Powerhouse Sound is another exploration in texture, dynamic, sonority and dramatic power for saxophonist and composer
Ken Vandermark. Recorded in Oslo and Chicago with two different bands playing roughly the same material -- with some significant differences as well --
Vandermark brought bassist
Nate McBride (
Vandermark 5) with him to Norway and recorded seven new tunes. The Oslo band contained another bassist in
Ingebrigt Håker Flaten (both men played electric), drummer
Paal Nilssen-Love, and
Lasse Marhaug on electronics. In Chicago, in addition to
McBride,
Jeff Parker plays guitar, and
John Herndon is the drummer. There seems to be an obvious nod to
Ornette Coleman's
In All Languages here, where he played roughly the same music with both an electric and an acoustic band. There are similarities to be sure, but the actual form and perhaps even the function of the tunes change as they are performed by these two groups. The Oslo versions are seemingly constructed with a kind of circular rhythm which everything evolves from and comes back to, but sonic noise disintegration is built into the breaks, whether those breaks are at the beginning -- as they are in the nearly 12 minute "Shocklee" (written for
Bomb Squad's
Hank Shocklee) -- in the middle, as in "King to Crown (For King Tubby)" -- or near the end, where it's done much more subtly in "Coxsone (For Coxsone Dodd)." In some tracks, such as "2-1-75 (For Miles Davis)" one can find the continuity of the beat on the bassists, one ever so slightly playing that rhythm and the other in the fray of sound created by the band. All of this said, it doesn't matter which tune is being played -- and these most certainly are tunes, not blowing exercises -- the ensemble is plugged into a particular rhythmic concept (or polyrhythmic concept, as it were) where funk, Afro-beat, reggae, dub, grooved-out electronic jazz and even rock & roll all meet -- check out "New Dirt (For the Stooges)," that closes the Oslo set, where spooky notions of improvisations and inverted bass languages converge into something truly resembling a song, albeit one within a broken syntax -- they converge at the place where they all begin: rhythm.