Tim Berne’s Snakeoil  – The Fantastic Mrs. 10 (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Tim Berne’s Snakeoil  – The Fantastic Mrs. 10 (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:07:12 minutes | 717 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Intakt Records

Few have summed up Tim Berne’s music better than longtime collaborator, producer, and engineer David Torn. In the liner booklet to The Fantastic Mrs. 10, he writes, “Tim’s music has always had balls, always this courageous energy; and it’s not so much being badass, it has the nerve of progress!” That is particularly apt for this recording. It’s Berne’s and Snakeoil’s debut outing for Intakt Records after three dates with ECM. Guitarist Ryan Ferreira, present on the band’s last two outings, has been replaced by longtime Berne associate (and criminally under-celebrated) Danish-born guitarist Marc Ducret. His tenure with the bandleader dates to 1991’s Pace Yourself with Tim Berne’s Caos Totale; he was also a member of Berne’s Big Satan and Bloodcount groups. The majority of these eight tracks are very much of a piece. They combine the saxophonist’s love of closely notated charts, making abundant use of angular harmonies, elastic rhythms, dissonance, and counterpoint, and they both complement and highlight the group’s well-established collective improvisational language. A student and disciple of Julius Hemphill, Berne’s musical logic and philosophy flow with a formally constructed direction (not destination) through elaborate compositional strategies. It’s as if the sharp angles this music pursues in labyrinthian fashion resolve naturally on a sonic map, with identifying (land)marks added during the moment of execution. The title-track opener finds Berne offering a nearly Monk-esque theme to clarinetist Oscar Noriega and pianist Matt Mitchell. Drummer Ches Smith lays a break-ridden, funky shuffle over the top. As the frontline players solo, Ducret plays directly at and in response to Smith (there is no bassist in this band), coloring the tune’s spine with angular riffs, vamps, and fills. “Surface Noise” is introduced quietly by Mitchell’s piano and glockenspiel. His lines course stream-like into rivulets of sound replete with waves of undulating motion. Its flow eventually quiets as Noriega’s clarinet bleats whale-like from the margin, and Ducret’s shards of noise trace color and texture. The remaining players bridge melody, dynamics, and improvisation in conclusion. The lone cover here is a short reading of Hemphill’s ballad “Dear Friend” rendered harmonically faithful. It’s adorned by brittle guitar glitches and percussion feints. “The Amazing Mr. 7,” expresses complex rhythmic and lyrical phraseological figurations through the ensemble’s group interplay. It’s a strategic unfolding, in staggered melodic inflections, that also sounds indebted to Hemphill’s example. Producer and engineer David Torn does a stellar job of illuminating the complexities in Berne’s and Snakeoil’s balanced tightrope walk between formal composition and free playing. The sound on The Fantastic Mrs. 10 is not as pristine as on their ECM recordings, but it’s preferable. There are no implied senses of added space or icy coolness. This set crackles with rooted physicality. The sometimes-explosive interaction takes place in a close environment (like focused conversation). Snakeoil’s music remains tough, permeable, idiosyncratic as hell, and alive with the possibility of the next moment. – Thom Jurek

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Tim Berne’s Snakeoil – You’ve Been Watching Me (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Tim Berne’s Snakeoil – You’ve Been Watching Me (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:07:36 minutes | 677 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM

Tim Berne’s third ECM album, You’ve Been Watching Me, sees the saxophonist-composer again leading his dynamic New York band Snakeoil, but now a quintet with the arrival of guitarist Ryan Ferreira, whose sound adds textural allure. The group’s 2013 release, Shadow Man, garnered Berne some of the highest praise of his career as a composer and bandleader. DownBeat said: “This music rocks and thinks, explores, deconstructs, and swings, in its own identifiably angular, Berne-ian way.” If Berne has hit a new peak with his writing on You’ve Been Watching Me, his band has reached a heightened state of collective interaction. Snakeoil can still be bracingly kinetic. But there is new space in these compositions and more lyrical focus to the improvisations, leading to a dramatic, even cinematic experience in such tracks as ‘Embraceable Me’. Berne’s music has never been richer or more arresting.

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Tim Berne’s Snakeoil – The Deceptive 4 (Live) (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Tim Berne’s Snakeoil – The Deceptive 4 (Live) (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 02:07:09 minutes | 1,57 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Intakt Records

Tim Berne’s Snakeoil, this group that has grown into a conspired unit over many years, presents with The Deceptive 4 an extraordinary live double album. “This double-disc live document, The Deceptive 4, traces the evolution of both Berne’s writing for Snakeoil and the way the band interprets his compositions onstage ­– from the group’s nascent beginnings to not long before the recording of its most recent studio release, and first for Intakt, The Fantastic Mrs. 10 (Intakt 340).

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Tim Berne’s Snakeoil – Shadow Man (2013) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Tim Berne’s Snakeoil – Shadow Man (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:17:04 minutes | 1,50 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM

The second, eponymous album from saxophonist-composer Tim Berne’s acoustic quartet Snakeoil. Over four years together, Berne and his band of New York standouts – pianist Matt Mitchell, clarinetist Oscar Noriega and drummer/percussionist Ches Smith – have developed a rapport that sounds like communal telepathy. The studio outcome is a marvel of kinetic action, the six pieces of Shadow Man making for music as visceral as it is cerebral; there is roller coaster dynamism and aching lyricism, roiling counterpoint and intriguing harmony, glinting detail and ensemble impact. The album is a dizzying experience for the senses, breathtaking in its sheer imaginative verve.

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Tim Berne’s Snakeoil – Incidentals (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Tim Berne’s Snakeoil – Incidentals (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:04:08 minutes | 659 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Master, Official Digital Download  | Source: Qobuz | Booklet, Front cover | © ECM

Much like other musicians from the post-free scene, such as Julius Hemphill, Tim Berne is already looking to break the lines and build upon the uncomfortable. For the last thirty years, the saxophonist from New York has been one of these active troublemakers, of these jazzmen who are willing to try everything, and disrupt anything. Leader of the band Snakeoil, Berne released a fascinating fourth album for the ECM label: inIncidentals, which he recorded with Oscar Noriega on the bass clarinet, Ryan Ferreira on the electric guitar, Matt Mitchell on piano and Chas Smith on drums, he continues his beautiful destabilising campaign, while always keeping one hand on the sacred scriptures of tradition (to better shake them up?). Less and less attracted to chamber music, the Snakeoil adventure becomes all the more fascinating. And the way carefully written music blends with highly sophisticated improvisations on Incidentals is truly reaching new heights. Cerebral and demanding, here is a beautiful contemporary jazz album.

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