Pocket Aces: Cull the Heard
Creative Nation Music
Boston-based guitarist Eric Hofbauer has received deserved praise for the four riveting Prehistoric Jazz recordings featuring works by Stravinsky, Messiaen, Ellington, and Ives he's issued with his quintet. As remarkable as that series is, it constitutes but one facet of this versatile artist's world, two others of which reveal the breadth of his interests and playing ability. The first is represented by the solo guitar recordings he's released (American Vanity, American Fear, American Grace, and Ghost Frets), the second by his new trio project, Pocket Aces, with bassist Aaron Darrell and drummer Curt Newton. A particularly compelling rapport between them is captured on Cull the Heard, whose eight improvisations tellingly credit all three as co-writers and co-producers (the deep connection between Hofbauer and Newton also stems from their mutual involvement in the guitarist's quintet).
It would be overstating it to say that Pocket Aces wholly rewrites the guitar trio tradition, yet there is a distinct sense in which the group distances itself from the customary approach. In keeping with the improvised spirit of the project, the normal hierarchy that positions the guitar as the lead and the others as support is exchanged for an approach that renders each voice equal. Throughout the recording, all are actively engaged as participants (in accompanying liner notes, the guitarist opines, “We are all melody players all the time, separately occasionally, but most often simultaneously”), and at no time is the impression created that any one player is more important to the result than another. In addition, Pocket Aces eschews standard swing-styled animation for a methodical mode of playing, one that evidences concentrated, in-the-moment decision-making and deep listening. The players might be conversant in a panoply of styles, among them blues and bebop, but Cull the Heard sidesteps pigeonholing for one that's open-ended and spontaneous.
Though any one of the pieces could serve as illustrative of the approach, “Chinook” seems a particularly apt choice. For seven minutes, Hofbauer doles out brief, querulous phrases to which Newton responds with flurries and Darrell insistent three-note ostinatos. An intricate, interconnected web results that's critically dependent on all three elements. In “The Shambles” the bassist's arco bowing acts as a foundation of sorts that frees the others to extemporize even more than they might otherwise (listen also for the guitar's prepared textures, which Hofbauer produced by threading his business card between the strings on the bridge) while fans of the guitarist's solo recordings will no doubt cotton to “Follow Her, Barefooted,” which opens with an extended solo turn. One's ears perk up considerably when “Crash Course” and “Provocateur” appear, given the faster tempo at which they're executed; if there are album cuts that come closest to jazz as conventionally known, it's these. A somewhat funkier side emerges in Newton and Darrell's playing in both cases, but the pair also treat the rhythms elastically, and they're also prominently featured in “Plain Sight,” their playing in this instance exuding a subtle Latin flavour.
As freely improvised is the material is, it's not without coherence, shape, or structure; Newton's description of it as “consciously compositional” seems particularly on-point in that regard. Hofbauer's assessment of it, too, is instructive in clarifying that the three “create forms and melodies that we develop, deconstruct, and recapitulate just like a written work.” Often executed at a ponderous tempo, the trio's playing advances with focused circumspection, with each member responding to and complementing the gestures of the others. Liberated from the imposed structures of the Prehistoric Jazz recordings, Hofbauer and Newton play with a kind of thoughtful unrestrictedness that one assumes must have been refreshing; for his part, Darrell's with them every step of the freewheeling way.September 2018