Bassist Simon Fell’s label Bruce’s Fingers has since the 1980s performed the invaluable service of documenting free-thinking players from outside London, few of whom are on the rosters of London-based labels like Incus and Emanem. These two discs share a common format (the sax/bass/drums power trio), a similar decibel level, and the participation of Fell himself on bass.

Improvabilly finds him working with two of his regular partners, the multi-instrumentalist Charles Wharf (playing tenor and soprano saxophones and bass clarinet) and drummer Paul Hession. The five long and brawling improvisations are named after paintings by Munch and Ernst. They proceed at a pace and volume that might be called “flat-out” if it weren’t that the musicians every so often – at the end of “The Interior of Sight,” for instance – demonstrate that they’ve been holding something in reserve by kicking things up a further notch or three. To my taste, this grouping isn’t as strong as the related Bruce’s Fingers trio with Alan Wilkinson on reeds, although perhaps such comparisons aren’t apt, given the different agendas of the reedsmen. Wilkinson’s concentrated, vicious extremism is a far cry from Wharf’s blustery, voluble playing, which can even be downright mellow when he’s on bass clarinet (on soprano he has a winningly old-fashioned vibrato). This isn’t music that gives a fig for such niceties as structure and developmental surprise: basically, each track is a continuous crescendo/barrage. What makes it work is the presence even among the most chaotic moments of a surprising amount of detail, of rhythmic and dynamic eddies. Paul Hession is in many ways the lynchpin of the session, and his admirably multidirectional work is well showcased on the sprawling 18-minute finale, “The Angel of Hearth and Home.”

Axis of Cavity is a subtler but if anything nastier piece of work than Improvabilly: an act of evisceration rather than bludgeoning. The excellent recording quality is also a plus, rendering the sonic violence with a clarity that accentuates the music’s perverse fascination (it makes me think of the ravishingly gorgeous and gruesome 19th-century medical photographs that adorn Naked City’s Grand Guignol). This is the second disc credited to Badland: their previous, selftitled disc from 1995 featured a lineup of Fell, alto saxophonist Simon Rose and drummer Mark Sanders. On Axis of Cavity, recorded in 1999, the drum stool is filled by Steve Noble. Compared to the more “classic” free drumming sound of Paul Hession, Noble is more of a trickster figure, playing with a jovial violence that may remind North American listeners of Joey Baron.

What’s most impressive on the album, perhaps, is how much musical range is packed into each track, and how different and eventful they all seem: some contain quiet passages examining a particular sonic texture at length (for instance, the first half of “The Scapula Angles”, where Rose’s saxophone flutters over the oozing drums and bass); some are sprightly, rapidfire free-jazz (“Spinous Process”); there’s even one track (“Bow, Stick and Reed”) which if it were unkinked a bit further would sound positively mainstream: Fell’s work on it is more Dave Holland than Barry Guy, and Rose is downright bluesy. A similar process of encompassing musical extremes is also audible in miniature within each track: this is most obvious on the CD’s one extended track, “Surface for Talice,” which ranges from quiet insect-music improv to an exhilirating climax on which Rose plays with acetylene-torch heat. (Not a track for those with ears sensitive to high pitches, let me note.) Of these two discs, Axis of Cavity is definitely the more challenging – and (as a result) it’s also the most rewarding.

Nate Dorward

Coda