Lapis Exilis

Jim Hobbs doesn't seem to get a lot of attention in the small jazz world, but discs like "Lapis Exilis" and "Drunk On The Blood Of The Holy Ones" are brilliant. "Lapis Exilis" has Taylor Ho Bynum on trumpet and Timo Shanko on bass and Django Carranza on drums. Jim Hobbs is one of the most slippery alto saxophonists around, and the most memorable themes on "Lapis Exilis" tend to be slippery as well. "Ol' Lady Who?" is the catchiest song, but most of the rest do a good job of sticking in the ear. The melodies are paired with very good improvisation. This disc has the best Taylor Ho Bynum playing I've heard, though his other stuff I've heard is either very free or in a larger ensemble. An excellent disc, I think most fans of modern jazz will like "Lapis Exilis".

Fully Celebrated Orchestra, Lapis Exilis. Skycap Records Cap 014.Jim Hobbs and crew have been notable fixtures in the Boston music world since 86 or so and are yet another point of redemption for Boston jazz torpor. They have commonalities with punk rock bands in the urgent edge to their approach to live performance. There is a similarity to anonymous street bands you might find in Nonesuch Explorer field recordings of samba escola's or Panamanian cumbia groups. By this I mean they play as if there were no music industry and all its troublesome trappings with a devil-may-care exuberance that belies the obvious levels of effort they apply to writing tunes and honing their playing.Jim came from Indiana but his horn tone has the cry of all the legendary Texans so I take the liberty of putting him in a corner of the music that recalls people who played in huge dance halls before the days of PA amplifiers. Timo is his long standing alter ego and landed here from the desert counties east of LA. There is a bit of fandango pulsation and surging in his approach to bass work.I am less familiar with Taylor Ho Bynum as he was only around 10 years old when Timo was my quasi roommate in a big ramshackle band dump in Somerville with a cantankerous Tracy Chapman next door and a retired Tip O'Neill dozing on his porch around the corner. But I feel I have come to know him through his blog Spider Monkey Stories and lucid writing for Destination Out. Of Django Carranza, I know next to nothing beyond what he tells my geezer ears on this CD.You see, these guys are seemingly indifferent to the usual tasks of writing bios for their web site. They appear to adopt the posture of Charlie Parker quoted long ago in a film short, "Well, we're going to let the music speak for itself". And it surely does.1.Lord Of Creatures.This is also a variation of a fanfare and I must say I like the convention of beginning a recorded sequence this way. Hobbs starts the melody for a few bars before Taylor joins. There is an initial likeable sense of reverence for the idea of casting sounds upon the air that soon shifts to a ready confidence in it all and digs in to the feast with unabashed apetite.Mr. Hobbs sings his part with less of the vast palette of timbre colors he will use in cuts to come. It is a striking warm singing of unabashed kindliness that has something important to care about. The Bynum element begins understated with initial phrases hit from different angles of hi to low, reverse and from the middle to ends in staccatto bursts before giving way to a smear slalom run of longer tones deftly shaped with a fleet ear to timbre variety.Timo Shanko introduces his fluttering rumble shuddering that at times convinces the bass it's a sitar while getting a rubbery flexibility that hangs in the higher register only to swoop to sudden lows as an accent and contrast. Mr. Django frames it all with deft snare and hat texture.2.Throne of Osiris.Here we have an initial example of composition design with a stark tritone open space sound and a stepwise staccatto motif for a kernal. Jim uses it for a flight take off that undulates in a wavy way that reminds me of how Goldfinches used to approach my Seattle window feeder.There are short phrase motifs alternating with silence amid the bass and drumscape. Taylor replies to this with an agile pattern of growls and chirps in tight bar units jumping all around the cornet's range. Timo Shanko makes the architecture sturdy and striking while Django gives his entire kit a thorough visit. The closing section involves dense tight unisons.3. Ol'Lady Who?It's as if someone read Zappa's old essay on humor in music. The loping melody might be a deconstruction of the old cowboy song, "Bury Me Not On The Lone Prarie" with a mock weep of horns that adds to the run of jazz pieces evoking inebriation that probably date back to Spike Jones, at least. And the melody development runs like a drunk bar argument between an old couple with the saxophone covering the wheedling side and the cornet handling the muttering with consummate plunger mute skill.Then there is the reconciliation and the tune goes home. The Timo and Django part might be compared to the bartender and doorman keeping an eye on it all with sly asides. Or it could just as well evoke the clip clop of the horse at an easy stride. I find myself whistling the melody on the way back from a meeting with a sub sandwich.4.The Mackie Burnette.They are on the march with this one. The rollicking recalls the days in New York when comparsa refugee bands from the Cuban boat lift paraded through New York traffic on a whim exasperating the motorists before pausing at some open space to really start the cooking.It dances with lots of timbre texture from all including slap tongue reed percussions an bluesy counter theme and a stack of kitchen sinks tossed in by all. It is like a punk rock era grandchild of a thing called 'Theme de Yoyo' from a soundtrack called 'Les Stances A Sophie' by some magnificent old guys from Chicago.The Shanko ostinato alone could be used to disrupt a minor coma.5.Apple Orchard and the Worm.Here we have a more cerebral side of FCO with composing in focus on something that is born as a nocturne almost pastel, suddenly contrasted by bold tonal primary colors that used to infuriate rennaissance popes.It isn't terribly diabolical to any ears that made it past world war one. A particularly striking feature is the way each ensemble member adopts distinct sonic positions. Hobbs makes his part a wide ranging display of his mastery of sound texture while Bynum covers a dense legato load of tiny notes, Timo decides to do bass pontillism and Django plays pulse. Wow, who' da thunk it?6.Three Rivers.This opens with Timo making a saz of his bass in a Sufi-esque whirl. Django takes it up with snare and hat rides soon joined by horn flow of singing unisons as a voice vector for a Rumi lyric, only no words, just the allegory. The texture thickens considerably with Django doing an exemplary kit roll with a nice hint of a dombek. Then it sings again with a Taylor ringing sing followed by Jim working lower registers in a manner most tenorish.7.Billylillylillybilly.Jaunty freebop lilting away in a big Whee! Hobbs is up in a higher register to preface avid ensemble improvisation before Bynum works a solo of a very tight group of tones shifting through an exhausting run of interval sequence options that define "economy of means". Timo sprints through a rubber ball bouncy solo and Django keeps the snare at a steady sizzle.8.Lapis Exilis.Balladish beginnings to a very deep piece that hints at the quieter Balinese form of gamelan initially to set a mood perhaps. There is a reason for this to be the title track and I now hazard a guess. In this quiet dawn beginning the bass simmers at its high end. Then come bits of silence wrapping little bell pings.Then something rears up with long tones and Jim Hobbs takes a white phosphorous solo that seems to lament something held dear and Taylor runs with a multiphonics continuation and there is something devastatingly sincere annd thought jabbing about it all and it moves me the way the Leningrad Symphony does as if these worthies glimpse something that echos what Shostakovich went through.Of course it has no structural music resemblence to Leningrad whatever except an innocent harmless opening contrasted by evocation of something malign.There's something about it that clouds my eyes and I'm on the edge of sobbing but maybe I'm just a haunted old idiot. There is a power in this that will resound with each participant all their days even if they never play another note and pursue IT careeers.9.Farewell.Now here it gets love songish in a way that shadows "Up On A Roof" or some similar old pop classic without any such musical reference. It's allegorical. There is a central core of a long weaving duet between alto and cornet that eschews unisons but twines instead. It farewells very well.