Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Tom Hamilton / Bruce Eisenbeil: Shadow Machine

199

Tom Hamilton / Bruce Eisenbeil: Shadow Machine

Tom Hamilton / Bruce Eisenbeil: Shadow Machine
Hazily speaking, electronicist Tom Hamilton emerges from a modern classical realm, while guitarist Bruce Eisenbeil inhabits the jazz improvising zone. On this album, such stylistic concerns are very nearly unimportant, as the pair are engaging in their own language of free improvisation. There's more space in this music, although Hamilton and Eisenbeil never cut back on their particular type of fluid hyperactivity. The synth-man uses a Nord modular device, which operates in vintage analogue mimicry mode. He scoops himself out from the heart of electronic interference, his palette taken from the sounds of internal malfunction. Eisenbeil spiders around, sounding comparatively traditional as he shies away from the overuse of effects and devices, almost adopting a kind of contained banjo resonance.

"Dot Dot Dot" has an almost melodic quality, with both players aping marimba plinks, while the event-packed "Walleye Spawn" provides the most varied textures, with its tightly-stuttered ping-pong compressions. Hamilton and Eisenbeil have found a level of speed-dialogue, which moves from the prolonged hovering ascendance of "Little Left On The Left" to the stripped pricking frequencies of "Silver Through A Straw."

The duo effectively launched its album at last month's Rhythm In The Kitchen, a three-day festival held at the Church For All Nations in New York City's Hell's Kitchen. They were the second act of four and for a Saturday night, attendance was thin, seeming particularly so in the high-vaulted and brightly-lit space. Hamilton and Eisenbeil's sonic field isn't plump with bass sounds and came across as being particularly trebly when issuing from the small PA setup.



Even so, by making their set compacted and bright, the pair still delivered a sharply focused sequence of pieces, kept to short tune-length, as on the album. When viewed in the flesh, it was easier to attach sounds to guitar and keyboard, with Eisenbeil less abstract and more rooted in obvious string activities. Hamilton would flash fingers across his knobs and keys, aiming for sheer disembodied electro-chatter, often percussively insectoid in nature. A location lying somewhere in between a church and a bar would have been best, but this naturally intimate music still fared well due to the sheer resourcefulness of the players.

Track Listing

Dusting Off Dada; Dryer Mouth; Shadow Machine; Dot Dot Dot; Mars Fell On Alabama; Walleye Spawn; The Salt Eaters; Little Left On The Left; Silver Through A Straw.

Personnel

Tom Hamilton
synthesizer

Tom Hamilton: Nord modular synthesizer; Bruce Eisenbeil: guitar,

Album information

Title: Shadow Machine | Year Released: 2009 | Record Label: Pogus

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.

Near

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.