Red Edge
by Frode Gjerstad and Lasse Marhaug
Breathmint Records, Southampton, PA, n.d.
Audio CD, Catalog number: BM096, $5.00
Co-released by Carbon, Gameboy, Little
Mafia and Sunship Records
Distributor Website: http://www.breathmint.net.
Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher
Saginaw Valley State University
mosher@svsu.edu
The roots of this kind of saxophone blurt
go way back. Poet/poemicist John Sinclair,
inspired by post-Coltrane jazzmen like
Albert Ayler, used to step onstage with
the MC5 to blow. During their Fun House
period, the Stooges lured Steve Mackay
out of the carnal kitchen of his own band
to provide improvisational notes in counterpoint
to Iggy Pop's similarly animated vocal
bursts. From Norway, these sessions by
seasoned saxophonist Frode Gjerstad and
younger electronicist Lasse Marhaug can
be enjoyed in the same spirit, welcomed
by those for whom noise is an edge of
music fraught with potential, not (or
not solely) an irritant.
The disc contains four cuts recorded on
a single day, November 23, 2002. Yet they
are four different negotiations or positions
of the dialectical dance between a warm,
breathy wind instrument and the inexorable
machine. "A Dry Well" is immersive, an
all-over painting of notes like a Jackson
Pollack canvas. "The First Rule" is reminiscent
of British musician Lol Coxhill, a tunefull
riff with a free jazz layer superimposed,
punctuated with a series of audio buzzes.
"Falling Down" suggests the bleating of
a dying animal, followed by industrial
noise like a whirring metal disk. It ends
in toad-like low notes and electronic
snuffling. The title cut, "Red Edge,"
begins with sounds evocative of sonar,
then avian life. With chirps like crickets
scuttling amongst its clarinet, it raises
the troubling question if the omega point
of electronic sound might not be to replicate
or evoke the animal realm. Gjerstad and
Marhaug convince us that perhaps the red
edge in question is the pulsing
beat of blood, of life.