By Nathaniel Friedman

Strictly speaking, fusion is a violent thing. Even if the end result is unity, it is certainly hard won; no one would call the high-speed collision of unstable isotopes an easy peace. Likewise, the classic fusion records are dramatic, untidy affairs. Great slabs of sound like Bitches Brew or Inner Mounting Flame are all experimentation and confrontation, with jazz, rock and funk smashing up against each other in their most uncompromising forms.

That said, there haven’t been many fusion records since the mid-seventies. The Naked City-inspired pastiche of the late eighties/early nineties basically let each genre rest on its laurels, while musicians like Dave Douglas work in post-genre world, where techniques can be employed without invoking the idiom they came from. And almost all of what gets called "fusion" these days is music that uses jazz as an excuse—to play too many notes, try out complex chord changes, or not bother with a singer. It’s jazz as conceived of by another genre, rather than that genre’s being affected by jazz.

As a veteran of the downtown scene, Tim Berne is certainly no stranger to mixing genres. Yet his latest, The Shell Game (Thirsty Ear), smacks of the golden age of fusion, in the most complimentary sense. All clenched grooves and seething atmosphere, The Shell Game finds Berne’s squalling alto, Craig Taborn’s otherworldly keyboards and electronics, and Tom Rainey’s ironclad drumming engaged in an uneasy diplomacy of style. Rather than sounding like a settled, blandly cohesive unit, this trio is fighting—in the most noble, constructive sense--to establish common ground.

For Berne, this exhilarating, ad hoc dynamic proved essential to the project. Although he could have "chop[ped] up the record to make it a lot more exciting in a conventional way, I was trying to show the process. There’s a certain tension in that. . . you wonder, ‘when is it going to break?’" As he puts it, "we’re discovering it as it’s happening. . . [as a musician], there are moments where you’re listening so acutely because you can’t figure out what’s going on."

In fact, Berne seems to have gone out of his way to encourage unfamiliarity and discovery. When he asked Taborn to join this new trio, he had only heard him play "for like ten minutes, with James Carter." But, as Berne says, "it’s all about the person. Just hanging out with Craig, I could tell he had a gut feeling, a sensitivity." As Berne puts it, "I’ve always liked the texture of electric instruments. . . of electric guitar and just noise in general. The keyboard thing has been in the back of my head for years. But what I didn’t want was someone to just play bass on the keyboard."

Taborn’s playing on The Shell Game is nothing short of revelatory. His contributions range from hard riffing on "Heavy Mental" to the disjointed drones and oddly virulent ambience of "Thin Ice;" equal parts fusion-era furor and post-rock reverie, he probably does everything imaginable but "just play bass on the keyboard." Both in the decidedly electronic use of electric keyboards (as opposed to just playing piano or organ on a different instrument) and his out-front role in the group, the obvious precedent is Sun Ra, circa 1965.

I also ask Berne if the group’s thunderous sound and almost gothic sensibility don’t owe something to the Tony Williams’ Lifetime, with organist Larry Young and John McLaughlin. Berne, who claims that he "knew I would say that," admits that he "[hasn’t listened to those records. But that’s what I figure they’d sound like, all dirty and distorted. That’s Craig’s aesthetic."

As crazed and marginal as Taborn’s playing on The Shell Game may sound at times, Berne also points out that "Craig has assimilated every kind of groove music." He estimates that Taborn and drummer Tom Rainey "share a file of eight trillion permutations of groove." For him, despite the experimental overtones of The Shell Game, the "process" he spoke of earlier also involves an interest in "the nuts and bolts of the groove." Berne points to the album’s "Twisted/Straight Jacket," where the intro "builds to this confusion. Craig’s loop comes in, you don’t even hear it, and then, out of nowhere, the groove sets up."

The interplay between Taborn and Rainey is another example of this trio’s sanguine brand of friction. Berne describes Taborn and Rainey as having "similar pop music listening histories." But, in contrast to Taborn’s more deliberate studies, longtime collaborator Rainey "just reacts in the moment, intuitively. Tom came up in California, playing in rock bands, and then got into jazz. . . They’re two guys in the same place, coming at it from different routes." Like his admiration for Taborn’s ambiguous way with a groove, Berne is most excited by Rainey’s especially subtle rhythmic sense.

"Rhythmically, he’s quite different from a lot of guys I’ve played with. He comes from an interest in odd meters, and how to do that in an interesting way," says Berne. "He always grooves it; he doesn’t just throw down to get the audience’s attention."

In the end, though, what makes The Shell Game such a compelling record is Berne’s leadership. By his own admission, he’s not the world’s most technically apt saxophonist. But for Berne, this leads to quite a different philosophy of the trio.

"I’m just not that good at playing exciting saxophone solos. I guess I’m always trying to disguise that," Berne says. "A lot of what I’m trying to do is not solo; I’m looking for an empty space, not a slot. It should sound like a real trio, not just a saxophone with a different rhythm section."

"I like getting under things, and being a part of a really slow-moving snowball," he continues "and the pay-off or peak doesn’t have to be loud. It can be a minor second that slips in there."

With as democratic a group as this one, the leader "doesn’t always get what he wants. But sometimes, you get something better."