Jeff Parker – Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy 2LP

Description

“Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy, x2 LPs of long-form, lyrical, groove-based free improv by acclaimed guitarist & composerJeff Parker‘sETA IVtet, is at last here. Recorded live at ETA (referencingDavid Foster Wallace), a bar in LA’s Highland Park neighborhood with just enough space in the back for Parker, drummerJay Bellerose, bassistAnna Butterss, & alto saxophonistJosh Johnsonto convene in extraordinarily depthful & exploratory music making. Gleaned for the stoniest side-length cuts from 10+ hours of vivid two-track recordings made between 2019 & 2021 byBryce Gonzales,Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academyis a darkly glowing sance of an album, brimming over with the hypnotic, the melodic, & patience & grace in its own beautiful strangeness. Room-tone, electric fields, environment, ceiling echo, live recording, Mondays, Los Angeles. Jeff Parker’s first double album & first live album,Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academybelongs in the lineage of such canonical live double albums recorded on the West Coast asLee Morgan‘sLive at the Lighthouse,Miles Davis‘In Person Friday & Saturday Night at the Blackhawk, San Francisco&Black Beauty, &John Coltrane‘sLive in Seattle. While the IVtet sometimes plays standards &, including on this recording, original compositions, it is as previously stated largely a free improv group — just not in the genre meaning of the term. The music is more free composition than free improvisation, more blending than discordant. It’s tensile, yet spacious & relaxed. Clearly all four musicians have spent significant time in the planetary system known as jazz, but relationships to other musics, across many scenes & eras — dub &Dilla, primary source psychedelia, ambient & drone — suffuse the proceedings. Listening to playbacks Parker remarked, humorously & not, ‘we sound like theByrds‘ (to certain ears, theClarence White-era Byrds, who really stretched it). A fundamental of all great ensembles, whether basketball teams or bands, is the ability of each member to move fluidly & fluently in & out of lead & supportive roles. Building on the communicative pathways they’ve established in Parker’s —The New Breed— project, Parker & Johnson maintain a constant dialogue of lead & support. Their sampled & looped phrases move continuously thru the music, layered & alive, adding depth & texture & pattern, evoking birds in formation, sea creatures drifting below the photic zone. Or, the two musicians simulate those processes by entwining their terse, clear-lined playing in real-time. The stop/start flow of Bellerose, too, simulates the sampler, recalling drum parts in Parker’s beat-driven projects. Mostly Bellerose’s animated phraseologies deliver the inimitable instantaneous feel of live creative drumming. The range of tonal colors he conjures from his extremely vintage battery of drums & shakers — as distinctive a sonic signature as we have in contemporary acoustic drumming — bring almost folkloric qualities to the aesthetic currency of the IVtet’s language. A wonderful revelation in this band is the playing of Anna Butterss. The strength, judiciousness & humility with which she navigates the bass position both ground & lift upward the egalitarian group sound. As the IVtet’s grooves flow & clip, loop & repeat, the ensemble elements reconfigure, a terrarium of musical cultivation growing under controlled variables, a tight experiment of harmony & intuition, deep focus & freedom. For all its varied sonic personality,Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academyscans immediately & unmistakably as music coming from Jeff Parker’s unique sound world. Generous in spirit, trenchant & disciplined in execution, Parker’s music has an earned respect for itself & for its place in history that transmutes through the musical event into the listener. Many moods & shapes of heart & mind will find utility & hope in a music that combines the autonomy & the community we collectively long to see take hold in our world, in substance & in staying power. On the personal tip, this was always my favorite gig to hit, a lifeline of the eremite records Santa Barbara years. Mondays southbound on the 101, driving away from tasks & screens & illness, an hour later ordering a double tequila neat at the bar with the band three feet away, knowing i was in good hands, knowing it would be back around on another Monday. To encounter life at scales beyond the human body is the collective dance of music & the beholding of its beauty, together.” —Michael Ehlers&Zac BrennerPressed on premium audiophile-quality 120 gram vinyl at RTI fromKevin Gray/Cohearent Audio lacquers. Mastered byJoe Lizzi, Triple Point Records, Queens, NY. First eremite edition of 1799 copies.