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Charlie Kohlhase Quintet: Play Free or Die
"Pigpile" opens the disc with trumpeter John Carlson working alone, whining around a plunger mute for a minute, until the ensemble – saxophones, bass and drums – looms in to build to a channeled three horn cacophony.
It's a free jazz atmosphere, though accessible to anyone who's familiar with that genre, and while "Grasping at Straws" has a bleak and lonely sound, "Doom is Yours" and "Doom is Mine" (24 minutes' worth; two parts of the "Doom Suite") radiate sonic adenaline.
Bassist John Turner stands out on the latter track, propulsive and free-blowing, working a deeply ominous groove, rounding out a tune that could serve as a soundtrack for Edgar Allen Poe's "Tell Tale Heart," the horns acting as three increasingly maniacal narrators.
The second disc opens in a mainstream mode with Sun Ra's "Super Bronze," capable of passing for a three-horn Charlie Parker Dial Records session, followed by Monk's always beautiful "Crepuscule with Nellie," played with reverence and sounding like the composer himself on Monk's Music.
Then there's "The Mad Suite," fifty-plus minutes of take-no-prisoners free jazz with driving rhythms and bellicose horns, moments of relative mainstream sound interspersed with wild saxophone wails that'll peel the enamel off your teeth. And I mean that in the best possible way.
One of the year's outstanding live sets.
Contact Boxholder Records at [email protected]
Track Listing
Pigpile, Grasping at Sttaws, Doom is Yours, Doom is Mine, It's Just the tip of the Icebox, Super Bronze, Crepuscule with Nellie, "The Mad Suite": Mad, Framework, Play Free or Die, The Brink
Personnel
Charlie Kohlhase--alto, tenor, and baritone sax; Matt Langley--tenor sax; John Carlson--trumpet, pocket trumpet, flugelhorn; John Turner--bass; Eric Rossenthal--drums
Album information
Title: Play Free or Die | Year Released: 2003 | Record Label: Boxholder Records
About Charlie Kohlhase Quintet
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