Stumble [LIVE]

Aaly Trio, Ken Vandermark

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 28, 2000)
• Original Release Date: January 17, 1998
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Live
• Label: Wobbly Rail
• ASIN: B00000AG7B
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #19,520 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #60 in	Music > Jazz > Compilations > Bebop & Post-Bop
  #91 in	Music > Jazz > Live Albums
  #95 in	Music > Jazz > Avant Garde & Free Jazz

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com's Best of 1998
Saxophonist Ken Vandermark released two excellent LPs this year--Target or Flag, a barn burner featuring his Chicago-based group, the Vandermark 5--and Stumble, his collaboration with Sweden's AALY Trio. Vandermark is a player with explosive moves and a surprising vocabulary of honks, blats, and horn chatter. Stumble creeps through the shadows like the soundtrack to a noir thriller. Other times, the record is convulsed by Vandermark's horn fits. A player of many moves--clucking, coughing, roaring, shrieking, wheezing--Vandermark is a player always on the edge, always full of surprise, and on Stumble he delivers the year's best avant-garde jazz: bracing, funny, and sharp. --S. Duda

Amazon.com
On Stumble tenor saxophonist Ken Vandermark and the AALY Trio (featuring Mats Gustafsson on tenor, fluteophone, and flute; Peter Janson on bass, and Kjell Nordeson on drums) lurch out of the gate with a creaky, spindle-legged tune built from shadowy drum and bass rumble and spy movie horns. It's a wonderfully evocative opener for an album built with a stylish taste for film noir moods and evocative sound textures. That's not to say that Stumble is background music. On a number of cuts, Vandermark and Gustafsson trade hurricane gusts and duke it out, horn to horn, in a great frenzy of squall, scream, and screech. After a few listens, those windy moments reveal sympathetic playing and (gasp!) real conversational interplay. An indie-jazz masterpiece. --S. Duda

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars music?, February 3, 2003

By	jesper nordström (sweden) - See all my reviews

After all, what is music? Is it melody? Sound? Noise ?
I don't think I've ever heard a record that makes the whole
definition of music such a question of urgency. Its sometimes very melodic in a low-key manner, then it exlodes into just weird and far-out noise to land again in harmony and melody. But the way the melodic parts are played has a kind of eerie feel, as if the melodies was played at great pain, like a madman trying to surpress his insanity. You hear a lot of noise from the musicians such as breathing and spitting. In fact they have managed to turn a saxophone into a rythmic instrument. Since I've seen them live in Sweden I can tell you that this is done by holding your knee into the saxophone and making the sound sometimes "leek" out while jumping around on the stage. If you really like names such as Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane in his later days, this is for you. But if you like jazz to be played at your cocktailparties, then beware !