By Nathaniel Friedman

When I first played Drew Gress’ Spin and Drift for a saxophonist friend of mine, he reacted with almost comic precision. A few minutes into "Disappearing, Act One," the album’s whimsical opener, he remarked that "whatever sound it is they’re going for, they definitely nailed it."

As elliptic as it may sound, this insight gets right to the heart of the bassist’s sophomore effort. Spin and Drift, which boasts an all-star line-up of Gress, Tim Berne, Uri Caine, and longtime Berne drummer Tom Rainey, is a masterful study in group identity—how it is that strong musical personalities can come together to forge a unified sound, without anyone having to sell himself short. In fact, Gress brought this band into the studio only after a long process of trial and error.

"This project came about as a result of my having played extensively with each of these great musicians, and wondering what would happen if they were thrown together to play new compositions of mine," says Gress. "There are two or three older compositions included on the album, but the majority of the pieces were composed specifically for Tim, Uri, Tom and myself."

From the outset, there was the intriguing, yet potentially problematic, pairing of Berne and Caine. Oddly enough, these two staples of the downtown scene had never played together. And Berne has in the past demonstrated something resembling an aversion to traditionally chordal piano, one of the key elements of Caine’s style.

"I was intrigued by what Tim’s choices would be, how he would negotiate harmonic sequences of the songs. He turned out to be a far more interesting selection than if I had chosen someone with, let’s say, a more ‘vernacular’ approach to harmony." True to form, Berne’s presence proves to be the group’s wild card, with his picaresque alto whooping and wailing away on even the album’s most demur tracks.

This typifies the chicken-and-egg nature of the group’s genesis. As Gress puts it, "it was simply a matter of putting everyone together in the same room and allowing time for common ground and language to be found, to emerge." The solution was to play a series of intermittent gigs around the city, which were more or less forums for extended, ice-breaking free-blows. Over the course of a year, the sound of the group "gradually came into focus," says Gress, "a protracted experience of allowing the band to form some identity."

It’s fortunate that Gress, the leader of this work-in-progress, is so boundlessly patient when it comes to pulling together his projects. Part of it is out of necessity; as one of New York’s busiest bassists, he spends a lot of time shuffling around the globe, playing other people’s music (three years have elapsed since his debut as a leader, 1998’s Jagged Sky,). However, Gress actually finds this steady stream of work conducive to writing, giving him plenty of time to deliberate and return to pieces fresh.

"I tend to work slowly in making compositional decisions. I seem to agonize over questions of form, approaching the music as a sculptor would a piece of rock. Often, I feel the composition is ‘in there,’ trying to tell me what it wants to be. I feel it’s my job as a composer to discover what that is, reveal it, and then get out of the way."

"I am definitely not a fast worker; I apparently need to be tweaking and chipping away at pieces gradually. Perhaps this attention to detail prevents me from putting out albums as frequently as I might like."

Judging from his role in this band, Gress thinks of a record as a writer’s showcase, not a bassist’s feature date. Unlike many bassist-leaders, who use their own projects as an opportunity to step out front, Spin and Drift finds Gress playing much like he does on other people’s records—a style that, for such an adventurous musician, is surprisingly conventional. Gress’ effortless sense of swing and limber fills are like tissue and ligament to the rest of the group’s more aggressive activity.

"I approach the bass in a more traditional context, in that I concentrate on sound and groove. For me, this project is more about my speaking through the writing. Right now, I’m just not hearing an Infinite Search type of recording, where the bassist plays the head, takes the first solo, and then turns it over."

But does Gress, who has a background in formal composition, ever consider writing for a larger—or more personalized—ensemble?

"I’ve been studying to that end with no real outlet in mind," he says. "But usually that ends up having an influence on what I write, even if it is for a smaller group. I find that there are different kinds of building blocks that are holding things together in any music, and that some fruit will come of looking at those."

Even this album’s deftly lyrical tunes bear the mark of Gress’ formalist philosophy, as well as the indirect influence of weighty composers like Stravinsky, Henri Dutillex, and Michael Tippett.

"Form really fascinates me: how do you create an overall whole. Or not; sometimes it’s just as interesting to have something happen just once. I’ve been studying form a lot, considering the psychological effect it has on the listener."

At first blush, Spin and Drift may sound like a familiar quartet date—albeit one with some pretty striking individualists holding down the traditional roles. But, like Gress’ playing, the seemingly simple forms and gestures speak volumes in subtlety and implication. Which is not to say that this album works in the negative, or is somehow obtuse to the casual listener. More that, with this epochal band playing Gress’ deceptively linear compositions, the result is a familiar idea—with a devilish, unaccountable twist.