Saxophonist Matt Nelson is one of the more unpredictable virtuosos in New York’s underground. He played with a sense of ecstatic lyricism in a band assembled by Merrill Garbus for the album w h o k i l l. He’s delivered thoughtful supporting work in Battle Trance, a tenor-quartet group that plays compositions by Travis Laplante. And Nelson can also command center stage; his raging solos in Amirtha Kidambi’s Elder Ones invite comparisons to some of experimental jazz’s most admired reed extremists.
This kind of performance mobility doesn’t tend to come about casually—and it’s clear that Nelson enjoys taking on discrete roles in different ensembles. On his first record as part of GRID, a collaborative trio with drummer Nick Podgurski and bassist Tim Dahl, Nelson conceives of a different challenge. This time, he often plays the saxophone covertly. As he puts his tones through a raft of pedals and electronics, the majority of Nelson’s licks sound like the work of a lead guitarist in an avant-rock trio.
On the band’s eponymous debut, Nelson’s indirect use of the saxophone is the most consistently thrilling element. During the initial minutes of the first movement (titled “(+/+)”), you might spend some time re-checking the album credits just to make sure there isn’t a guest guitarist on hand. But those slow-moving, feedbacking melodies are all Nelson. The free-improv pulses from the rhythm section create a compelling, abstract background. And when Nelson allows small bulbs of typical reed-instrument noise to flower, in the fourth minute, the listener gains a greater appreciation of the saxophonist’s command over this unusual terrain.
The NNA Tapes label has used the term “doom jazz” to describe the band’s sound, though there are some precedents that predate this subgenre coinage. Starting in the ’90s, Rashied Ali—the ferocious, late-period drummer for John Coltrane—worked with bassist Bill Laswell and the guitarist-vocalist Keiji Haino in the outfit Purple Trap. And Laswell’s ’80s partnership with saxophonist Peter Brötzmann, in the group Last Exit and on the duo album Low Life, is another touchstone for this school of noise-jazz. But those past ensembles have often been at pains to show how many song forms they can undermine: swinging wildly between clattering ragers, ambient soundscapes, and even some dance textures.
The members of GRID take a more stable view of the style. Some passages on the album have slightly more propulsive drive (see: “(-/+)”). Others a shade of greater mystery (as on “(-/-)”). But over four movements spanning 38 minutes, the differences between these sections are not as stark as on many prior rock-meets-free-jazz outings. The benefit of this more even-keeled approach is its novelty. Though the textures are extreme in nature, and densely layered, GRID doesn’t seem primarily interested in bludgeoning listeners.
That decision results in an unusually dreamy realization of the underlying aesthetic: one that brings the group’s work more in line with drone composition than with that of Laswell. The risk stalking such a choice is the fact that a listener’s attention can drift a bit. But in electing not to close with a dramatic bash of a finale, the members of this gifted trio signal that they may be fine with that reaction. Like much else on this surprising set, the quick fade-out ending creates an idiosyncratic impact that lingers well beyond the album’s running time.
