Free Fall

Furnace

BY Eric HillPublished Mar 1, 2004

A trio recording by the ever-in-motion Ken Vandermark with the Norwegian piano and bass assistance of Havard Wiik and Ingebrigt Haker. The group takes their name from an album by the Jimmy Giuffre Trio (which featured Paul Bley and Steve Swallow) providing a lynchpin between jazz past and present. Vandermark employs low register clarinet like Giuffre to create a reed space where the other instruments can enter and occupy equal ground. Their style is spare, mellow and moody; the work of craftsmen unhurriedly working with delicate machinery. Each moment has a richness of anticipation and reward. Only on the title track, dedicated to Frank O’Hara by Vandermark, is the calm truly broken; the piano is briefly unchained like an unexpected car chase in the middle of a Bergman film.
(WobblyRail)

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