Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Tom Collier: Impulsive Illuminations

4

Tom Collier: Impulsive Illuminations

By

View read count
Tom Collier: Impulsive Illuminations
Vibraphonist Tom Collier offers up something quite different from his previous Origin Records CDs, where he covered the jazz standards like John Coltrane's "Giant Steps; Miles Davis' "So What," and some seemingly unlikely pop hits: The Rolling Stones "What a Shame" and Brian Wilson's "God Only Knows," alongside his own always engaging compositions. With Impulsive Illuminations, the thirty year University of Washington educator (now retired) explores the world of improvisation with pianist Richard Karpen, in the trio mode, with five different artists sitting in—one for each of the disc's extended tunes.

This is pure sound, the creation of atmospheres that can eliminate the listener's normal inclination to identify the inputs of the individual instruments. The piano/vibes pairing blends into a beautiful, luminous blur, and Bill Frisell's guitar—on the fifteen minute title tune/opener—glows in from another universe. Calling the sound "otherworldly" would be an understatement. It's the creation of a soundscape that slows time to a flow through a wavering liquid atmosphere via improvisational wizardry.

Drummer Ted Poor fills the third angle of the trio on "Odious Mode." The tune has more drive, with the snap of Poor's snare drum counterpointing the sustain of the vibes, combined with increase in tempo that injects turbulence to the fluid mood.

"Out of the Cistern" pulls things into even stranger territory. Taking as inspiration a Stuart Dempster recording (Dempster sits in on trombone and didjeridu on this tune) with Pauline Oliveros "that took place in an underground cistern with a 45 second reverberation time at Fort Warden State Park in Washington." Collier has recreated this reverb "by adding a sampled algorithm [that gradually] mathematically disappears so that there is zero reverberation by the end of the piece," according to the Collier-penned liner notes. Whether the process is understood or not, it makes for a ghostly fourteen minute tone poem of sound .

Clarinetist William O. "Bill" Smith joins Collier and Karpan on "Ligneous Oscillations," an abstract and eerie reverie; and trumpeter Cuong Vu contributes to this singular set with "Discontinuous Impunity," a gorgeous seventeen minute smear of avant-garde, in-the-moment composition that closes, perfectly, this singular, masterfully-crafted, in-the-moment set of sounds.

Track Listing

Impulsive Illuminations; Odious Mode; Out Of The Cistern; Ligneous Oscillations; Discontinuous Impunity.

Personnel

Tom Collier
vibraphone
Bill Frisell
guitar, electric
Bill Smith
trombone
Cuong Vu
trumpet
Ted Poor
drums

Tom Collier: vibraphone, marimba; Richard Karpen: piano; Bill Frisell: guitar (1); Stuart Dempster: trombone, didjeridu (3); William O. "Bill" Smith: clarinet (4); Cuong Vu: trumpet (5); Ted Poor: drums (2).

Album information

Title: Impulsive Illuminations | Year Released: 2016 | Record Label: Origin Records

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

Tramonto
John Taylor
Ki
Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii
Duality Pt: 02
Dom Franks' Strayhorn
The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.