Yarbles

Despite the makeup of a seemingly standard European jazz trio — saxophones, bass, and drums — this trio is anything but standard. The date was made spontaneously, for better or worse, and contains no re-recording or overdubs. What these three cats are interested in, clearly, is not jazz or merely improvisation, but sound exploration. It's true they named their "tunes," but that's only to distinguish one series of experiments from another. What is most remarkable is how many sounds this trio manage to coax from their instruments, particularly Martin Pfleiderer's saxophones. They sound so foreign, alien, so devoid of "saxness," that they are, it seems, more like instruments for the expositions of microphonics where two or even three notes are played at once. On "Smoothpick," endless loops of one tone are layered over each other as Peter Niklas Wilson's double bass is bowed into mimicry; only its tonal qualities are different, being a full two octaves lower than the soprano. "Vividence" is a showcase where percussion dictates form and content. Modality becomes "honkality" and a dance around the surfaces of the drums. It's all a chase of fun and shenanigans that makes for an interesting listen or five. But these fellows can be serious in tight listening quarters to allow for the various interactions of overtones, and their subsequent reverberations, to become the first lines of the next string of ideas. What is compelling is the degree of precision in such a spontaneous setting, where each player knows his limits and goes just half a step beyond them to meet the others ("Yarbles," "Nomanclatter"). Sound for the sake of hearing what it sounds like is a viable — and entertaining — motive for making a free improvisational record.