1. Minerals
2. Liquor Store
3. Cut and Run
4. Around the Town with Clinton Brown
5. Blanket Hill
6. Epidemic
7. Anadarko
8. On the Take
9. The Slink
10. Static Character
11. Plainclothes Detective
12. Anadarko
13. Anadarko
Seth Nanaa (drums)
Jordan Schranz (bass)
Brent Bagwell (tenor sax, clarinet)
Free jazz + post-punk + post-rock = the future.
According to The Eastern Seaboard anyway.
For the Brooklyn based trio - whose backgrounds
are equally split between rock groups and
more traditional jazz ensembles - modern jazz
has lost its edge, drifting into stasis rather
than experiment, neglecting its role as a
subversive force. The solution? To escape
from any set musical confines by amalgamating
the best of two distinct genres. As bassist
Brent Bagwell said of Nonfiction, “We
took all the things we liked about jazz and
all the things we liked about rock and sort
of just folded them together and made up stuff
of our own.”
The result is a highly original sound. From
the frantic beginning of ‘Minerals’,
we are presented with a rawness more commonly
associated with rock groups like Sonic Youth
and Nirvana than with any form of jazz. Schranz’s
sax is characterised by dissonance, screeching
chaotically, wailing eerily, and droning like
feedback from an amplifier. Bagwell’s
bass is also rock-like, favouring catchy,
thumping riffs rather than traditional walking
bass lines and using the bow repeatedly to
create a keyboard/synth-like sound. In the
two short interludes - Blanket Hill and the
second Anadarko - we even get even get a taste
of distortion effects that purists would no
doubt object to.
But ‘free jazz’ doesn’t entirely
suffice to describe The Eastern Seaboard’s
style. The group, after all, insist on writing
actual intros and outros, and refuse to tread
the dangerous path of rejecting traditions
of time and melody. The musicians consistently
gel together, developing the mood and tone
of each piece through astonishing musical
empathy. Despite the sparse and experimental
nature of songs like ‘Around the Town...’,
for example, we never lose interest in flow
of ideas that permeates the collective effort.
And on ‘Static Character’, we hear
the trio focus on a very concrete idea, and
elaborate on it with meticulous precision.
For many, however, Nonfiction’s flaws
will far outweigh its virtues. Rich and complex
as the work may be, its headache-inducing
potential should not be underestimated. And
approaching the final third of the album,
its hard not to feel just a little frustrated.
The prewritten intros show tremendous potential
for fully developed compositions. It seems
a shame that, for the sake of freedom, they
weren’t expanded further.
Robert Gibson
CD Reviews
Black Saint, 120163-2
