Tim Berne's concert recordings consistently beat his work in the studio. Since the mid-90s he's released almost nothing but live albums-- there are no studio recordings of his Bloodcount or Paraphrase bands-- and his success with this unpredictable medium reflects a knack for running his bands through long, knotty works where they can stretch out without derailing: there are no slow parts, no wandering through the forest, no sections where the guys ring little bells or recite poetry. Of course, many great jazz albums have taken those risks, but Berne goes for reproducible results.
Some jazz musicians improvise off of chord changes, others improvise over modes; Berne sounds like he's fueled entirely by his own momentum. Melodies fly across liquid ensemble passages that break into caustic soloing-- collisions between soloists, aggressive comping, drummers who knock around like they're ripping the floorboards out from under you. Separate compositions roll into each other like merging traffic, and the musicians can shred and extrapolate without evading the incessant pulse that sent them on their way. And although not every live Berne album is so intense, The Sublime And. ranks as one of the most relentless.
The Science Friction band is an electronics-heavy four-piece that merges two of his trios: Hard Cell-- with the stupendous keyboardist and Fender Rhodes specialist Craig Taborn-- and Big Satan, with French post-Frisell guitar deconstructionist Marc Ducret. Both trios included Tom Rainey on drums; known for his more standards-focused work in Fred Hersch's trio, Rainey has been Berne's drummer on call for years, as far back as Paraphrase. Berne recorded this quartet for the Science Friction album on his own Screwgun label last year, and this double-album captures a complete concert in Winterthur, Switzerland, crossing album tracks with new material.
As expected, this performance is louder, longer, and way more chaotic than the studio album; where that first record was intriguingly loopy and colorful, this set just smokes, propelling the band through longer sections and more frantic solos. Berne rips off especially fluid leads on alto sax, and he's courageously linear against the fireworks from his sidemen. When he's not adding color and effects with his laptop-- playing blustery wind samples over a tense sax solo, or throwing echo on Berne's high notes on "Mrs. Subliminal"-- Taborn plays fierce solos on his Fender Rhodes and synths, with an especially aggressive turn on "Jalapeño Diplomacy" that's bolstered by riveting accompaniment from Rainey, an intuitive (and disruptive) drummer who's both impeccable and propulsive, especially in his own terse, focused solo on "The Shell Game".
On this set, the best among equals may be Marc Ducret. Ducret has long had the maturity to slather color from his effects without becoming amorphous, but I've rarely heard him solo with such sheer velocity. Distorting and fragmenting his lines without veering a degree off-course, Ducret seems to deconstruct and rearrange his instrument in mid-air like a cyborg in an especially violent Japanese anime.
There are a few shortcomings. Even though the compositional material works for this band, the melodies end up sounding far more alike than usual. And the album may actually be too busy: one of the only moments to reflect comes with Taborn's solo synth feature, "Smallfry", which is actually too ambient-- the hanging suspense in his sustained chords evokes images of a rock show, and you can almost picture Taborn in a silver cape in front of a smoke machine as he weaves a dramatic introduction to the next piece.
For these minor reasons, The Sublime And. feels less definitive than, say, Unwound (the more-than-comprehensive three-disc Bloodcount record), or Paraphrase's Please Advise. But this is the strongest record he's made yet with an electric band-- and it's one of the fiercest and importantly, most inventive performances he's captured. The Sublime And. is essential for anyone looking for exhilaratingly original jazz music.
