Album Review: Steve Swell's '5000 Poems'

Steve Swell's Slammin' the Infinite, a band with seven years of experience in New York's free jazz scene, lives up to its name in its fourth album release, 5000 Poems (Not Two, 2010). Fans of free jazz will delight in the band's energy, which seems inexhaustible, as well as the album's variety, with pieces ranging from heavy and Ornette Coleman-esque to lighthearted.

Swell's opening solo on “Not Their Kind” gives the listener an apt introduction to his improvisational style. His trombone playing is intensely textural. Light years away from the scalar approaches of mainstream jazzers, and even quite removed from other well-known free players like Albert Mangelsdorff, whose use of multiphonics became so popular among trombonists.

Swell spends the vast majority of his solos working "across the grain" of the trombone slide, using his athletic embouchure to flutter quickly, even spasmodically, between partials. This effervescent virtuosity can sound exhausting, but Swell rarely backs down. His tone has the characteristic buzz of a small-bore trombone, which compliments Sabir Mateen's saxophone playing. Like Swell, Mateen is adept at more vertically-oriented improvisation, able to deftly spring from the altissimo register to low, edgy growls.

Slammin' the Infinite boasts a seasoned rhythm section. John Blum's piano playing is rhythmically insistent, often playing games of call-and-response with the soloist. Bassist Matthew Heyner shows creativity within prescribed limits. On “Where Are The Heartfelt?” he creates a rhythmically mesmerizing accompaniment from just three notes. Heyner's skills as a soloist are best displayed when the band has quieted down. The end of “Sketch #1” finds him working busily with both hands, bowing jagged ascents to high harmonics. Klaus Kugel takes advantage of his cohorts' rhythmic maturity, freeing himself from time-keeping duties even on groove-oriented tunes like “Where Are The Heartfelt?”

Though 5000 Poems is dotted with such tunes as “Not Their Kind” and “The Darkness Afoot” that bring such free jazz pioneers as Ornette Coleman to mind, each nod to tradition corresponds to a bold departure from it. Thus “Sketch #1”, in its first theme of perpetual eighth-notes, simultaneously affirms and offers a lighthearted commentary on swing before diving into a more abstract, expressionistic duet between piano and flute. “Sketch #2” works similarly, and shows Swell's concept of the album as a whole.

5000 Poems shows a crafted progression, from Swell's opening solo to the horns' last exhausted sigh on the closing track. For those listeners that can revel in a high degree of intensity, this album bears listening to all the way through.

Release Date:

February 15th, 2010 on NotTwo Records

Personnel:

• Steve Swell – trombone, compositions
• Sabir Mateen – alto sax, tenor sax, clarinet, alto clarinet, flute
• John Blum – piano
• Matthew Heyner – bass
• Klaus Kugel – drums

Track List:

1. Not Their Kind
2. Sketch #1
3. Where Are The Heartfelt?
4. My Myth Of Perfection
5. The Only Way. . .Out
6. Sketch #2
7. The Darkness Afoot