Cover of the album being discussed
At the end of last month, Pyroclastic Records released the latest album of original compositions by Trevor Dunn, leader of Trio-Convulsant. Dunn plays bass in this combo, joined by Mary Halvorson on guitar and percussionist Ches Smith. The title of the album is Séances, and the trio is joined by a quartet called Folie à Quatre. The four musicians engaged in this “folly” are Carla Kihlstedt on both violin and viola, Mariel Roberts on cello, Anna Webber on flutes of different sizes, and Oscar Noriega on clarinets of different sizes.
The advance material I received for this album describes its content as: “Bludgeoning metal, intricate contemporary chamber music, boundary-blurring jazz and mutated country blues.” While I am not strictly obliged to deal with classification of content that resides on my Music Server, I am enough of a pessimist that I like to burn a physical copy of that content to serve as the “ultimate backup.” In my “physical world” I have separate categories for “classical,” “popular,” and “jazz” (as well as a few minor categories that can be grouped under “other”); and I usually enjoy puzzling out my own classification of an album like this one.
One of the criteria that I use in classification involves notation: How detailed is it, and how restrictive is its interpretation? In listening to Séances I came away with the impression that, while Smith may have had a score for his drum work, he was treating that score as a guideline, rather than a strict specification. As a result, Séances will rub shoulders with other jazz masters and their combos!
How one listens to this album is another matter. Dunn has prepared single-paragraph text descriptions for each of the album’s seven tracks. Those descriptions are preceded by moderately lengthy context-setting involving the “Convulsionary movement,” practices by the eighteenth-century French religious pilgrims known as the Convulsionnaires of Saint-Médard. Dunn’s notes definitely provide context for the attentive listener. However, the nature of that context may have more to do with how the listener reacts than with how the music has been structured and performed.
Having listened to this album several times, I find myself reluctant to overthink the listening experience. I am far more interested in teasing out the individual lines delivered by each of the seven players. This is music that allows one to alternate between appreciating the different “textural fabrics” and focusing on how individual threads contribute to a fabric. If I consult Dunn’s booklet at all while listening, I am more interested in the provocative images than I am in explanatory text.
Nevertheless, I have to emphasize that I am simply describing my own impressions rather than trying to prescribe them for others. This is one of those offerings in which one should not feel obliged to draw upon the experiences of others. Put another way, the underlying motto is as French as the Convulsionary movement but has its own distinctive advice: chacun à son goût!
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