Customer Reviews

Corridors & Parallels

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Much has been made of the "new" direction that this album represents for the Ware quartet. Most of this hype centers around the presence of electronics on the disc. Certainly this disc represents a radical departure from Ware's more mainstream but still impressive albums for Sony. Where on the Sony albums, Ware seemed to be channeling late Coltrane through Charles Lloyd, this disc marks the return of Ware the ecstatic Ayler disciple. So to me, rather than marking a new direction in Ware's work, this disc is a return to form, albeit with a few gimmicks and some twists.

The album does mark some interesting departures for the group. Stylistically, the work on the album is less compositionally based and ranges freely between avant-garde energy jazz blowouts, an Africanized romp, some very impressive Middle Eastern inspired blowing and even a ballad. Though there are "tunes" like Corridors and Parallels, which obviously has a predetermined theme, much of the album sounds like a studio experiment, with grooves and general shape as the determining factor rather than the earlier free jazz "heads" that were the stock in trade of the group in the 90s. The results are mixed. Straight Track noodles around for a while until Ware enters, then things ignite. Jazz Fi-Sci is centered an old-fashioned "trading fours" session between Ware on tenor and Shipp on synthesizer. As interesting as this concept might be in theory, the effect is rather weak, partly because Shipp's chosen program is not particularly interesting as a solo voice. Superimposed, the African jam is one of the outstanding tracks. It features a percussion jam centered on a synthesized marimba sound, over which Ware blows a scorching solo. Sound-a-bye is an interesting sonic texture ballad, but it goes on too long and too little happens. Corridors and Parallels is the other really outstanding track, featuring a beautiful bowed melody from William Parkers inimitable bass over which Ware blows with the intensity of a Sufi musician. Somewhere is another wonderful Parker feature. The bass player coaxes some amazing sounds out of his instrument over an otherworldly soundscape. Spaces Embrace has a bluesy quality that is intriguing, and Ware's tone is at it's raspy best. And Mother May You Rest In Peace is a gospelized ballad and dedicated to the memory of the tenorist's mother.

To me though, the album's central gimmick mars it. I have struggled long and hard to come to terms with Matthew Shipp as a pianist. For years I didn't get the hype. Now I am learning to appreciate his strong points, an interesting sense of construction, a unique blending of the tone clusters of Cecil Taylor with a piano style that owes almost as much to hard boppers like Horace Silver and Bobby Timmons as it does to any 60s pianist. But the synthesizer just isn't his instrument. The "ingenious programming" that many reviewers have commented on is actually not that ingenious. Any user of a Roland keyboard product will recognize the programs as straight "out-of-the-box" Roland user programs. This in itself is not such a big deal, though it shows no special ingenuity on Shipp's part. But his approach to the instrument is fairly unimaginative. On Jazz Fi-Sci Shipp noodles around like Sun Ra at his kitschiest, and it's not particularly attractive. On Superimposed, he uses a pad sound, which is meant as a background wash, as his solo instrument voice and it is singularly ineffective. On some of the other tracks, his use of the instrument is a little more in keeping with the nature of it, but even in such tracks like Corridors and Parallels, the use of synthesizer relegates Shipp to a subordinate role in the quartet, effectively negating him as an equal creative member of the group. Perhaps the best thing that could have been done with this disc would have been to hire an expert, as Shipp has done on his two "jazztronica" albums for Thirsty Ear, and let Shipp do what he does best, play the piano. Then the disc would have less of a gimmicky sound, and we would get the well-oiled machine that we've come to expect from the Ware Quartet.

In closing, this is not a bad album at all. It is even a welcome return to form from Ware himself after his "mellow" Sony phase. But it doesn't represent the group at it's best, or even a "new direction" for them. Rather it represents a stylistic experiment of the kind that musicians often attempt to get themselves out of a creative rut. It has much in common with similar experiments like Miles' late flirting with hip-hop, Ornette's Skies of America recording, or Charlie Parker with Strings...it represents not so much a bold new direction, as an attempt to inject life into a style that may fit the musicians too well. Perhaps with some work, this could truly develop into a new direction for the Ware quartet. But as it stands, this is a good album...not a great one. Worth checking out, surely; but not destined to go down as a classic album for this group, which is capable of much greater things.

Just because Matthew Shipp plays a synth doesn't make this free-jazz muzak. This is not a "quiet" album. Really, can you imagine David S. Ware, perhaps THE free-jazz sax ambassador of our era, notwithstanding Fred Anderson, Ken Vandermark, Jon Butcher, and Ivo Perelman, teamed up with William Parker and Guillermo Brown producing anything but take-no-prisoners, in-your-face sonic assaults? I'd want my money back, if that's not what I got here. And I do get it. In spades.

Take "Straight Track," for instance--or, really, just about any cut ("Jazz Fi-Sci," a free-robotic number, "Superimposed," with its free-jungle vibe, "Corridors and Parallels," a free-hip-hop groove); it would be difficult to imagine a more committed, burning free-jazz sensibility than this.

Maybe it's the faux "ballad" numbers--"Sound-a-Bye," "Somewhere," "Space Embraces"--not ballads, really, but more like Matthew Shipp's ambient jazz, and the neo-gospel number, "Mother May You Rest in Bliss," that have led some to regard this as something other than full-bore David S. Ware.

I for one absolutely affirm this new direction for Ware. May his tribe increase.

A great, quiet album by the David S. Ware Quartet. They seem to have been able to find a more concentrated vision for this project than for others, and the result is a slow and sublime piece of music which manages both to be meditative and highly experimental. Even the synthesizers sound good (which is kind of hard for me, an avowed synthesizer hater, to admit)! To me, this echoes some of the Chicago Underground Duo's works. Excellent album.