Diatom Ribbons

Album review

Diatom Ribbons is pianist/composer Kris Davis' 14th recording as a leader, and her sixth on her Pyroclastic Records label. She has long been closely associated with jazz's vanguard, as well as with a posse of likeminded explorers, three of whom are present here: saxophonist Tony Malaby, vibraphonist Ches Smith, and bassist Trevor Dunn. But she has always been eager to reach past conventional perceptions; as such, she brings a newer group of collaborators aboard who are not normally associated with the music's bleeding avant edge, including Esperanza Spalding (as a vocalist), saxophonist JD Allen, drummer/composer Terri Lyne Carrington, and Haitian electronicist/turntablist Val Jeanty. Guitarists Nels Cline and Marc Ribot also appear selectively.
Diatom Ribbons delivers a heady and physical music built from kinetic fragments. Harmonic, rhythmic, and tonal ideas that often don't work together, somehow do in Davis' brave compositional and improvisational languages. The core trio with Carrington and Jeanty lay the groundwork for the other players to interact. In the title-track opener, Jeanty provides sampled sections of an interview with Cecil Taylor as Carrington creates a syncopated rhythmic counterpoint to Davis' three-chord, six-note repetitive pattern. The pianist's circle expands from here; she adds and subtracts notes and chord voicings. Dunn, Malaby, and Allen eventually enter to address Davis' feints and phrase-like articulations with striated yet dovetailing separate melodies and illuminating solos. A shimmering piano chord with synth washes and Malaby's bluesy sax introduce Michael Attias's "The Very Thing," before Spalding languidly arrives in pursuit of the lyrics. Carrington and Dunn dance across and through the harmonic backdrop. The core trio provides Cline with a unique foundation on "Rhizomes," including a hip-hop snare shuffle, punchy turntablism, sampled voices, a rumbling bassline, hovering vibes, and a jazz rock cadence from Cline, whose later soloing wraps it all up. "Stone's Throw" commences as a spacious and interrogatory modal study between Davis and Smith, its rhythmic and textural shifts usher in urgent post-bop at its nadir. In "Certain Cells," Spalding spends the first 30 seconds unaccompanied, quoting from Gwendolyn Brooks' poem The Prisoners, before Carrington double times Jeanty's synth pulse bassline. Both set those words free while the pianist, Cline, Dunn, and Smith create a web of meaning to underscore them. The closer is a 12-minute reading of Julius Hemphill's "Reflections" played by the guitarless sextet. Davis articulates the tune's air of brooding mystery, but via a quick shift at four minutes to solos from Malaby and Allen atop Carrington's roiling groove, it becomes an exposition of color, timbre and tone. For listeners who have followed Davis' career, Diatom Ribbons is a logical if jarring (and exceptionally fine) pursuit of the unknown toward new directions and possibilities. For newcomers this bracing statement, will offer countless angles and edges commingle as realized yet open-ended works. When the entire aural portrait is assembled, Diatom Ribbons sounds like what it is: Davis creating her own ground rules for modern jazz.

© Thom Jurek /TiVo