Black Milk Impulses: Manifesto

We love jazz music because its purveyors wander off-script to make music. That is, they improvise. They do not wing-it or fake it. Step one, obtain a command of your instrument. Step two involves learning compositions. Step three, for a jazz musician, is to reinvent both step one and two.

Such is Manifesto by the global consortium known as Black Milk Impulses. The core of BMI is Italian drummer Gianpaolo Camplese and Australian pianist Leo Auri. They have collaborated with several players to create trio music, including the Japanese shakuhachi musician Sachio Suginumi and bassist Matteo Anelli. It is the current trio with German trombonist Gerhard Gschlößl, in which their vision of reinvention is realized.

The music is presented as the accidental rumblings of a musical virus. The tracks tumble out of the speakers like an intoxicated businessman, but a close listen reveals that each piece is anything but inebriated. "Music Box Range" opens with distorted piano, halting beats, and trombone yawls before veering into a waltz. It is music that might be found on a Tom Waits or Vinicio Capossela session. The trio incorporates electronics throughout. "Waves Of Bass" hums with a sizzled circuit, some super-slow turntable wax and eventually a pounded groove. Their creativity appears to have no end point. The simple toy piano notes open "Carillon," and a traditional acoustic trio improvisation builds upon a three-way conversation. When BMI play a written piece their assemblage has enough off kilter tilt to sharpen the ear. The joy of Mainfesto is the sounds between the notes, sampled crowds, static and these interlude tracks of less than two minutes that contain the seeds of extended improvisations.