Jazz review: Gutbucket Chamber Orchestra at REDCAT

Listening to the Brooklyn four-piece Gutbucket, it's hard not to think of the old line that generally applies to the weather just about everywhere outside of Southern California. If you don't like what's happening, just wait a couple minutes and it will change.

Over two aggressively category-defying sets at REDCAT Monday night, Gutbucket worked a jagged yet fertile seam between jazz and rock highlighted by on-a-dime twists in tempo, time signatures and mood -- often within the same song. With deep roots in the downtown New York City avant-jazz scene of the early '00s, Gutbucket bears hints of the klezmer-dusted fireworks of John Zorn in saxophonist-ringleader Ken Thomson's excursions along with the bent effects-pedal workouts of Sonic Youth that can be traced in guitarist Ty Citerman. But the band's unpredictable sound is harder to pigeonhole.

In a taut first set taken from the group's rambunctious 2011 album "Flock," the group's ADD-enhanced compositional verve was in full bloom. "Zero Is Short for Idiot" found Gutbucket expanding upon a seesawing melody from Thomson until the song reached a near-explosive peak; the more contemplative "Murakami" showed the group flashing a more atmospheric, unstructured side led by a droning guitar arc from Citerman. Other experiments were more difficult to follow, such as the smirkingly named "d0g Help Us," which cycled through so many head-spinning stutters and stops in rhythm that the effect eventually became exhausting.

For the second set the band was joined by a selection of CalArts students for the "chamber orchestra" portion of the evening, and the broader palette of vibraphone, keyboards and clarinets seemed to draw the group into tighter focus. Introduced as "A love song to America," the driving "More More Bigger Better Faster With Cheese" sped along an insistent groove reminiscent of late '90s post-rock, guided by a percolating rhythm hammered out by electric upright bassist Eric Rockwin, and "Doppelgänger's Requiem" featured a gorgeously slow-burning turn by Thomson before evolving into a zigzagging finish. 

Even with its young accompanists, however, the group wasn't about to be contained. A bass clarinet solo by CalArts' Michael Mull in "C'mon It's Just a Dollar" gave way to a frantic end section that vaguely resembled a punk show under a circus tent, and the set-closing "Brain Born Outside Its Head" stomped through something akin to jazz sludge metal, inspiring a giddy Thomson to leap to the center of the stage at its abrupt finish as if trying to stick his dismount. It had been an undoubtedly wild ride.

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-- Chris Barton

Photo: Gutbucket's Ken Thomson. Credit: Marty Rosamond.

Comments

[keldwalker]

It sounds so great on paper, promising so much until you actually hear it. The retrofitting of the long dead 'avant garde' into groups like this one, and Zorn's as well, is punishment for the ears. Many suscribe to it, though, not because they actually like it, but because they think it makes them hip by doing so. Free jazz today is junk music made mostly by trust-fund types who have the time and money to imitate the noisemaking artists who hit the jazz scene over fifty years ago. Think Ornette coleman, Archie Shepp and Cecil Taylor for starters. Free jazz is an easy place to land in the jazz world if you can't play jazz but enjoy the pretense of being a jazz musician. Today jazz is a retro style that, on the one hand, has been appropriated by corporations, schools and government and, on the other hand, indulged in by spoiled rich kids as a pseudo-profession based on pretense and copying the past.

[Sevil Drib]

If there is going to be a future in jazz or rock or whatever category this genre-bending band happens to fall in depending on your mood or your taste, it is with Gutbucket. They have taken Ornette and Prog Rock and created an amalgam that on first hearing is jarring and by the second set deserves one's attention, awe, and gratitude.

This is not simply free-jazz blasting screeching riffs but tightly-knit and impeccably rehearsed music with each piece falling in the 3-5 minute range. These short pieces create a great variety in the set even though within each piece the episodic construction aptly affords a myriad of different moods.

They've been around for 10 + years and I hope another 50!