Friday, November 12, 2021

Tim Green and Massimo Magee - Abeyance (November 12, 2021 577 Records)

Abeyance was recorded 3 days after the Cyclone Trio studio sessions that produced the album The Clear Revolution (577 Records, 2021). After a 5-year break, Tim Green and Massimo Magee returned to the recording studio to revisit the improvisational investigations they had left off in Brisbane in 2014. Magee and Green are longtime collaborators, having explored multifaceted and adventurous improvised music together for more than a decade, on drums, saxophone and clarinet, with and without electronic manipulation. Abeyance is a complete free improvisation by the duo, recorded in one take and without edits or prior planning. Though entirely unpremeditated, it works with long-form structures, centred around a repeated, severely truncated phrase adapted from part of the classic ‘Epistrophy’ tune by Thelonious Monk, and traverses a wide spectrum of improvised music, from late 60s free jazz to more recent electro-acoustic developments. 

By tracing a path from one to the other, through various intermediate points, it makes a spontaneous attempt to embed a teleological narrative—one view of the contemporary progression of avant garde, jazz-inflected improvisation into recent times. Functionally speaking, it could be said that this re-asserts the idea of progress, a necessary step before progress can again be made. Abeyance will be available digitally via 577 Records on November 12, 2021.

1. Abeyance
2. LITTLE SAMPLE FROM ABEYANCE

Tim Green - Drums 
Massimo Magee - Electro/acoustic alto saxophone, clarinet at New River Studios, London, UK

Recorder by Massimo Magee on March 14, 2020
Mixed and mastered by Theo Carbo

Cover painting: Untitled by MiHee Kim Magee
Album design by Mark Smith

Music by Tim Green and Massimo Magee (Five Seven Seven Records Music, ASCAP)

Orbit577 is part of 577 Records
Brooklyn, New York