Sometimes it seems like NYC-via-Detroit drummer Gerald Cleaver turns up on half of all the interesting albums in forward-thinking jazz, and it's been that way for more than a decade. Track the activities of scene pillars like Matthew Shipp and William Parker, and younger luminaries such as Craig Taborn and Jeremy Pelt, and Cleaver, now 50, will never be far behind. He's well documented as a bandleader too, with three fine full-lengths stretching back to 2001, all issued by connoisseur-friendly Barcelona label Fresh Sound New Talent.
But jazz is only one facet of Cleaver's aesthetic. In the past, he's engaged with the genre's time-tested traditions-- his second album, 2008's Detroit, was both deeply conventional and highly satisfying-- but as early as his 2001 debut, Adjust, he'd marked himself as a bandleader who values free-form textural exploration as much as an orderly progression of solos. For his new, fourth record, Life in the Sugar Candle Mines, released under the group name Black Host, he partners with a label that shares his broad vision. The Northern Spy roster includes avant-jazz heavyweights such as Charles Gayle (a longtime Cleaver associate), as well as Zs, Rhys Chatham, Hubble and other conceptually minded artists who have carved out personal niches that transcend genre. The album's engineer and mixer, Bryce Goggin, whose credits include Pavement, Antony and the Johnsons, and Phish, fits neatly into this expansive company.
The supporting cast is another tip-off that Cleaver is broadening his scope. The drummer's earlier bandleading sessions drew mostly from his peer group, but in Black Host, he's assembled an intergenerational all-star quintet, featuring three of NYC's most volatile, expressive improvisers. Saxist Darius Jones and guitarist Brandon Seabrook come equipped with heavy-duty punk-fusion credentials-- Jones plays in the harrowing collective quartet Little Women, and Seabrook leads his own raw, frenetic trio, Seabrook Power Plant-- while pianist Cooper-Moore (a.k.a. Gene Ashton, a longtime collaborator of the late saxophone force David S. Ware) has established himself over three-plus decades as an alternately tender and terrifying player.
It's telling that Cleaver's name isn't on the marquee. Life in the Sugar Candle Mines features some outstanding drumming, but the leader's core concept here is to let his formidable cast loose and see how the players combust, both with each other and with a wide array of compositional tactics, from crunchy, choppy jazz rock to hazy psychedelic ambiance. The results are sprawling and sometimes draining, but overall, Cleaver's gamble succeeds. The record exudes a raw, otherworldly beauty that you won't find anywhere else in contemporary music, jazz or otherwise. (The Tony Williams Lifetime's Emergency! and other gritty late-60s/early-70s fusion statements are a definite touchstone, but the record doesn't invest seriously in retro allusion.) Black Host's music is a well-tended hot-house: feverish and bracingly weird, yet also purposeful and shrewdly strategic.
Opener "Hover" is a brilliant collision of form and chaos. The piece starts with a nod to ecstatic 60s free jazz, the instruments roiling and mingling, but soon Cleaver segues into a driving, waltz-time backbeat; like elements of a blurry photo slowly coming into focus, the players unite in a gnarled yet triumphant theme, with Seabrook's amp-frying tone heightening the punk-gone-gospel mood. The track crossfades ingeniously between blaring and pastoral modes.
"Citizen Rose", one of several ballad-like pieces on the record, functions as an effective counterweight to the likes of "Hover", and "Ayler Children", which builds to a climax that's closer in feel to U.S. Maple's heady mid-90s avant-rock than the expressionist praise music of the piece's namesake. Jones, Seabrook, and Cooper-Moore (on synth) float through the "Citizen Rose" theme in a group trance, urged on by Cleaver's exquisitely patient brushwork. The improvisational section that follows is the opposite of traditional jazz solo practice, where each player takes a turn out front; instead it's an ambient psych soup, with Seabrook's disembodied twang and Pascal Niggenkemper's moaning arco bass bubbling up from the murk.
There's no getting around the fact that Life in the Sugar Candle Mines is a demanding record, full of lengthy, exploratory performances. (Of the eight tracks here, four crack the 10-minute mark and none are significantly shorter than six.) Most of the time, that's a good thing; the stretching feels urgent, a key component of the weird spell Cleaver and co. are casting. "Gromek" is an exception. The woolly psych-jazz meditation, which builds from a rustle to a roar over the course of nearly 13 minutes, lacks a coherent narrative thrust.
The album ends on a quietly stunning note, with the slow-blooming ballad "May Be Home". In an ingenious arrangement move, Cleaver effectively splits the quintet into two overlapping sub-groups. The track begins with a ghostly Jones/Seabrook duet, which recalls the spectral seances that saxist Joe Lovano and guitarist Bill Frisell conducted in their long-running trio with late drumming master Paul Motian. The focus then shifts to the piano-bass-drums trio. Cooper-Moore eases into a balletic, free-floating reverie, virtuosic but not the slightest bit showy, that might be the record's single most arresting passage. Cleaver rustles tastefully in the background, demonstrating again what an unconventionally effective bandleader he is.
For an open-minded listener not attuned to present-day jazz, Life in the Sugar Candle Mines is an excellent entry point. It's too idiosyncratic to typify any broader movement, but it transmits the untamed energy of the contemporary New York scene. The album never panders with obvious genre cues; Cleaver simply gathers the sounds and textures he needs from various sources and blends them without fuss. More importantly, he does right by the essential tenets of jazz bandleading: Give your bandmates a clear, compelling blueprint and embrace their spontaneous revisions. The result is an exemplary study in fantastical form, and the humanistic detonation thereof.
