Here, the boundary between jazz and contemporary classical music disappears. Areas by Toronto’s Nick Fraser explores with flexibility all the interstices that exist between the world of free improvisation and the experimental atonality of contemporary music. The album, composed of seven delightfully unsettling tracks, begins with The Wreckage, a true unequivocal call announcing what is to come. Initial stridency that is reminiscent of Luigi Nono, the master of the Italian avant-garde of the second half of the 20th century. Mimic follows in a more measured manner, starting with a Webernian atmosphere, but gradually accumulates intensity, in a growing tumult that here betrays Fraser’s connections with Roscoe Mitchell and Anthony Braxton, with whom he has collaborated. The rest of the drummer’s album continues this exploration of the most demanding areas of (very) high-level improvised music with just as much sonic granularity, rhythmic fracturing, and structural disorganisation, while maintaining exceptional textural activism from the present artists (Fraser himself, then Tony Malaby on saxophones, Kris Davis on piano, and John Kameel Farah on electronic extravagances during three appearances).
Musical excellence at the peak of its possibilities, but undoubtedly for discerning and/or very curious ears.
Nick Fraser: Drums, Piano Harp*
Tony Malaby: Saxophones
Kris Davis: Piano
John Kameel Farah: Electronics and Sound Processing*
(* Track 1, 4, 7 only)
