Music Mondays: Seasonal Parker, Roy Campbell, and Yellow

It’s the calm before the storm. The semester starts tomorrow, our campus has a mask mandate, my syllabi are ready, and cool fall weather has settled in town as if on cue. Needless to say, I’m pretty excited. The long purgatory of summer is finally over and it’s time to get back at it.

I’m also excited because I have a little gaggle of good music to share. Some of this is really new and some of this is pretty old, but all of it inspired me over the last week as I prepared for the new semester.

First, I can’t recommend enough one of William Parker’s latest albums Painters Winter. It is evidently a complement to his 2001 album Painter’s Spring which likewise features drummer Hamid Drake and all arounder Daniel Carter. William Parker is a bassist and a distinctive one at that. So both albums are not only locked down in terms of bass lines, but also showcase Parker’s distinctive style of both plucked and bowed base as well as his ability to create tonal contrasts with by playing some kind of pocket trombone thing. Daniel Carter who is capable of flight of remarkable intensity as well as passages of tonal exploration which complement Parker’s bass, is a new voice to me. Both albums are typically classified as avant-garde or free jazz, but they’re not the often crass or impulsive displays of technical bravado that folks often associate with this genre. Instead, the offer thoughtful and at times quiet music that draws the listener into the interplay between musicians. What these albums do (at least for me) is force me to think about relationships between the musicians, between the sounds, and between the instruments. Maybe it’s the recent vogue for so-called “relational ontologies” and the like that has me thinking more and more about how relationships create meaning and looking deeper into the relationships between events, individuals, objects, and sound. Maybe it’s that Parker creates a sufficiently solid foundation that almost all his albums have the kind of groove that I need to motivate and inspire me (check out “Happiness” on Painters Winter and if it doesn’t generate feeling in you, I’m not sure what will). Maybe it’s Drake and Carter can follow and play around and with Parker in a conversational way. 

Parker and Carter’s rapport got me exploring Carter’s discography a bit more fully and this led to me Other Dimensions in Music where Parker and Carter collaborate with trumpet player Roy Campbell, drummer Rashid Bakr. This album is four tracks of remarkable grooves and inspired music. If the trio format of the pair of Painters albums could sound a bit spare where space is as much part of the conversation as the notes being played, the addition of a trumpet in Other Dimensions in Music offers the potential for a denser soundscape which the musicians build slowly and deliberately. Roy Campbell’s trumpet may well be the star of this album. He coaxes a range of tones, textures, and melodic lines from it and it dances along with Carter’s reeds in a personable conversation. Parker’s wisdom punctuated by Rashid Bakr’s restrained but never hidden drum work anchors the sets. The opening track “Tradition’s Traditional Omissions Suite/Sailing Toward the Dark Happy Voice” is among the best things that I’ve listened to lately (apparently, there are those who think this group’s next album Now! is even better. I haven’t heard it yet).

Enjoying Campbell on this album drew me to some of this other work. I found what some regard as his best album It’s krunch Time to be a revelation. It features Khan Jamal on vibes (Wilber Morris on bass and Guillermo E. Brown on drums). Unlike the long, simmering grooves and soundscapes that constitute Other Dimensions in Music, It’s krunch Time plays like a pop album with songs rarely extending beyond 6 minutes. The result is a less organic feeling. In some ways, it feels like conversations begin, but then get cut off before they begin to wander and explore. There is, however, something to be said for its diversity of sonic textures. I like vibes and Khan Jamal and his ability to move between laid back etherial tonality and punctuated intensity makes him a natural complement to Campbell’s trumpet. Morris who I don’t know alternates between bowed and plucked bass and Brown tries to keep things moving along without stepping on anyone’s toes. Check out the cover of Monk’s “Bemsha Swing” and the “The Star Spangl’ed Banner” for two of the more accessible tracks. This album is a great afternoon listen and evokes a semester’s worth of classroom conversations in its 40 odd minute run time.

Finally, as readers of this blog know, I was drawn to William Parker through his association with Sun Ra. Of course, Sun Ra’s legacy goes beyond those who played with him and is particularly visible in certain branches of the jazz scene in the UK. Last week I started Emma-Jean Thackray’s Yellow. Synths, groovy electric bass, voices, horns, reeds, free experimentation alternate with tight scores. If the Shabaka Hutchings’ project, The Comet is Coming is about the days before the end, Thackray’s Yellow prepares the way. It feels like the continuation of Sun Ra’s late-1970s explorations (especially Lanquidity and On Jupiter) for the 21st century. It’s not only listenable, but also complex enough to reward repeated visits. Less of a conversation that the works I’ve discussed in already in this blog and more of a proper concert. Let the music wash over you and challenge you to get out of your comfy chair and experience the world differently.