North America
by Curlew.
Cuneiform Records,
Silver Springs, MD, 2002 .
audio cd, with booklet,
rune167
Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen
Jan Delvinlaan 115, 9000 Gent
stefaan.vanryssen@pandora.be
Curlew is a New York 'downtown' formation around George Cartwright and
Tom Cora, and including Mark Howell, Fred Frith, Rick Brown and J. Pippin
Barnett. North America was Curlew's second album, originally released
only in Germany in 1986. This cd has additional material from a live
performance at Mort's Place, N.Y, when the group was composed of George
Cartwright and Tom Cora, Otto Williams, Micky Skopelitis and Anton Fier.
The cd has 17 tracks, most of them composed by Cartwright and Cora.
Six of them are available in two versions, one recorded in the studio
and the other live. Recordings are by Martin Bisi, who also assisted
Fred Frith in mixing.
Perhaps this is an important historical document. It illustrates what
happened in the early eighties of last century, when the borders between
free jazz, rock and experimental were starting to break down. Basically
it is a collection of very self-similar exercises - one of the track
is appropriately called 'The Ole Miss Exercise Song' - in overlaying
a beat (drums, sometimes two, bass and occasionally cello) with a simply
repeated tune in one group of melodic instruments and a free improvisational
layer in another group. The use of accordion, cello and violin results
in a distinct musical timbre or 'sound', which is the hallmark of the
group and probably its raison d'etre as well.
The booklet has a transcript of a conversation between George Cartwright
and Michael DeCapite and tells us nothing about the music. It only serves
to illustrate the lighthearted cynicism of the interviewee who knows
that certain days are over and unrecoverable, and allows the interviewer
to show off.