At first glance, Mike Patton's noise-mongering Ipecac label may seem like an odd home for Flat Earth Society; then again, this avant-garde Belgian big band would seem like a misfit in any company.
Led by veteran composer and clarinetist Peter Vermeersch, Flat Earth Society are well-versed in a broad array of big band jazz vocabularies, and their music is an unruly confluence of Carl Stalling's "Merrie Melodies", Henry Mancini's cosmopolitan swank, and Sun Ra's cosmic slop-- all performed with the whiplash attention span of John Zorn's Naked City. The group's previous four albums have only been available in the U.S. at import prices; so on Isms, Patton has thoughtfully compiled 19 introductory tracks-- including a couple previously unreleased ones-- to help bring you up to speed with FES's brand of lunacy.
Due to the band's rambunctious nature each FES album displays multiple personalities, but Isms compounds this schizophrenia by drawing material from such distinctive records as 2002's Minoes, the soundtrack to a children's movie, and 2003's The Armstrong Mutations, on which the group re-interprets the works of Louis Armstrong. As a result this collection undergoes such violent mood shifts from track to track that you'll either be enthralled by FES's seemingly bottomless creativity or else you'll feel like you just spent an afternoon on the Tilt-A-Whirl after a heavy lunch of ketchup and mustard.
Like many European jazz acts, Vermeersch and FES draw as much inspiration from such 20th century composers as Stravinsky or Bartok (not to mention art-rockers like Zappa or Beefheart) as they do from the blues or other more traditional American sources. These artier influences are especially evident on some of the shorter orchestrated pieces from the Minoes soundtrack like the Morricone-esque "Minoes Op Boodschap" or the mischievously atmospheric strings of "Ellement En De Katten". But they also surface on longer songs like "Zonk" or "Trap", which emphasize complex, turbulent arrangements and strenuous group interplay over solos or individual virtuosity.
The group's size and membership fluctuate (There may be as many as 20 players on some tracks) but regulars like bassist Kristof Roseeuw, trumpeter Bart Maris, and tuba player Leonaar De Graeve consistently deliver memorable performances. Best of all might be the two tracks here from The Armstrong Mutations, the percussive-heavy "(Little) King Ink" and the woozy Preservation Hall stomp of "Funeral and Binche", both of which strike the ideal balance between reverence and radicalism while Vermeersch plays his horn as sweetly as Sidney Bechet. Hopefully fleeting interludes of near-perfection like these are enough to sustain you while you chase Flat Earth Society around hairpin turns on their\xCAunending quest to capture the next hot moment.
