Frush (Luc Houtkamp, Sebi Tramontana, Steve Beresford, Martin Blume)

By Martin Schray

Frush is a project of four unsung heroes of the second generation of
European free jazz – Luc Houtkamp, Sebi Tramontana, Steve Beresford and
Martin Blume. Nevertheless, this categorization in no way means that they
deserve to be “unsung“ – on the contrary! Houtkamp is a Dutch
saxophonist (tenor, soprano) and clarinettist who has been playing with
Sven-Åke Johansson from 1973 – 75 and later with the great improvisers
from the Benelux countries such as Ernst Reijseger, Han Bennink, Misha
Mengelberg and Fred Van Howe. Tramontana, an Italian trombonist, was
initially best known on the Italian scene, later working with Paul
Rutherford and Barry Guy, among others, and becoming a member of the
Italian Instabile Orchestra. In the new millennium, he has been a regular
at festivals such as Victoriaville (with Mario Schiano, Evan Parker, Paul
Lovens and Barry Guy), he has connections to the Chicago scene around Ken
Vandermark, he was a member of Mats Gustafsson’s Nu Ensemble and has
played a lot with Joëlle Léandre and Paul Lovens anyway. The British
pianist and multi-instrumentalist Steve Beresford is the age president of
the quartet and probably the best known of the musicians. He was already
part of Derek Bailey’s Company projects in the 1970s. Actually, he has
played with everyone who is famous in the UK in the field of avant-garde
music. Finally, the band is completed by the German drummer Martin Blume.
He too can boast a significant list of collaborations: Among others with
Peter Brötzmann, Lol Coxhill, Peter Kowald, Werner Lüdi, or Jay Oliver.
Together with Ken Vandermark, Matthias Muche and Thomas Lehn, he forms the
free jazz quartet

Soundbridges

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From this somewhat lengthy introduction, you can already deduce that you
can expect first-class free jazz of the European kind on Frush.
The seven pieces can be divided into four longer improvisations and three
shorter miniatures. What strikes you from the very beginning ist he
excellent timing of the musicians. Everyone jumps into the improvisation
when it suits him, but then leaves it again immediately. So somehow
everyone is always involved, but then again not – there is a lot of air
during the playing, but still an enormous dynamic. Very dense, energetic
passages alternate with quiet moments in a matter of seconds. The dense
passages sound as if a toddler is rummaging through his overflowing toy box
full of exuberance (which is meant in an absolutely positive way here),
while the quieter ones – mainly due to Tramontana’s mutes and Beresford’s
preparations – seem almost eerie. Houtkamp’s saxophone hovers above it all,
giving the impression that he is biting into the melody and shaking it back
and forth like a predator does it with a large piece of meat. Blume
provides a very solid background for the music, his playing is most
reminiscent of that of Paul Lovens (another compliment). His contributions
are lightning-fast, varied and full of surprises, both tonally and
structurally. The icing on the cake are quotes, which are sprinkled
throughout the pieces (e.g. Dixieland phrases in “Flusk”, classical
film music at the beginning of “Fidther”, later in the piece there are
modern jazz piano passages; “Fracchen“ starts with a cool jazz line). In
general, the album offers a cornucopia of different sounds and little
melodies.

In a nutshell, Frush offers outstanding free jazz of the old
school played by masters of their trade. Anyone who likes John
Butcher/Phil Durrant/Paul Lovens/Radu Malfatti/John Russell:

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