Peter Brotzmann: Lost & Found

That's best highlighted here by ..."Got A Hole In It," performed on tenor sax, not least because this one also highlights how Brötzmann has tempered his use of vibrato, as if passing time has prompted inevitable reflection. His breathiness conjures up past visions of (of all people) Ben Webster coming into the audio picture—if Webster had ever tackled the Thelonious Monk songbook, that is.

If it hasn't been said before that Brötzmann's approach to the clarinet is as unique as that of anyone on this planet then it can be said here. On the title track, his tone is singular enough to suggest another instrument altogether, whilst his lyricism, something which again is often not apparent in his group work, also comes to the fore. In its more animated moments, however, the music is almost a soundtrack for any free radicals there might still be out there. It's proof, too, of how important the clarinet's range is to his instrumental conception. Within this piece alone he assumes a trio of voices because of it, all of them having a magnetic identity in common.

Brötzmann has only added the alto sax to his inventory in recent times, but it's clear on "Internal Rotation" that, in doing so, he's taken to the horn like a man for whom individual expression transcends the instrument. There's the same light and shade to be heard here as there is elsewhere, but here the animated passages conjure up only the man's own past, as if the fire hasn't so much dimmed as merely changed the color of its flames. The blast is, however, just as invigorating as it's always been and, because of this, Brötzmann can now indeed be seen as the old-fashioned modernist referred to in the accompanying booklet notes. In times like these there are far worse things to be.

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