EXPLODING STAR ORCHESTRA - We’re All From Somewhere Else

Chicago's jazz scene is back in the spotlight. This time our guide is Rob Mazurek, cornet player with Chicago Underground (Trio or Quartet, depending on the occasion), backed by a roster of more or less well-known names, among whom Ken Vandermark (baritone sax and bass clarinet), Jeff Parker (guitar) and John Herndon (drums) stand out. "We Are All From Somewhere Else" revolves around a sort of poem about an exploded star and its countless, cosmic mutations. In the background there's even the sound (!) of electric eels, because somewhere in this strange tale you'll also find "intelligent conversations" with these little creatures... These artists are a bit crazy, but that's fine. It comes with the job.



Built around two long suites, split by the impressionistic piano elegy of "Black Sun", "We Are All From Somewhere Else" is a record in which the music constantly breathes an air of radiant freedom, and where what matters is not so much the individual improvisations as the collective, "narrative" effect of the whole, as is immediately clear on the percussive, vaguely martial "Sting Ray And The Beginning of Time: Part 1", whose course later fills up with flute flourishes, exuberant trombone mutterings and orchestral blazes touched with revelry free The spiralling interlude lights up with trumpet flights of fancy and guitar phrasing, in a constant chase of slithering Don Cherry echoes and jagged electricity. The same airy effervescence dominates "Part 2", while "Part 3 (Psycho-Tropic Electric Eel Dream)" finally reveals the mystery of the eels...



Superb soundscape free-formthat of "Psycho-Tropic Electric Eel Dream" is an example of how the tradition ofavant-jazz Chicago is still alive and well, with its whole legacy of extreme expressive freedom and an unlimited will to sculpt music into empty space as if it were a canvas onto which to let the sound of the most disparate sources pour like real colors, including, in fact, that of electric eels, whose buzzing sound was duly recorded by Mazurek himself in a Brazilian research lab. Adding to the sense of destabilization is also the (far from indirect) tribute to Robert Ashley, through mysterious words that echo like a mantra in the finale. Refinement and nostalgic verve find a fascinating point of convergence in "Part 4", betraying as well a cross-cutting lyricism that, with exquisite grace, blends Miles Davis ed Eric Dolphy.



When "Cosmic Tomes For Sleep Walking Lovers: Part 1" kicks in, it feels like being hurled into the middle of the tour de force Coltrane-ian of "Ascension". The breadth is grandiose, the sound multiform, the imaginary landscapes multifaceted. A chaos of the kind that only seems impenetrable on the surface, but which instead feeds greedily on perilous indiscipline, on an anarchic drive so fierce it borders on an inexplicable transcendent force. Thus, the central thematic core is deconstructed and reassembled through three different vanishing points, before the last one drags itself into "Part 2" at the pace of a contagious minimalist andante, with the blessing of Steve Reich.



True to its cosmic breath, Mazurek & co. then place, with "Part 3", a kind of meditation on the meaning of unity within the whole universe. The music dances with placid ardor, as the instruments pass the baton to one another, never overdoing it, yet always remaining faithful to the almost "liturgical" value of the whole. The very brief interlude of "Part 4 (Fifteen Ways Towards A Finite Universe)" opens the scene onto the last panel of the fresco ("Part 5"). Between enchantment and mystery, here the sound truly moves panoramically through space and time, almost carrying us on a trip overboard, astonished before the inexplicable yet so real wonders of the universe. The vibraphone traces the furrow, the horns mark out a space of action that is necessarily "poetic", the rhythm section ensures that it all doesn't evaporate like an exploded star. And we're in seventh heaven!

21/01/2007