KRIS T REEDER – TIME TO FLY PART 2 (ELR XL Records)
Improvising trombonist Kris T Reeder has, we’re informed
online, been “tokenised on the Ethereum blockchain”. It takes us five minutes of searching to work
out that this is not satire, just something we have no hope of comprehending. Still, if it had been a wheeze it would have
summed up this album, which embodies Vicky “People Like Us” Bennett’s concept
of irritainment: art which is defined
by its very ornery awkwardness.
Take opener “78 Free”, built on a chunky 4/4 bass drum
kick which is a sloppily chopped loop, regularly dropping a fraction of a beat.
This sums up the intriguing tension at the heart of the album, a clash between
the jazzy expressiveness of free improv trombone, and cheap clunky electronica. “Go On Then” pits rusty ‘bone tension cues
against wildly oscillating synth in a style that might be called Noirstep, but
might also be mistaken for someone testing the parameters of a Korg in a shop with an improv masterclasss in the
corner, and “Pain Threshold” subsumes some relaxed hippo-parping notes in a
storm of electronic chirrups and buzzes.
There are points where the album feels more sonically
balanced, the interplay between Autechral beats and fluent trombone runs in “For
Deep Experience” working well, and the title track’s SNES reproduction of a New
Orleans second line groove possessing an ineluctable swagger, but generally
this record is as frustrating as it is enjoyable. But so much free improv has become a closed
stylistic paddock decades after its inception, this deliberate oddness is
actually a good thing, and we encourage all readers with a taste for the
leftfield to seek Reeder out. And if you
work out what to do with a tokenised blockchain whilst you’re at it, be sure to
let us know.
