Nick Dunston: Atlantic Extraction
Out Of Your Head Records
A scan of the artists with whom Brooklyn-based double bassist Nick Dunston's performed offers some hint of his debut album's tone. Tyshawn Sorey, Vijay Iyer, Ingrid Laubrock, Jonathan Finlayson, and Amirtha Kidambi are but a handful of those with whom Dunston's worked, and he's also studied with bassist Linda May Han Oh and composer Missy Mazzoli. Such experiences have no doubt exerted a profound influence on him as a leader, player, and composer, the evidence compellingly presented on Atlantic Extraction.
Certainly one reason the recording sounds distinctive has to do with the lineup (which also goes by the name Atlantic Extraction), with the leader joined by Louna Dekker-Vargas (flute, alto flute, piccolo), Ledah Finck (violin, viola), Tal Yahalom (guitar), and Stephen Boegehold (drum set) on the date. The unusual textures generated by the flute-violin-guitar front-line add greatly to the project's appeal; Dunston also wisely grants his partners generous space for self-expression, with Yahalom and Finck ceded spotlights in “String Solo No. 2” and “String Solo No. 1,” respectively.
Also pivotal to the recording is Dunston's compositional approach. In place of, say, an album featuring a half-dozen ensemble performances, collage sketches and solo explorations are mixed in with quintet pieces, the blend ostensibly giving the sixteen-track set the feel of musicians working through different creative possibilities. In production terms, he opts for rawness over polish, the focus more on process and spontaneity than note-perfect through-composition. Apparently, some pieces were written years ago, whereas others were birthed in the studio minutes before recording. That he adopted such a bold approach for his debut as a leader says much about the artistic personality involved.
It's interesting that his writing suggests affinities with someone who's not mentioned in the press release's ‘RIYL' list: Henry Threadgill. While echoes of Braxton, Varèse, Ornette Coleman, Ligeti, and Cecil Taylor might be detected in Dunston's music (Finck's sawing in “Delirious Delicacies” calls to mind Ornette's own violin playing, for instance), there are passages on Atlantic Extraction that could be mistaken for ones by Threadgill. Consider the melodic trajectories essayed in “Tattle Snake” and “Globular Weaving” as examples, and that the material features unison flute-and-guitar voicings establishes the tie all the more.
The music's avant leanings are evident the moment the album's introduced by the one-minute creak and sway of “Collage No. 2.” As if it's the most natural thing in the world, Dunston weaves elements of free jazz, twentieth-century classical music, rock, and even country into his mercurial pieces. In what's arguably the most audacious cut, “S.S. Nemesis” follows a light-speed bass-and-drum pulse (reminiscent of Haden and Blackwell in their early Ornette days) with a wild country hoedown episode. In mixing aggressive quintet performances with restrained chamber-styled settings (e.g., “Dunsterlude”) and even a vocal-driven experiment (“A Rolling Wave of Nothing”), Atlantic Extraction holds the listener's attention despite the many directions pursued. As the recording plays, images of forward-thinking explorers communing in New York lofts during the ‘60s and ‘70s come to mind, Dunston seemingly intent on keeping a similarly intrepid spirit alive in his own music-making.December 2019