Steven Bernstein • ResoNation Trio / Scotty Hard & Steven Bernstein • Ultra Resonance Royal Potato Family RPF 2608
It helps that the trio pieces are spare -- the aphoristic tunes and many of the treatments: like the jolly-riffing “Pettiford” (for bassist Oscar, with appropriate forward thrust). Steven Bernstein’s a longtime fulcrum of New York’s downtown improvising scene, as heard for example in his raucous quartet Sexmob, where he may play zesty slide trumpet. But he was also a regular on Levon Helm’s Midnight Rambles up in Woodstock, and Steve (in his notes) places this trio in the “folk tradition”: like songs around the campfire. Here he plays valved horns only (trumpet, flugelhorn, and in-between G trumpet) without mutes, and his playing is more about a singing, undulating line than jamming on bebop changes. Bassist Scott Colley’s low thrumbles trace folky toward-home/away-from-home diatonic patterns à la Charlie Haden on blues standard “Sitting on Top of the World.” Drummer Nasheet Waits can always find the swing or shuffle in seemingly open time. He and Colley were open-minded pianist Andrew Hill’s rhythm section two decades before; here they pick their conversation back up, curving around the leader, always creative. They all careen off Waits’ limber, hip-hop-inflected beat on “Woodstock.” Bernstein uses a horn’s middle register to get to the heart of the matter: he keeps his line plaintive and earnest -- already thinking about the transformations to come. For the mad-science Ultra Resonance, Scotty Hard (aka Scott Harding) disassembles and reassembles myriad component parts using a bevy of samplers, fingertip percussion pads, signal-treaters, and sonic slicers and dicers (Roland 606, Bias BS-2, Akai MPC 2500), and sneaks in a bit of his own electronic keyboards and a briefly deployed lap-steel guitar; Jeremy Gustin drops in a little extra bass drum and floor tom, perhaps to mask transitions from one drum loop to another: “All instruments replayed, rearranged, redeployed by Scotty Hard.” You can spot Waits’ “Woodstock” drum beat on “Erbium” -- almost as if provided as a courtesy to the post-producer, to be used later as needed. The overall effect is dreamscapey -- we may hear trumpet slowed down at variable speed à la John Oswald’s plunderphonics. “Niobium” sounds recorded underwater, with dolphins. Signals may also speed up. The soundscape won’t lie flat -- the looping is irregular, so regurgitated that waves of rhythm don’t dishonor the living, breathing Waits. No rote hypnosis on this trip. Seams show here and there, but this music doesn’t celebrate the seams, post-modern style; it’s about divining the music in the myriad bits, like building new cars from spare parts without instructions. As Ultra Resonance reminds us, jazz meets
hip-hop wise, it’s not 1990 anymore, when swinging Blue Note samples were undercut by
anti-swing cookie-cutter rhythm loops. Hybrids are more interesting now that
something/anything is always in flux. If this electro-acoustic stuff is too 21st-century
for you, the unadulterated trio awaits. Engineer/mixer Andy Taub's close-miking of
trumpet, bass and drums on ResoNation Trio makes sampling easy for producer Hard
and provides listeners with a cozy, intimate soundstage, and Taub keeps things crisp and
warm with quick-decay reverb. So you can feel the heat of that campfire the trio play
around. |
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intertwined but very different albums on one disc cry out for shuffle-play integration. On
ResoNation Trio, trumpeter Bernstein plays nine of his tunes (and one blues
evergreen) with bass and drums. Then for the Ultra Resonance half, hip-hop
producer Scotty Hard slices and chops those recordings apart and stitches them back
together, Frankenstein’s-monster style, for eight electro-drenched new tracks whose
parts you may have a hard time tracing back to the trio performances. 