By Nick Ostrum
I rarely analyze cover art in reviews, but maybe I should. In this case,
the cover consists of a photograph flanked on either side by a firey
bundles of wheat (or carpet?) and, below, paintings of a flower and a soft
blue bird. Above is the title, The Ancients, crowned by vine
scrolls, all in black. This highlights the center photo, in which Isaiah
Collier, William Parker, and William Hooker stand on a New York rooftop, two
wearing scarves, one sunglasses, all three staring at the camera. But the
photo looks like a faded polaroid, primary hued with hushed blue and
yellow. It looks old. The three men look like ancients, fuzzy from memory,
almost haunting the image.
In other words, the image is making a claim to lineage and the album lives
up to it. Recorded over two nights of concerts – two at LA’s Arts &
Archives and one at The Chapel in San Francisco – in 2023,
The Ancients
is both urgent and classic, reaching back to the slow methodical modal
build-ups of 1970s free jazz. Collier starts with a patient layering of
phrase upon phrase, which accretes tension until an eruptive release about
17 minutes in. Parker lays a propulsive bass, leaping from furrow to
furrow through additive embellishments and sheer drive. Hooker plays with a
concertedness that betrays not age, but wisdom and experience. He is busy
and rhythmic, but with precision and crisp, discernible arcs rather than
free-for-all clangor. (In that, he is on par with Andrew Cyrille right
now.) With Parker and Collier’s emphasis on process and development, this
works perfectly and brings me back to some of my first encounters with the
music of Noah Howard, Sonny Simmons, Kidd Jordan, and, of course, late
Coltrane. Then again, one would not mistake Collier for them. I am not sure
what it is, exactly. Maybe it is the replacement of patience and slightly
longer tones, or fewer beats per measure, for the rush of those earlier
works. Collier, Parker and Hooker are dealing with similar ideas and
aesthetics but developing them in different ways. Take Parker’s turn to the
hojǒk, a Korean instrument akin to an oboe, at the end of the second LA
night, and Collier’s adoption of various unidentified “little instruments”
and the Aztec death whistle, which sounds like a human scream, as evidence.
Or, take the extended, spacious bass-drum duo in the second LA night, that
replaces some of that early energy music exuberance with special attention
to construction.
My only real criticism is the cuts between tracks. Each set fades out
rather than finishes. One wonders whether this was done to fit each set
onto a side of a record. If so, that is a fine reason, but one is left
wondering what is missing. Somehow 22-minute cuts just are not long enough.
Now, Collier’s own words: “free jazz is an enduring high art. its greatest
expressions belong to their particular moment in history, & live on to
transce-nd & refract in amaranthine ways. inside our present historical
moment, we are fortunate to have the master musicians in the ancients
bringing us their high level creation.” Agreed, but let us also remember
the current moment, and the new generation who are building on that
tradition, Collier himself foremost among them. God damn, this is good
music. Cheers to the ancients, the forebearers, who established this
tradition, and an extra spilled libation to those of whatever generation
who are keeping it alive and relevant.
The Ancientsis available as a download on Bandcamp and as a double-CD and LP through Aguirre Records.