Customer Reviews

Youth Oriented

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

And quite a band it is. David King, he of the monster drum chops, mainstay of that mega-deconstructionist jazz outfit, The Bad Plus, shows he's by no means a one trick pony. Happy Apple strikes me as no less innovative and irreverent than The Bad Plus, which, alas, seems to be getting most of the attention.

There's perhaps more of a rock vibe happening here, but it's not one you're likely to hear even on college or alternative radio. There's too much of a true jazz sensibility running through this disc to land it in that territory. The instrumentation--sax, bass (albeit electric), drums--is a kind of classic jazz trio with roots in such venerable innovators as Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman, and, more recently, Joe Lovano. But what they do with it is something else again.

Featuring all originals--and the lads are no slouches as composers--Happy Apple seems to be more in line with, say Josh Roseman, Ez Pour Spout (though both these do a lot of covers), and Tronzo, Granelli, Epstein (check out their fine record, Crunch), than the traditional pianoless jazz trio. There also seems to be some kind of referent to unclassifyable, free-floating, just-plain-intransigence a la Captain Beefheart.

They succeed because they've created a genuinely new sound that combines elements of free jazz, alt-rock, compositional ingenuity, and true improv.

A note about the packaging. As this is a Nato-generated disc--these are the purveyors of such avant weirdness as the Lonely Bears and the Sam Rivers/Tony Hymas collaboration Eight Day Journal--you get some recurring visual motifs. Oddly, it shares with the latter a faux illustrated story-booklet, supposedly a visual commentary on the music, but really more like an iconic red herring, which, nevertheless, provides intriguing eye-candy, entirely consonant with the music proceedings.

Probably not for everybody (indeed, who is it designed to please?), but certainly worth plunking down a few dollars if you're an adventurous musical hound like this listener.

I don't have much to say... This band is great, and this cd is as great, creative and diverse than all others from Happy Apple...

Happy Apple, since more than 10 years, is creating a great music wich is completly "their" music : it looks like Sonny Rollins meeting The Police, or Roland Kirk having child with Nomeansno (a great hardcore band). And all the poetry, excitment, furor and idiosyncratic beauty of their music come from these strange and monstruous crossings.

Of course, if you want to hear "jazz", with II/V chord progressions, songs of 32 bars and structure in AABA, you will be very disapointed. And if your limit in "avant-garde" is the jazz of the sixties, with this particular feeling it had, and if you can't accept the fact that jazz opened itself since this time to many local and diverse esthetics, you will feel sad about this music, that doesn't look like something you can recognize.

To me, Happy Apple is not an "avant garde" or "free-jazz" band (they like too much beautiful melodies for this), nor a commercial band (they are too much crazy and free-minded for that) but one of the most creative "power trio" of these times.

Though fans of BP may be underwhelmed if going in with high expectations, this all but encompasses hip experimental jazzy background music.

Having been alerted to the early Mothers of Invention, Captain Beefheart, Sonny Sharrock, Ornette Coleman, etc. at an early age this music doesn't completely surprise. This is a strange mix of free jazz, trance, funk...... I love it! If 'over the top' isn't your bag, stay away. Erik Fratzke, Michael Lewis and Dave King are all monster players and this album definately proves that point because there are chops galore. This is a very hard album to describe, but imagine the later days of Coltrane mixed with Jaco Pastorius and a 'more syncopated' Drumbo and you get the picture.

This CD was somewhat of a disappointment. I love what David King does in The Bad Plus. I love his rambunctious, firey style. I love his use of strange percussion instruments and sound effects. But this album just doesn't really jive with me. It's no doubt that all three players on this album are great jazz musicians, but this album just sounds like... noise. And this coming from a fan of Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy (which many untrained ears refer to as "just noise"). The pieces aren't particularly interesting in a harmonic sense. The title track is a fairly straight ahead vamp that weighs on the listener with boredom after a while. The improvisation on the album is free, but it's not accessable. It literally sounds like noise. The most disappointing cut on the album is "The Landfall Planetarium." Bassist Eric Fratzke picks up a guitar on this cut and exhibits underwhelming chops (and I'm trying to be nice). After several minutes of what sounds like a 4 year old child making noise on a live guitar (yes, that was mean, I couldn't resist) the piece falls from a highflying aircraft into an abyss of nothingness with a boring vamp and a poorly executed melotron "melody." After a cacophonous funk chart, the listener is given "Drama Section" which doesn't really get going until after over a full minute of cymbal noise. It's a somewhat tasteful free ballad, but it is hard to discern what is melody and what is improvised. The next cut, "The Treetops of a Bad Neighborhood" doesn't actually sound like jazz at all. It sounds like bad trance music with saxophone improvisation. I think that I have said enough.

Basically it breaks my heart to only give this album two stars. While King, Fratzke and saxophonist Michael Lewis may not have much to offer on a guitar or mellotron, they all do possess an incredible amount of talent on their main instrument. It peeks through at certain moments which make the disc worthy of more than a base rating of 1 star. I just wish Happy Apple would make some music that is really good. There's so much potential for greatness here and it breaks my heart to see good musicians put out material that is beneath their potential.