JamBase
by Dennis Cook
It's a bit ballsy to call an album visionary in this age of hyper-recycling
but San Francisco's Broun Fellinis are just that on their new seasonal
offering, December (Stylus Quo). This is like the John Coltrane Quartet's
softly brilliant Ballads shot with a PixelVision camera. Traditional
holiday music gets a skewed, smart workout by Kevin Carnes (aka Professor
Borris Carnes) (drums, sampler), David Boyce (aka Black Edgar Kenyatta)
(tenor/soprano saxophone, efx, synth) and Kirk Peterson (aka Angel of
Redemption or The Redeemer) (electric bass). Around since 1991, the
Broun Fellinis excel at what the Art Ensemble of Chicago calls "Great
Black Music" – a massive spectrum that incorporates hardnosed
jazz, silken soul and all the other nourishing threads black musicians
have contributed to the sonic spectrum. And all that richness comes
to bear on December.
Their arrangements of overly familiar fare like "Jingle Bells"
and "Little Drummer Boy" injects luscious vitality. Like Coltrane's
similar strategy on Ballads, this trio both embraces the recognizable
melodies while tugging them in all sorts of directions. We are reminded
of the endurance of traditional music because of their tenacity in unearthing
new side roads and hidden passages in places we thought we knew well.
"Carol Of The Bells" has the stratospheric onrush of the best
Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, tumbling headlong into a jittery, glitch beat-driven
"Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" that suggests Boards of Canada
after a bowl of meth sprinkled Wheaties. And it's not all Santa and
Jesus. Traditional Jewish ditties "Channukah" and "Dreidel"
get reworked in a way not seen outside of John Zorn's Masada. "Dreidel,"
in particular, spins on a wholly new axis, with Carnes' wide-angle drumming
and a skittering Augustus Pablo-esque reggae shuffle that transforms
into a pile-driving skip that dances with Peterson's patient, cavernous
bass and Boyce's winged soprano sax. If it all halts a little abruptly
with "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," that's just fine. The
end is often sudden and always definitive, a dark punctuation mark on
every life, every season, every year.
East
Bay Express
by Rachel Swan
Leave it to free-jazz trio
the Broun Fellinis to take a conventional idea -- a Christmas album,
in this case -- and push it in 10 million funky directions. And it just
gets funkier. Last month, the group put out its own antidote to the
traditional Johnny Mathis Christmas with December, which features original
takes on canonical tunes like "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,"
"Little Drummer Boy," and "Carol of the Bells."
Always sardonic, often dissonant, and sometimes real dubby and effected,
December runs the gamut from straight trio pieces to heavily processed
stuff. It's worth checking out. |
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