Bill Frisell / Andrew Cyrille / Kit Downes: Breaking the Shell

When in as unique a setting as St. Luke in the Fields, the English village-like church on Hudson Street in Greenwich Village, it only figures that guitarist Bill Frisell, pipe organist Kit Downes and drummer Andrew Cyrille would rise to the distinct occasion and create something equally anomalous.

A grand host of noir sci-fi themes and motifs run through Breaking the Shell. And it is awesome to hear. The trio is in an active, real-time thought experiment: what music will emerge, and what styles will merge with a pipe organ in the band? In the hands of some, Breaking the Shell might have been a stiff, leaden affair. Fortunately, the three set their imagination meter to Warp Ten, inviting listeners to do the same.

"May 4th" begins the mad sonics. Though it might be considered blasphemous to say Frisell sounds like he is often just tuning, it is precisely the sound to set against Downes' droning, effusive organ. "May 4th" breathes, collages. Expands, immerses. Each instrument searches for its sound, for its voice in the debate. The press release notes that "Untitled 23"—an amorphous Downes' composition—has an angular, almost Monk-like melody. Well, that might be true. But the opposite could also be true, and it is the shapelessness of the track that is the point of the enterprise. Because put simply, Breaking the Shell breaches gravity.

"Kasei Valles" lies at the heart of that breach. It floats from mystery to moonlight. Enriched by Cyrille's innate knowledge that drums need not keep the beat. The eighty-four-year-old master scatters his thoughts as Downes deftly juggles his instrument's 27 stops and 1,670 pipes; sounding at times like a whisper building to a roar about to devour everything in the audible range. Moody with an Apocalypse Now soundtrack feel, Frisell commandeers the Norwegian folk song,"Sjung Herte Sjung" ("Sing Heart Sing") and pulls off a convincing Doors-like jam. As a study in concurrent propulsion, "Southern Body" finds the trio tumbling forward. Wrapped in warm clouds, Cyrille's soft ballad "Proximity" and "Este a Székelyeknél (In the Evening at the Székelys") closes out Breaking the Shell on a deservedly restive, dramatic note.

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