By Ferruccio Martinotti
First transitive property of the Free: if A plays with B and B plays with C,
A will play with C. From which the second follows: if you liked A, you will
like C. The empirical observation of the above, today starts from SML, a
quintet composed of bassist Anna Butterss, Jeremiah Chiu synth, Booker
Stardrum drums and Gregory Uhlmann guitar. International Anthem’s debut
album, Small Medium Large, released in 2024, was recorded at ETA in L.A.,
a venue Jeff Parker used for his quartet, which included Butterss and
Uhlmann, on “Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy”. Its pyrotechnical
synthetic grooves, ranging from Miles’s On the Corner or Get up with it infectious pimp jazz, the polyrhythms of Fela Kuti and the greasy funk of
Parliament/Funkadelic, guaranteed free fall, joyful listening. From there,
Booker Stardrum’s new solo album (his fourth, following 2015’s Dance And, 2018’s Temporary Etc.; and 2021’s Crater), released on We Jazz Records,
is a short but lateral step.
Who is Booker, besides being SML’s drummer? His
official bio describes him as a composer, drummer, and producer, involved in
numerous impro/experimental and pop projects, film scores and sound design,
through collaborations that include Lisel, Photay, Horse Lords, Wendy
Eisenberg, Amirtha Kidambi, Ben Vida, Will Epstein, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma,
Chris Williams, Patrick Shiroishi, Carl Stone, Lee Ranaldo, and Nels Cline.
Our Man, supported by faithful collaborators Anna Butterss, Jeremiah Chiu,
Chris Williams, Lester St. Louis, Logan Hone and Michael Coleman, began
mapping out the new album during a stint in the Catskill Mountains in 2022,
sketching out recordings of insects and birds and homemade mallet
instruments.
So, a field recording album? Not exactly, since those are
reworked through MIDI controllers, samples, and loops. An electronic music
album, then? Not only that, acoustic sequences are interpolated into the
electro textures, as if to maintain a solid connection (human first, rather
than analog) with that farm where it all began, in the quiet of a late
summer on the Catskills. Jon Hassell-esque ambient, perhaps? It’s a fuel
element of an engine that shifts down two gears and hits the gas before
going too narcoleptic, just as the sonic iterations hark back to the
supreme Necks, but when the synapses connect there, here’s an immediate
shift in direction.
Regarding “Third Nature,” the album’s fourth track,
Booker’s words are a sort of programmatic declaration for the entire
project: “It gets its name from a concept in social ecology, that humans are
part of nature even though there have been different philosophies that
separate humans from nature. First nature is the natural world, second
nature is human development and social ecologists remind us that we are of
nature, and then the question is, how can we do a better job, exist, be of
nature, and affect nature in a cohabitual way?” Obviously the theme is
gigantic and of capital importance, and unfortunately, this album, nor any
other album, can’t provide us with the answers. But it is precisely in its
minimalism that Close-up On The Outside finds its raison d’être, like
those small mechanical devices made of gears and springs that in themselves
have no specific function but that you would remain enchanted by looking at
for an indefinite time. Its compositions, carved from the dense layering of
instruments and manipulated samples with a pantonal harmonic sense and an
intuitive approach to rhythm, won’t change the music’s axis of rotation by a
single degree (how many albums do that..?), but they will allow you to spend
33 minutes of irresistible bliss. To play with the oxymoron: a dispensable,
necessary listening.