Kris Davis: Diatom Ribbons Live At The Village Vanguard

Rogue pianist and noted polymath Kris Davis exercises the mercurial fluidity of her future-forward-thinking quartet, Diatom Ribbons—drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, turntablist and electronic musician Val Jeanty, and bassist Trevor Dunn—ushers guitarist Julian Lage into the maelstrom and voila! Another memorable Live at the Village Vanguard emerges boldly and triumphantly.

As befits Davis and company, the collective energy running rampant on this two-disc set is hard to pin down, but it is as palpable and discernible as a cut power-cable whipping wildly in one of those more and more common hundred year storms. Perhaps to summon the fearless spirits of Ornette Coleman or Cecil Taylor via drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson's slippery "Alice In the Congo" (Jackson featured with both back in the day), each player sets a course with the inherent promise being that each will get to the same point at some time. It is a thrilling slope, loping here, charging there, free falling throughout as Carrington, Davis, and an especially an agitated Lage, bust the margins.

Like the micro-algae referenced by the band's name, "Nine Hats" ventures into the void, taking bits of Eric Dolphy ("Hat and Beard}} and musical experimentalist Colon Nancarrow's "Study No. 9 for Player Piano" as premise for further expansion. With the electronic arpeggiator swirling amid Carrington's phantom-like skittering and Lage's contemplations, the piece slips effortlessly into an open ended investigation of the tonal poetry of fellow vanguardist Geri Allen's elusive "The Dancer." First heard on Miles Smiles (Columbia, 1967), Wayne Shorter's percolating "Dolores" gets its first radically restructured take (an even more kinetic second take closes out the set.) Keeping all their feet to the metaphorical peddle, "Bird Suite Part 1: Kingfisher" soars from a rock 'n' roll center out onto Seventh Avenue and beyond.

Disc Two sets out on a more standard (if standard applies to Davis willful calculations) with the pianist's atmospherically iambic "Endless Columns" and carries over into the extended "Bird Suite Part 2: Bird Call Blues," wherein Carrington and Dunn lock into the key of swing, Davis dances solo then engages Lage to pirouette and propel, cut and call at will. Jeanty's exquisite bird song, electronic cootchie coos and shadow play add to the flowing mood, highlighting Davis' key theory that everything fits into the mix, including spoken word passages by Paul Bley, Karlheinz Stockhausen / Ives Ensemble, and Sun Ra. "Bird Suite Part 3: Parasitic Hunter" and the meandering lullaby "Brainfeel" further Davis' bigger vision that nothing falls outside Diatom Ribbons infinite purview.

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