payne
