Home Again
Label:
Konnex
Web:
http://www.konnex-records.de/
Personnel:
Dave Fox, keyboard; Bruce Eisenbeil, guitar; Pat Lawrence, bass; Jon Marc Ryan Dale, percussion.
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By Pico
Dave Fox teaches piano courses at Greensboro College in North Carolina, but the stuff he's puttin' down with his combo The Dave Fox Group couldn't be any more opposite of what you'd find in a classroom setting. It simply has too much panache for formal academic study.
The DFG, consisting of Fox on various keyboards, Jon Marc Ryan Dale on drums and Pat Lawrence on bass, make music that doesn't bend for convention. Heck, it doesn't bend for anything. It's free-form jazz that finds kinship with Cecil Taylor, Paul Bley and just about anybody who's recorded for ESP-Disk. They compose their songs collectively on the spot, most likely as the tape is rolling.
Underneath all that chaos, Fox & Co. are playing close attention to tonal colorings and ever-shifting moods. Fox himself uses Fender Rhodes,
Hohner Clavinet, Hammond B-3 and a Yamaha Grand Piano in ways that they were never used before, making the sound a little louder, a little more aggressive and a lot more unpredictable...making it almost like a keyboard-based version of Bruce Eisenbeil's Totem.
For the DFG's third release Home Again, they did in fact bring in Eisenbeil to add his one-of-a-kind guitar to the mix, and the results are blessedly explosive. Whenever the Master Timbralist is added to the equation, the whole dynamics of the music changes; Eisenbeil is one of the few guitarists today, like Bill Frisell, who's capable of doing that consistently.
Fox (and the rest of the band) adapts his own style to counter, accentuate and bob and weave with Eisenbeil. He prefers to make his mark more subtly, often providing shadings and textures that sometimes set direction and often is the guy holding everything together.
Highlights can be found everywhere. "The Well Prepared Suitcase" starts as a study in minimalism but climaxes with a dual between Fox's rootless grand piano and Eisenbeil's string plucks and scrapes. The epic "An Encounter With A Street Troll" goes down so many alleys and finds an adventure in each one. The kinetic, unhinged "Of All The Tapas Bars In The World..." and the sweet, tonal but still unencumbered "Home Again, For Now," are my personal faves
Fox has been selling Home Again on his own, but he's recently found a distributor, the German label Konnex Records, so hopefully this bold, brash CD will be easier to obtain. In the meantime, just follow the link below for obtaining one of the more interesting, inspiring and energetic whack jazz records to come across this desk since, well, the one by Totem.
If there's one this to learn from this record, it's this: not all college professors are the meek, bookish types. Then again, Home Again is not a class.
It's a clinic.
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THE DAVE FOX GROUP FEATURING BRUCE EISENBEIL - Home Again
By Massimo Ricci
Besides being a jazz specialist pianist Dave Fox is also classically trained, although you might not guess it by listening to Home Again, the third CD by The Dave Fox Group after 2004’s Gatewalk and 2007’s If These Songs Could Talk. Comprising the leader on grand piano, clavinet, Fender Rhodes and Hammond B-3 organ plus Bruce Eisenbeil (guitar), Pat Lawrence (bass) and Jon Marc Ryan Dale (drums), this incarnation of the ensemble couldn’t play a minute of formulaic music if one threatened them at gunpoint. Impertinent approaches to improvisation pullulate all over the record and outrageously climactic manifestations of lawlessness abound, with just the slightest exception of the conclusive - and vaguely, distantly tonal - “Home Again, For Now”, whose character mostly derives from jangling chords and overdriven strategies from Eisenbeil’s heavily processed axe.
An opposite example is constituted by “The Well-Prepared Suitcase”: the musicians strive to implement a rather unstructured type of instant invention without caring too much about the ribaldry that some of these semi-educated noises might evoke, generating a rebellious feeling in the (until then) unperturbed listener. “An Encounter With A Street Troll” – what a fabulous title for a piece – is probably the ideal symbolization of the band’s risky demeanour, chock full as it is of sudden increases in the fury-to-calmness ratio and striking exuberance at one and the same time.
Eisenbeil’s clear-sightedness in alternating distortion and purity during incessant circumventions of normalcy is as always astonishing – cultivated punk, if there was ever a better representative – and Fox receives wholeheartedly whatever is thrown his way, counterattacking with idiosyncratic commitment bathed in the sound of instruments from the 60s. Lawrence and Dale smirk appreciatively, swapping footnotes and oddball permutations that hypothetically should never be allowed in a “rhythm section” (ha!).
But this is the fractal tempo of real life’s enigmatic attractiveness, and – contrarily to the welcoming seduction of hypocrite gleaming – this raw charm entices more and more with each listen.
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JazzReview.com
By Glenn AstaritaCutting-edge free-jazz and experimental guitarist Bruce Eisenbeil joins North Carolina keyboardist Dave Fox and his group for an aggressive and genre-crushing sojourn. Fox looms as a Renaissance man here as he helps anchor the quartet with swirling organ patterns, and dirty Fender Rhodes implementations. It’s a revved-up electro, free-form gala with thrills a minute, akin to a rapidly-paced cinematic thriller.
Fox’s wily keys and Eisenbeil’s buzzing and flickering licks generate gobs of excitement here, as the rhythm section flexes its muscle via asymmetrical pulses and sweeping patterns. In effect, the band surfaces as a combustible music-making machine. Yet they occasionally temper the various flows while embarking on reengineering processes. At times, Fox sprinkles airy keys across the top, and goes toe-to-toe with Eisenbeil on several occasions as they activate a rolling thunder type game plan.
The musicians render a few nip and tuck, free-form dialogues amid liquefying themes and massive deconstruction efforts. At times, Eisenbeil conjures up lucid thoughts of how Hendrix might perform within these musical environs. On “An Encounter With A Street Troll,” Fox’s manic organ voicings present a frenetic underscore to a sequence of fractured motifs, shaded with circular storylines. And the band ventures into minimalist territory. However, Eisenbeil lets his imagination soar on “Home Again, For Now,” where his phased, ‘60s rock guitar voicings might sound like George Harrison delving into a psychedelic-drenched cosmic breakdown. In sum, this is a persuasive and thoroughly hip album. They play tricks with your neural network throughout.
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Downtown Music Gallery
By Bruce GallanterFeaturing Dave Fox on keyboards, Bruce Eisenbeil on guitars, Pat Lawrence on bass and Jon Marc Ryan Dale on drums. Keyboard wiz, Dave Fox, has collaborated with Eugene Chadbourne & Frank Gratkowski, is on the staff of Greensboro College and is presently finishing up his Doctorate at Columbia University. This is Dave's second disc as a leader and it features the great local out/jazz guitar wizard Bruce Eisenbeil. This disc was recorded in Durham, North Carolina, not far from where all the members of the quartet except Bruce come from. Right from the opening piece, "Leaving the City", we are off into free but focused soaring. Dave Fox seems to be playing electric piano and organ, his tone at times somewhat similar to Bruce's guitar who often manipulates his tone with a variety of devices, wah-wah, distortion and such. The quartet often sound as if everything is in flux and moving in waves together. What this most reminds me of is the early seventies, before terms like fusion were invented. What makes this special is the way guitar and keyboards constantly swirl around one another, answering each others lines with inter-connected parts. Like the magic moments in a Grateful Dead jam, this quartet sounds like they've been playing together for a long time and can contemplate each others moves. I am not familiar with either rhythm team member, but they sound swell throughout as they weave their way around one another magnificently. It is hard to explain just what it is that makes this so incredible, you just feel the exhilaration as they all sail together ever so tightly. Time to check out Dave Fox's first disc. If it is nearly as good as this one, it is indeed another must have. – BLG
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Global-Mojo.com
“Leaving The City“ the opener is called and jumps at the listener with nerves cracking big city noise from Dave Fox’ keyboards, Bruce Eisenbeil’s guitar, Pat Lawrence’s bass and Jon Marc Ryan Dale’s drums. Thus an exiting journey starts. The “Well-Prepared Suitcase“ leads to the presumption that the musicians view themselves with quite a bit of self-irony, and also “Airports And Me“ will make some people smile with knowledge. “An Encounter With A Street Troll” begins playful like a children’s game, but by and by develops into a rather haunting experience, and you’ll be happy to catch some breath and enjoy some lyrical moments by “Nightfall In Taos, New Mexico”. Atonal and dissonant collages characterize the album – and how could it be different with these guys playing. But this is not at all meant as an end in itself. If you describe the natural course of the river Vltava by music in the 19th century the outcome will sound like Smetana’s composition and be adequate. If you describe a journey in the 21st century, it turns out adequate, if it mirrors the atonality and dissonance of our world around and our worlds inside, and the Dave Fox Group achieved precisely this successfully. That there is room for beauty anyway is not only revealed in the final title track „Home Again“, which carries the wise addition: “For Now“.
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All About jazz
By Eyal HareuveniThe third release of the Dave Fox group, augmented now by avant-guitarist Bruce Eisenbeil, presents free improvised music at its best. This is adventurous music that's raw, muscular, unstructured, intense, idiosyncratic in its risk-taking approach but still cohesive in a unique way.
The group is comprised of North Carolina's Greensboro College music educator Fox (here on Fender Rhodes, Hohner clavinet, grand piano and Hammond B3 organ) and New York-based Eisenbeil on guitars—quite often processing their sound—alongside Fox's musical partners, bassist Pat Lawrence and drummer Jon Marc Ryan Dale.
The quartet begins with a dense free-form improvisation, "Leaving The City," exploring sonic possibilities through constant changing rhythmic patterns, while the jagged fretting of Eisenbeil and distant keyboards of Fox add an atmospheric edge. Eisenbeil leads "Of All The Tapas Bars In The World..." in an energetic, dense pattern of chords that surprisingly turn into a standard blues scale, but Fox's keyboards color it in cosmic psychedelic tones. "The Well-Prepared Suitcase" begins as an unstructured exploration of sounds from the quartet's instruments but culminates in an arresting duet between Eisenbeil and Fox on piano, each going to the extreme.
"Airports And Me" is a more structured and patient duet between Fox and Eisenbeil as Dale and Lawrence join in—all four looking for a common pattern vertically in a standard manner, pushing the music forward while locking on a certain rhythm, but at the same time in a horizontal manner, thereby expanding the piece's sonic envelope. "An Encounter With A Street Troll" is another dense piece with similar fractured structure and sudden changes, where Fox's B3 channels it into a kind of early fusion alley while Eisenbeil's intense bluesy fretting may be inspired by the same era but pushes this piece into stratosphere. After the spare and mysterious improvisation of "Nightfall in Taos, New Mexico," the quartet concludes in a more straight-forward manner with "Home Again, For Now," inspired by cosmic sixties psychedelic blues.
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Jazz Impro NY
By Gary Heimbauer“What I happen to be experiencing in my life, and what you happen to be experiencing, is what makes me, me and you, you. If musical improvisation is about an individual expressing themselves, and we are experiencing things in our lives that are very deep and meaningful, then we should expect our lives to correlate to our playing. That’s when our playing becomes realistic enough that people who hear it say, “Oh yeah – I feel that too, even if I don’t know what it is.”
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