Once in a while, I can convince myself that it's impossible to say anything truly new in music. There has been so much music made and documented in the last 50 years, my thinking goes, that the best we can hope for is an artful re-combination of elements of the past (which seems like more than enough, most of the time). But then I'll come across a new record that sounds like nothing else I've heard: I can't quite place it, but its appeal feels so organic and easy to understand, I don't really feel a need to place it, either. Such is the case with the second solo album from Michigan-born, Montreal-based saxophonist Colin Stetson, New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges.
A few things about this record make it highly unusual. First, Stetson generally records his pieces solo, live, and in a single take. Some of these tracks have so much sound, so many cross-crossing and overlapping elements, it simply doesn't seem possible that one musician is making them in real time. "Judges" has clattering percussion, a menacing bassline, and a growling lead element that sounds like an anguished voice processed in a strange way. Well, the percussion turns out to be a close-mic'd recording of the instruments' keys being manipulated, the low-end comes from the fact that Stetson plays the enormous bass saxophone and has a good sense of how to underpin a tune with a deep pulse, and the lead voice is indeed his voice-- Stetson vocalizing through the horn as he blows. That all of these things come together at once in a piece that is compelling and highly musical is nothing short of miraculous. The key to Stetson's approach is that he uses an array of microphones placed in strategic places-- on the horn, on his neck, on the other side of the room-- and then mixes everything down into a churning cauldron of sound (engineer Efrim Menuck from Godspeed/A Silver Mt Zion and producer Shahzad Ismaily had their work cut out for them, and they succeed brilliantly; Ben Frost is equally great on the mix). Stetson has also mastered the technique of circular breathing-- playing continuously with his mouth while breathing through his nose-- so that the sound can unspool unencumbered by his body's need for respiration.
The record does bring certain reference points to mind. When Stetson really gets the circular breathing going and unleashes a torrent of notes the climb up and down the scale, fans of free improv might think of solo material by players like Peter Brotzmann and Evan Parker, whose mind-boggling technique is put at the service of in-the-moment expression. But Warfare Vol. 2 doesn't sound much like improv or even jazz, despite our associations of the genre term with the solo horn. These pieces sound composed and carefully ordered, often closer to the precision of classical minimalism than the expressionism of fire jazz. And compared to someone like saxophonist/composer/bandleader Anthony Braxton, with whom Stetson has worked (if you are a virtuoso on bass sax, you're going to wind up working with Braxton, who greatly expanded the context for unusual reeds in jazz), Warfare feels less cerebral, almost like a "pop" version of some of those heady compositions.
So there's no prior experience needed here. You can dive in and immerse yourself in the swirl of musical color that is "From No Part of Me Could I Summon a Voice", in which Stetson's blast of notes, many per second, are recorded as though from across a vast stone space, each one vanishing into the air in a cloud of natural reverberation. Or marvel at the way Stetson makes a track like "Red Horse (Judges II)" sound almost as if it had a breakbeat, the slap of the keys on the instrument so pronounced in the mix you focus on the rhythm first and the texture of the air coming through the horn later.
Reinforcing the music's connection to both minimalism and pop, several tracks here feature the vocals of Laurie Anderson, whose approach is a natural fit with this material. "A Dream of Water" features her clear and hypnotic voice articulating memorable imagery ("There were those who lived in the crawlspace/ There were people lighting candles") over a grinding and relentless arpeggiated figure from Stetson. "All the Colors Bleached to White (ILAIJ II)" begins with Anderson's vocal and a swelling chorus of voices and then shifts gears to a hard, noir-ish stomp whose deep tones can easily shake an entire room. Shara Worden from My Brightest Diamond joins the proceedings on a powerful and affecting cover of Blind Willie Johnson's "Lord I Just Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes", a mutant, arted-up blues that reminds me of the overlooked album of Ekkehard Ehlers, A Life Without Fear, the way it abstracts a folk idiom and boils it down to a central emotional idea.
Like the rest of the record (and Vol. 1 is also excellent, if not quite as varied or powerful), "Lord I Just Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes" feels like music I've been subconsciously craving without even knowing it exists. And though New Warfare Vol. 2 is easy to enjoy on a purely musical level, as sound, without bothering about the underlying ideas or any notions of how it's made, it's also a gratifying reminder that horizons of musical expression are so much more vast than prevailing trends would indicate.
