Exhaustion / Kris Wanders: Exhaustion / Kris Wanders

The marriage of punk rock to free jazz is a natural fit. Both art forms are DIY; punk a rejection of corporate rock-n-roll of the 1970s and free jazz, the stasis of jazz, some fifty years post-birth. Today, we find Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore playing with The Thing, Borbetomagus, The Ex and Ken Vandermark, John Zorn's Painkiller, and Zu with Mats Gustafsson, to name just a few collaborations.

This single-sided LP, released in a limited edition of 150 copies or available as a download, is a meeting between the self-described Australian "harsh pub psyche" punk band Exhaustion and the saxophonist Kris Wanders. Wanders, a European pioneer in the 1960s free movement, performed with Peter Brötzmann, Willem Breuker, Fred Van Hove, and can be heard on Alexander von Schlippenbach's Orchestra Globe Unity 67 & 70 (Atavistic, 2001). He moved to Australia in the 1970s and has surfaced on record occasionally, lately on Poland's Not Two Records.

This 22-minutes of music, recorded in 2013, is a thick carpet of sound. Wanders lays out a searing tenor squall against the brutal onslaught of Exhaustion's guitar, bass, and drums. That said, the music doesn't tread into noise as much as it accesses a mostly even-tempered and persistent immersion into a constant sonic river—one that features rapids and tranquil passages. Wanders is solicitous of the music's direction and abides by Exhaustion's pattens, which scorch Duncan Blachford's guitar reverb, Ian Wadley's thudded bass, and Per Bystrom's chaotic drum. Listeners come for the loud passages, but will return for the interludes where the murmured sound is most absorbing.