Sleeping Beast: Sleeping Beast

The self-titled debut album from Texas-based trio Sleeping Beast is a fascinating document showcasing an engaging, amorphous dialogue between three patient and well-journeyed improvisors. There is a unique, abstract chemistry between Danny Kamins, Thomas Helton, and Lisa Cameron that never ceases to engage and invent. Each player displays remarkable restraint and intense consideration when deciding what to express. The character of their collective is always evident throughout this session.

Houston-based Kamins, here on alto saxophone and contra-alto clarinet, has had an especially prolific output as of late, and Sleeping Beast marks the twelfth catalog entry for his online imprint, Musical Eschatology   . A fellow Houstonian, Helton is renowned not only for his wide vocabulary on upright bass but also as a composer, conceptualist, and bandleader. Cameron is a veteran Austin-based drummer and percussionist working across multiple scenes with an approach that combines sound art, free jazz, free improvisation, noise, ambient, psych rock and beyond. All three players have previously collaborated, but Sleeping Beast marks their first release as a designated unit. 

In line with the conversational quality, Cris Burns and Dylan Cameron's crisp, dry production presents the group with virtually no filter. What one hears is what they get. While the group has moments of fiery abandon, they mostly opt for a brooding, contemplative approach that prioritizes the ensemble sound over any single ingredient. "The Fascist and the Furious" is the free jazz-leaning piece in the sequence and, in a perhaps deliberate sense, provides a fluid introduction to the following, more abstract entries. Things soon become barren and skeletal in "The Great Nothing," which evokes a sweltering, dank environment on the verge of complete disintegration that later devolves into a sinking, thick soup of sustained noise. On album highlight "The Ceremony," Cameron opens with deep, resonant toms that cast things with a brooding color that is shortly joined by interlocking, alien long tones from Kamins' sax and Helton's bass recorder.

Helton switches back to bass "Red Snails in the Sunset" with an extended moment of agitated, sawing sul pont that runs beneath interjections from Kamins' clarinet. Cameron sneaks in building cymbal scrapes that quickly ratchet the overall sense of anxiety, and sustaining it with a ritualistic, hobbled groove. The final piece, "Spectral Chasm," feels like hitting the bottom of the pit the listener has been falling through. It has a quasi-Pagan quality, as if it were intended as some sort of incantation. The playing here features a tremendous level of tasteful restraint and a prime focus of the total gesture of the ensemble above all else. Things have finally descended to a ghostly, but fitting conclusion.   

One of the appeals of working primarily with improvised music is developing an organic ability to accommodate multiple definitions simultaneously. In other words, evoking and inventing simultaneously. The music on Sleeping Beast defeats easy containment. It is a unique psychedelic blend that maintains the identity of its many separate ingredients. The music of Kamins, Helton feels invitational, and Cameron conjures the full experience for a conversational result.