Fred Anderson Quartet: Live Volume V
FPE Records
If this live recording by Fred Anderson sounds raw, it's a wonder it exists at all. Clarence Bright, tending bar at Chicago's Velvet Lounge on the December 1994 night the tenor saxist's quartet appeared, captured the set on a Tascam DAT recorder, after which it remained in bassist Tatsu Aoki's possession for two decades as a CD transfer. Eventually digital technologies allowed for some degree of polishing to be applied, the result this first archival release by FPE Records. It naturally lacks the three-dimensional roundness of a professionally recorded live set yet is wholly deserving of preservation for its ferocity; the word volcanic hardly conveys the heat generated by Anderson, Aoki, Hamid Drake, and especially Toshinori Kondo. (Previous chapters in this Live series, incidentally, featuring different incarnations of Anderson's groups appeared on Aoki's Asian Improv aRts label.)
The tenor saxist, bassist, and drummer played often at the Lounge during the ‘90s and sound comfortably at home on the nearly hour-long recording. It's the Japanese trumpet player, however, who's most prominently featured, with the late bandleader generously granting his colleague ample solo space. Kondo's playing is, in a word, staggering. The sound produced by his electronically altered trumpet naturally calls to mind Miles during his Dark Magus days, with one difference: Kondo plays with such uninhibited fire, he makes Miles sound mellow by comparison, however hard that might be to believe.
It takes no time at all for the Japanese trumpeter to make his presence felt when the band blasts from the gate. His horn squeals, screams, and squawks from the drop, the acoustic bassist and drummer providing a fluid, ever-mutating base for Kondo to wail against. He's in full scorched earth mode for the opening dozen minutes of the almost half-hour “Analog Breakdown,” Anderson opting to watch the spectacle unfold until he enters eleven minutes in. Heard alongside the trumpeter, the leader is initially the very voice of sanity, his playing unfolding with circumspection, until his attack grows in ferocity with Kondo's re-emergence.
The thirteen-minute “Probability Distribution” is largely leisurely by comparison, Drake sitting out for its first half as the other three converse meditatively. “Era of Rocks” follows without pause, the leader freely exploring in response to Aoki and Drake's prodding until Kondo's entrance elevates the playing aggressively. Imagine the sound a living creature makes during evisceration and you'll have some impression of his playing in the piece's second half.
There are moments on the release when the playing could pass for a stripped-down Art Ensemble of Chicago (see the closing minutes of “Analog Breakdown,” for example, where the ensemble playing includes a de-electrified Kondo or the trumpet-less central episode in “Era of Rocks”), the fact not all that surprising given the ties shared by Anderson and the group's members to Chicago's AACM (The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians). While Kondo has appeared on many albums and in many contexts, a personal favourite is his performance on the 1997 release Shiva Recoil: Live/Unlive by Paul Schütze's Phantom City outfit. This Velvet Lounge live set offers a considerably more substantial account of the trumpeter's playing, however, which makes it pretty much a must-have for Kondo fans. Not to take anything away from Anderson, but it's the trumpeter's playing that makes the recording as memorable as it is.January 2020