REVIEWS
Evan Parker + Barry Guy
So It Goes
Maya Recordings MCD2301
“Haha!” Barry Guy lets fly an exclamation of exuberant exultation 2:50 into the final piece on So It Goes, his newest duo disc with Evan Parker, recorded in performance in February of 2023. Brief but telling, only slightly briefer than the semi-quartal phrase Parker interjects to elicit the response, that exclamation encapsulates everything that makes the album’s three collaborations and two solos so refreshing and so completely captivating.
Those two syllables burst forth with the spontaneity and vigor that have defined the duo’s all too rare ventures on record as duo over the last four and a half decades, but of course, the duo resides at the heart of recordings nearly too numerous to catalog. For those cognizant of these two creative giants’ boundary-bending work on a seemingly endless array of projects, it should go without saying that the truth in toto is much more complex. Like the music emerging from early 1950s French serialism, each note embodies the vastness in implication of its genesis, but in the moment, Guy and Parker also embrace the various shades of timbre, dynamics, and microtone around and between them, chaining instant to instant by highlighting the freedoms each might entail.
Guy and Parker’s combined syntaxes are immediately recognizable as individual entities, as the two solo centerpieces attest. Each player digs deep into an area while simultaneously exploring everything adjacent, sometimes ranging far afield indeed only to recapitulate in the most unexpected fashion. As is so often the case, on “Grit,” Guy’s bass is magically transformed into an ensemble merging timbral pointillism with cyclic multi-pitched percussives, but the widely spaced intervals at 1:23 relate back, if obliquely, to the rapid-fire arpeggiated descents with which he opens his astonishing miniature. Density then increases, each note a bridge to the muted plucks and knocks bolstering and surrounding it as buzzed tones signal a new but familiar terrain. To suggest that Parker engages similarly controlled freedoms while also defining areas of exploration is to posit, verily but incompletely, that Mahler and Bruckner shared a musical language. “Creek Creak[’s]” aptly homophonous title perfectly sums up Parker’s pithy gem, blooming from and nearly complete return to the inner exploration of a single pitch. Yet, via his ubiquitous circular breathing, he connects phrase to phrase with a natural series of atomic crescendos, a modified “Romanticism” similar to the points and waves informing Guy’s Fizzles and Symmetries, not to mention “Grit.” Each of Parker’s phrases is a line of points, each tapping into a tonal or sonic center while shaping its substance to his purpose.
The two solos separate the third part of the titular triptych from its counterparts. It hardly seems possible that three relatively brief collaborative forays might present lifetimes in summary, but this is exactly what pours forth, and it would be folly hearing all this as anything but multiple generations’ triumphant commitment in encapsulation. I suggest headphone listening to sample each formal and structural nuance, a few of which must suffice here. The slow-burn birth and outreach of motivic tendrils opening the second part, so reminiscent of Birds And Blades’ meditatively glistening final studio piece, transitions in mere seconds to the increasingly “wordy” give and take Incision proffered in 1981. Guy’s always gorgeous glissando-heavy pizzicato bringing the final piece to life is complemented by the key-clacks and slap-back aerobatics of parker’s tenor. Those two instruments meld in miasmic mélange 5:05 into the first part, preconceptions of pitch, chord and melody made meaningless in the unity manifested only by similarly fostered symbiotic listening. The Hegelian back and forth at 8:20 harkens back to the interregistral leaps and melodically thorny Euro-free improv intricacies of the early Spontaneous Music Ensemble, where the two musicians planted the seeds fully flowering here.
The recording is as superbly detailed as the humorously inflected applause following the final piece is well-deserved, but no description will pave the way for the sound in waves, troughs, sinewy scalar spirals, and spectacularly skewed returns that typifies these two languages in dialogic development, trope, and attendant history blurring with each polyphonic passage. That exuberant laugh was, after all, preceded by a fourth-based melody from Parker that may in fact be a quotation, itself anticipated by arco fourths from Guy, but this is bean-counting again. What pervades, what leads each gesture to the next and unifies it all, is that exultant energy, the rushes of wide-eyed innocent experience inhabiting the moment of creation, each moment a convergence of differing particulars, each extending the last with fearful logic while wiping the slate clean, and so it goes!
–Marc Medwin
Evan Parker - Barry Guy: So It Goes
By John Sharpe
February 17, 2024
Two masters who have invented a (the?) lexicon for their instruments meet on So It Goes. British saxophonist Evan Parker and his compatriot bassist Barry Guy should need no introduction to anyone interested in European free improvisation. Both active since the 1970s, they remain vital forces even with as they both move into their eighth decade. Their association was formalized in 1980 with the inception of the long running trio completed by drummer Paul Lytton. But they have also appeared in duet many times, evidenced by four previous recordings, the most recent of which was Birds And Blades (Intakt, 2002).
So, 21 years later, a further bulletin arrives, captured in concert near Parker's home in Faversham in Kent, offering a welcome update on a fertile partnership. The five cuts comprise three duo pieces and a solo from each. As always, an intense communion and an astounding speed of response characterizes their interaction, even though the actual rejoinders themselves may be oblique (indeed one of their earlier albums was titled Obliquities).
So, when Guy's fluttery filigree slurs early in "So It Goes 1," drawing an instant upticked echo from Parker's tenor, it stands noticeable as the exception not the rule.
More often any confluence is in pacing or intensity. When Parker breaks out his soprano on "So It Goes 2" to spin sinewy wisps of skirling piping, Guy takes up his bow for a similarly unbroken wail, which together set the overtones fizzing around the hall. Likewise, in "So It Goes 3," in one fleeting passage, both venture if not into the bounds of lyricism, then only just over the hill from it. Otherwise, they proceed in sequences of asymmetric lurches and sleek sprints which defy easy delineation.
The unaccompanied tracks reveal their styles in high definition. Guy revels in contrasts: high vs low; bowed vs plucked; tuneful vs prickly; dense vs spacious. "Grit" initially evokes the image of someone struggling to extricate themselves from among the strings, before a respite of delicate harmonics and koto-like rippling interrupted by a succession of ferocious flurries. Parker slips in and out of circular breathed lines so naturally and smoothly that it ceases to become remarkable. On "Creek Creak" he squeezes notes out until they expand, rejoicing in their freedom, the first of a series of ceaseless rivulets which fluctuate between registers and become hitched on recurrent snags.
Even though such outcomes, either alone or in tandem, are no longer unexpected, the overall conception remains astonishing. As such the chance for immersion in their symbiotic alchemy one more time is cause to cheer.
by Rigobert Dittmann
EVAN PARKER / BARRY GUY So It Goes... (Maya Recordings, MCD 2301): Live am 4.2.23 im The Hot Tin in Faversham auf den Spuren von... Taylor Swift? Quatsch! Von Kurt Vonnegut, der in „Schlachthof 5 oder Der Kinderkreuzzug“ (1969) mit diesem fatalistischen Spruch die schreckliche So-geht-es-halt-igkeit der Welt kommentiert? Doch das „So it goes in the world“ hat schon Becketts „More Pricks Than Kicks“ besiegelt und war zu John Stevens gelangt. Die Kollegialität der beiden Veteranen, Parker mit Jg. 44, Guy mit Jg. 47, geht nämlich zurück auf die Begegnungen in Stevens' SME 1967 im Little Theatre Club und bildet, mit Guys LJCO ab 1970 als Katalysator, eine maßgebende Konstante im europäischen NowJazz. Im Trio mit Paul Lytton, das, rock'n'rollend on the road, Guy aus der Tretmühle mit The Academy of Ancient Music und The London Classical Players hebelte. Und immer wieder gern zu zweit, von „Incision“ (FMP, 1981) bis „Birds and Blades“ (Intakt, 2003). „So It Goes...“ wechselt Guy-Parker-typisch von Tenor & Bass zu Soprano & Bass und wieder Tenor & Bass, mit dazwischen 'Grit' als Demo, dass Guy am Kontrabass eine Klasse für sich ist, und 'Creek Creak' als Soprano-Solo, ohne das ein Konzert mit Parker unvollständig wäre. So stecken die zwei hier, genüsslich und erinnerungssatt, ihre Silberlöwenköpfe zusammen, mit räsonierenden, sich fusselig babbelnden Lippen und brummeligen Fingern, die ständig Witzeleien und Geistesblitze einstreuen. Mit erstaunlichst surrendem oder diskant flageolettisierendem Bogen, in murxenden Sprüngen, fieselig wetzend, harkend und pfeifend. Und wieder pizzicato, mit spitzen Fingern oder bassigem Oomph, während Parker Töne spuckt oder wie Bonbons lutscht. Wie er, scheinbar ohne Luft zu holen, mit dem Soprano sprudelt und tiriliert, ist so stupent wie ever, doch nicht weniger unfassbar ist Guys geklappertes, geschrummtes, pikant gepflücktes Solotraktat, das die Saiten knetet, tupft, zerrt und klopft, als wären Poesie und Krawall siamesische Zwillinge. Die finale Zwiesprache mit bröselig rauem oder flüssig spotzendem Tenor zu krabbeligem, singendem, flirrendem Pizzicato, pfitzendem Bogen und webendem Schwebklang unterstreicht dieses Zwi und Zwie – blutsbrüderlich.
[BA 122 rbd]
By Enzo Boddi
Recorded live, this album represents yet another confirmation of the mastery of two of the greatest exponents of European improvisation. Sharing a very long artistic acquaintance, as well as a solid friendship, Parker and Guy face the challenge live with the ease and arrogance they are accustomed to. Each of the five episodes is distinguished by its process and development. Set for tenor and double bass, So It Goes 1 and So It Goes 3 are characterized by a fragmented progression, made up of broken and sharp segments of the tenor, to which Guy contrasts clusters of notes with a vehement pizzicato. Gradually, the tangles and contrasts are resolved to give rise to flowing passages, especially where Guy takes up the bow and Parker produces articulated progressions with circular breathing. In So It Goes 2 Parker switches to soprano, constructing spiral sequences duly underlined by Guy's bow in the high register. The discourse progressively becomes unar- ticular, generating lumps and jolts. For solo soprano, Creek Creak enhances and exacerbates this mode of performance. The result is a labyrinthine structure, characterized by iterations that even evoke the trance-like practice typical of many popular cultures. In turn, in Grit Guy he performs a solo in which he shows off his very material approach, characterized by ropes torn, beaten, treated and "mistreated" even with the help of objects. The result is subtle, variegated dynamics and heterodox so- norities.
After all, as obvious as it is to underline it, it is precisely the exploration of timbre that constitutes one of the distinctive features of the figure and poetics of these two masters.
