 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
Billy Martin, Calvin Weston, DJ Logic
Martin info
MMW Web site
articles/contests
Track List:
1. Far Away
2. Landing
3. Rice Glue
4. Hungry Ghosts
5. Ylang Ylang
6. Flashing Sword
7. Xyloids
8. Heart Blood
9. Co-op City
10. Starlight
11. Hustling Raindrops
12. Starry Night
|
|
|
|
Billy Martin/Grant Calvin Weston/DJ Logic - For No One In Particular
(Amulet Records)
By Jim Allen
The idea of an essentially all-drums album can send even the most adventurous aesthetes scrambling for their Schoenberg records in terror. Unless a mad genius/old master like free jazz titan Milford Graves is involved, or there's some kind of world music context, you could be in for a dodgy 40 minutes of clattering and banging. Nor are hopes raised when denizens of the notoriously texture-over-content jam band world are involved. Yet, against all odds, Medeski, Martin & Wood drummer Billy Martin, MMW cohort DJ Logic, and drummer Grant Calvin Weston come together to make For No One In Particular a consistently interesting experience (order it here).
Weston is a drummer whose roots lie in the rock/funk/jazz hybrid initially known as harmolodic music, as pioneered by Ornette Coleman and James Blood Ulmer (both of whom Weston has accompanied). He brings both gravitas and a crisp adventurousness to the proceedings. In the course of an hour-long live set, Weston, Martin, and Logic collapse musical boundaries at will, even as they seek to redefine both the line between turntablist soundscape collage and avant-jazz improvisation, and the role of percussion therein. Most of the melodic elements come from Logic's turntable work (though even this is undertaken in a highly rhythmic fashion), but Weston occasionally chimes in on trumpet. The trumpet blasts too are used more for color than the statement of melodic themes, and often the most tonal aspects of the music come from the percussion instruments themselves. Weston and Martin handle a variety of percussive tools with a painterly sense of color, adding as much texture and timbre as rhythm.
At the same time, no matter how atmospheric or abstract things get, the groove is seldom abandoned. The three men overlap patterns to create a beat-happy amalgam of hip hop and funk grooves often expanded by flurries of exultant, free-jazz abandon. As Martin and Weston evoke the image of Sunny Murray and Bernard Purdie crossing paths in some sonic netherworld, Logic frequently turns out to be the ace in the hole, interjecting spacey effects, electronic freakouts, and doses of aburdist humor (depending on how seriously you take an earnest reading of Rudyard Kipling's poem "If" in this context). Possibly the most impressive aspect of For No One In Particular is that it was recorded live. It would be easy to imagine this complex blend of modes and moods being labored over during long hours in the studio. It's a tribute to the imagination and ingenuity of all three musicians that this entire recording came together exactly as you hear it. Without the benefit of a visual presence, the lines between the three players' sound sources are blurred all the more, and it's often difficult to figure out exactly what is emanating from whom. What it all adds up to then, is a leave-your-egos-at-the door collective musical experience where ideas are developed in free-fall and cultivated in motion.
top of page
|
|
|
