David S. Ware - Threads

[Nate Dorward]

My first impression of it has been--







--well, words fail me. Is there anyone here who can muster a case for this not being a cast-iron clunker?

[Uli]

?

[walto]

Well, I think it's no better than a B-/C+, but I'm not that crazy about any of his stuff, so WTHDIK? As you know, I give my thoughts about it in more detail at bagatellen.com

[Gary Sisco]

I liked the Freedom Suite record but that's the only one since Ibarra left the band. The last few times I've heard him live he seemed to be not very interested and gave lackluster performances, which isn't good with me, since I decide about musicians based more on live performance than recordings (tape -- or digits -- might not lie, but studio products often do). I don't know. He did make an interesting statement, for a musicians, I thought, in one of the glossies. He said music is what he does, not who he is.

For myself, that was the way I was thinking about it before I decided to stop playing out, and then to stop playing. For me, it's the other way around: what I do is who I am.

[Clay Fink]

Originally posted by Gary Sisco
...what I do is who I am.

I guess that makes me a jerk-off.

[Uli]

This is a very disturbing thread for me. Nate's first post saying nothing else than that the record sux beyond words in his opinion for me is indeed an indication that maybe he has something against who Ware is.

[jazzfiend]

Agreed, Uli. In fact, Nate's pompous attitude continues to be a disturbing turn-off. Look's like I'll not renew my Cadence sub.

[Derek Taylor]

I like this release better than Nate seems to, but I’m still pretty lukewarm on it. Walt makes a comparison to Charlie Parker w/ Strings in his Bagatellen review that I think is spot on. On Bird’s album it was an instance of artistry outdistancing the gimmicky nature of the setting; but the same doesn’t ring that true for the Ware.

IMHO everyone plays competently, with Shipp and Maneri being standouts, but the whole doesn’t hang together that well & Ware seems to be treading some water in his improvisations. Makes me wish he would sit down & reassess where he’s been & where he wants to go. Maybe he’s already done this, but from the work on THREADS it doesn’t sound like it.

As far as not renewing your Cadence sub based on your negative opinion of Nate, I doubt he’ll be too distressed. But there’s a lot of value in that magazine & it seems strange to sacrifice one’s access to it as a means of registering dissatisfaction with an individual writer.

[Captain Hate]

It took only 7 posts to turn this into a forum on Nate.

[Uli]

Originally posted by Captain Hate
It took only 7 posts to turn this into a forum on Nate.

This is not a forum, this is a thread.

to some extent I think it was about Nate more than anything else from the first post. Of course, he can always set us straight by explaining what this strange "review" was all about.

[MRS]

Nate is one of the only people in here who consistently talks about music.

i'llweigh in on nate, since i haven't heard the Ware record yet.
i've always found Nate's posts and other writings to be thoughtful and interesting.
(And I'm a huge fan of David S Ware)

[Nate Dorward]

Hm, looks what happens when your computer goes out for repair--48 hours later & there's a friggin' referendum going. What a two-sentence online post on a disc I'm not even reviewing for Cadence has to do with that magazine is beyond me. If you don't feel like renewing, then don't renew: what's the need for some completely spurious pretext?

I didn't write a review: what I wrote was quite serious: I was initially nonplussed enough by the disc that wanted to know what Ware's fans made of the disc & if anyone liked it much better. Despite the narrower forum title, I've usually assumed that this is the right place for any thread specifically about a single album.

The disc: a quick synopsis: it's "The David S Ware String Ensemble", the strings consisting of William Parker (as usual), Mat Maneri on viola, Daniel Bernard Roumain on violin, and, er, Matt Shipp on synthesized strings mostly. Plus Guillermo E Brown, who is pretty clutzy throughout. Ware himself only plays on a few tracks. It's a short album--45 minutes--of which 13 minutes are the title track, for the quasi-string quartet alone; it's pretty enough at first & then as it goes on in the same vein...& on...& on...becomes simply one of the most irritating things I've heard for ages. Combine that with 9 minutes of "Sufic Passages" (clumsy groove tune) & already half the album is next to useless; & it's not as if the rest of the album strikingly better. In fact there isn't much more to the album--a couple of long tracks which are listenable, if still aimless & filled with glurge (& they do go on at extraordinary length--I've never watched the "time remaining" counter on my CD with such incredulity); & two brief sax/drums improvs which serve as punctuation marks at the midpoint & end of the disc. & that's it.

[saltwatersnow]

my long held view is that the whole blue series is a watered down disaster, and brown is wares weakest drummer, and the synth is frightening.. I think this scene reached a great high point with the ibarra band the the in order to survive parker albums, and these were the albums that got me into new free jazz and i have been so dissapointed in the directions since. Its like they either couldnt think of where in that field they could take it too, or got sick of being very poor or both.

[Jonny Miner]

saltwatersnow wrote:
"I think this scene reached a great high point with the ibarra band the the in order to survive parker albums, and these were the albums that got me into new free jazz and i have been so dissapointed in the directions since."

I agree about Shipp and Ware--a certain amount of ego, forced professionalism, and elitism has perhaps cut them off a little--but I think that Parker's been stretching in countless fascinating directions, while at the same time holding fast to his own conception and spirit. And I think this is only very partially reflected on record.

I think this "scene" (I'm not sure, however, where this scene stops and another starts), has lots of hope in the tremendously under-rated work of trombonist Steve Swell, in Sabir Mateen, Hamid Drake, Daniel Carter, and especially in younger players like Matt Lavelle and Ras Moshe and Matana Roberts. Not to mention powerhouse drummer Tatsuya Nakatani.

Shit's brewing every Sunday at CB's Lounge, and in Williamsburg at Moshe's Music Now events. All it needs is some support and love, and above all, some patience. Parker and Ware had been playing since the early 70's, and without Sam Rivers, the European press and promotion people, and a couple of writers at Downbeat, who knows if they would have been around long enough to form IOTS, or the Ibarra group? I don't see much support for the newer guys, except perhaps from those older artists. I guess that's nothing new.

[Gary Sisco]

Geez. Another thesis to argue emerges from someone saying he doesn't like a record. (Not a scene.)

Clay -- lol.

[walto]

Can we PLEASE get back to talking about Nate?!

[Other Steve]

Originally posted by saltwatersnow
brown is wares weakest drummer

I used to be right there with you, but I can't agree with this anymore, not since hearing Brown take things to a whole new level at Iridium some weeks back (the double bill with Henry Grimes). I don't know exactly what happened, but suddenly, Guillermo gets it... I'm a harsh judge of drummers, having been one, and he had my jaw on the table all night long. (By way of contrast, Ware was the weakest link in his own band that night.) I will agree, however, that Brown's newfound capacity is effectively nowhere in evidence on the lugubrious new Threads.

[saltwatersnow]

one of my favorite new related albums is rob brown trio on bleu regard. the drummer there is warren smith who i think would be an ideal choice for wares band. him and parker sound wonderful together.

[Sergio Zamora]

Originally posted by Other Steve
I'm a harsh judge of drummers, having been one,

[Nate Dorward]

Well, Shipp's synth & Brown's drumming don't greatly appeal to me, but really they're not to blame for the album's failure: hte truth is, Brown & Shipp are barely given a fighting chance by the material. When Brown is given something to chew on he does passably--the two brief "Weave" tracks are OK, & he's fine on "Carousel of Lightness". I can't for the life of me figure out why he sounds so inept on the absolutely straightforward 4/4 of "Sufic Passages" though. Shipp's accompaniments on the album might as well have been preprogrammed in several spots--ditto William Parker.

[Frisco]

Originally posted by saltwatersnow
one of my favorite new related albums is rob brown trio on bleu regard. the drummer there is warren smith who i think would be an ideal choice for wares band. him and parker sound wonderful together.

Yes indeed, this Rob Brown disc is excellent. I wrote something about it before the format for this forum changed. Warren Smith is a seasoned master of drums and percussion. I think Guillermo will get there. I have also seen signs of him developing, in the limited times that I've had the opportunity to hear him live.

I've not heard the Ware disc yet. He's long been a favorite of mine, but I can see where this disc might deviate, particularly with Matthew playing the synthesizer or electric keys, or whatever he's doing here.
Too bad. The potential of David, Mat Maneri, Matt Shipp, Parker, and Brown is incredible. I was actually excited to hear about Maneri playing with David.

[Nate Dorward]

I seem to recall a thread about the critical genius of Thom Jurek at one point (was it on the old JC?). Anyway, was rather stunned by this:

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p...=Azu3ibkj9sakx

which is, quite simply, mad. Or is it just a con? I note that Jurek's review contains a little info that must be straight from the horse's mouth (the i.d. of a lift from Coltrane which isn't audible to the uninformed listener, nor is it mentioned in the linernotes); & I am told that the cover of the released disc comes with an extract from Jurek's review (the bit declaring that it ought to win a Grammy award). (I haven't seen the released version as the copy I had was a prerelease CD-ROM with no cover art.)

Meanwhile here's my formal writeup:

http://www.squidco.com/cgi-bin/news/...cgi?newsID=259

& here's another piece on it by Dan Warburton:

http://www.paristransatlantic.com/ma...ct_text.html#8

in case anyone has energy for dead-horse-flogging.

[mke]

Digression:

I like this description, from the "Now Playing" section of the Paris Transatlantic page Nate linked to:

For Minneapolis-based poet and pianist Erik Belgum, it's Sun Ra. "Solo Piano (Vol. 1) (1977) has been sitting atop my top records list for the past month - we used to call them "records" when I was your age. I'd spent weeks trying to understand, articulate, and transcribe the Ra solo style when my nephew showed up wanting to play me the James Bond Theme. To my chagrin, with his unstable left hand groove, random placement of sforzandi, and all those major-minor chords in the right hand, he put out a damn nice Sun Ra sound, for a fifth grader."

[walto]

Wow, thanks for posting that Jurek review, Nate. Not too much in common with yours or mine, is there?

Speaking of cognitive dissonance, there's a long, rapturous review of Laura Andel's "Somnambulist" in the new Cadence. I trashed it pretty good at bagatellen.

BWTHDIK?

[Nate Dorward]

Yep, dif'rent strokes for dif'rent folks I guess--see the enormous enthooz for that disc you trashed at

http://www.squidco.com/cgi-bin/news/...cgi?newsID=288

But, hey, I definitely trust you more--the author of that one is the same guy who did a rave of Tisziji Munoz's Divine Radiance, which is quite a feat. (I just panned it at Paris Trans.--I thought I was pretty kind to it all told. Actually, I wrote it just after reviewing the David S Ware & that's why I was nice to the Munoz--by comparison to Threads it's not so bad.....at least he lets the assembled musicians play.)


Yes, I like that comment on the Sun Ra solo disc!

[mke]

Originally posted by Nate Dorward
the same guy who did a rave of Tisziji Munoz's Divine Radiance, which is quite a feat. (I just panned it at Paris Trans.--I thought I was pretty kind to it all told.

That was a pan?

"The omens might look pretty grim, but actually the disc's not bad by any means."

[walto]

"Pan"

Mr. Dorward's too all-fired decent to fully appreciate da use of da woid in da hands of a real shit tossah.

[Uli]

Whatever happened to criticism, when the art of panning is lost?

[walto]

Right on. Actually, I got to admit that Nate's got both barrels blazing in his take on the Ware. He comes right out and calls it a turkey. I like that.

It's Jason's turn.