Although Steve Baczkowski has been on the free jazz scene for almost 20
years, he is not a super-prominent name. Even his outstanding recordings
with Chris Corsano, Brandon Lopez (e.g.
Old Smoke
), Bill Nace and Paul Flaherty have done nothing to change that. And Cheap
Fabric probably won’t change that either, even if it is an absolutely
wonderful recording. The album was “mostly recorded (…) on the evening of
a lunar eclipse (…). The process and timing created an energy of focused
intensity and strong intimacy, which is apparent in the music”, Baczowski
says. What is more, one could almost feel the surroundings of a cold
November night in Buffalo, NY., Baczkowski’s hometown.
Especially “Threads of the Warp“ shows that, with twelve minutes by far the
longest track of the album. But it’s not only intensity and intimacy that
can be felt here, the album is also about restraint, although great
expressiveness is shown. It’s about a minimal but dynamic approach with
simultaneous abstraction. Baczkowski doesn’t show off any technique on this
solo album, he hardly displays his instrumental qualities, which he
undoubtedly has. Instead, he seems to remove every element from his work
that he considers superfluous. He reduces his improvisation to long drones,
siren-like passages, isolated, plaintive outbursts, hushed echoes. It’s the
refinement of his concentrated yet haunting style, a reduction in which
only the truly essential remains. Sometimes it sounds as if the notes of
his saxophone have been sawn through, but his lines still remain
razor-sharp.
Even though Cheap Fabric consists largely of melody and sound, some of the
miniatures that make up most of the album gain their own inner rhythm, with
grandiose details being displayed in the whispered and breathy passages
(e.g. in “Meteor”, which seems rushed due to the breathing noises, which is
also reinforced by the flap noises of the sax that sound like a child’s
toy gone wild). On the other hand, there are extreme sounds and registers,
as in “Soft Landing”, in which the saxophonist exhausts the entire
spectrum of his instrument, sometimes to the listener’s pain threshold. The
same goes for “Low Orbit“, which sounds as if the saxophone has been
squeezed together
It seems as if Baczowski has been working towards an opus magnum, a concept
album, distancing himself from his art until only the truth of the moment
remains. The solar eclipse seems to have been the perfect time for this.
Cheap Fabric is available as a CD and as a download. You can listen to it
and buy it here: