At Age 69 Nels Cline Shows No Signs of Losing Interest

It’s a bit crazy to think about how long guitarist Nels Cline has been making music, dropping his first album Elegies with bassist Eric von Essen for Nine Winds—the imprint of venerable LA reedist Vinny Golia—back in 1981. It’s beyond doubt that he’s a technical marvel of immeasurable versatility, but that range has tended to supersede a firm musical identity, at least in a conventional sense. I would say that over 45 years Cline has developed an aesthetic that’s both rooted in and reflective of his deep curiosity. Although his work has always been nurtured by jazz tradition, his investment in rock music has been there alon, too. I think I first became aware of him through the writing of Byron Coley in Forced Exposure, who could hear the guitarist’s monster abilities manifested as he straddled the adventurous jazz and punk rock communities in Los Angeles. From the outset Cline elided hierarchies, equally at ease raising a ruckus alongside Thurston Moore, forging a weird kind of fusion-flavored free jazz in a band that included both Tim Berne and trumpeter Stacey Rowles—daughter of mainstream pianist Jimmy—or generating a tangle of free improv confusion with fellow LA guitarists Jim McAuley, and Rod Poole in the Acoustic Guitar Trio, whose first album was released on Derek Bailey’s Incus. The fact that he fit in immediately upon joining Wilco in 2004 only reinforced his nonchalant ease in just about any context.

Wilco has proven to be his longest and steadiest musical marriage, even eclipsing the great Nels Cline Singers with Devra Hoff and Scott Amendola. Over the last two-plus decades he’s produced an endless stream of records in disparate contexts, his music held together by its diversity more than a unified sound. In mid-March he introduced yet another project called the Consentrik Quartet, which had actually formed back in 2019 but was waylaid by the pandemic. You might think that this excellent ensemble with saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, bassist Chris Lightcap, and drummer Tom Rainey is where Cline finally synthesizes all of his voluminous interests in one single unit, but you’d be wrong. The press materials emphasize his deep respect for the golden years of Blue Note—the label which has released some of his most arresting work over the last decade—while also invoking the famous John Scofield Quartet with saxophonist Joe Lovano, which also released music on the label. While both of those references make a degree of sense they don’t provide the full picture. From track to track the music both changes complexion and sounds of a piece, which, again, testifies to Cline’s broad interests. It’s one of the finest groups Cline has ever led.

Cline’s love for rock music is inescapable even on the most jazz-steeped material. On the loping “23,” a buoyant ditty elevated by Rainey’s typically swinging yet multi-pronged, detail-rich drumming, the hooky post-bop theme played in unison by the frontline diverts into forked paths, first with Laubrock’s slashing yet soulful motivic gem, followed by the leader’s twangy whammy-bar mangling solo, which could probably be easily transplanted into a Wilco tune, at least in terms of tone and texture. “Surplus” is even more jazzy, both in terms of swing and multipartite shifts, which the quartet dispatches without the slightest hiccup, although toward the end there’s a surprising break that embraces some hardcore punk verities, including a couple of bars of seething noise. Check it out below. If anything, Laubrock and Rainey are revelations here, showing how adroitly they can tailor their playing to more concise, restrained settings without surrendering bite or heady structural conceits. The Consentrik Quartet doesn’t suggest any single point of reference, but there are a few smoldering ballads where I’m reminded of Ask the Ages, the classic late-era Sonny Sharrock album with Pharoah Sanders, Elvin Jones, and Charnett Moffett, which masterfully fused the leader’s in-the-red attack with swinging, soulful arrangements of stunningly gorgeous originals. “Time of No Spires,” the Consentrik Quartet closer, definitely puts me in the mind of a more restrained “Who Does She Hope to Be?,” particularly the moving Lightcap solo. But it also comes through in the fiery “Question Marks (the Spot),” where the connection between Cline and Laubrock is downright electric.

There are some stunning outliers, too. The deceptively placid “Inner Wall” hinges on a gorgeous sustained arco line from Lightcap, marbled with subtle textural fluctuations, over which Cline and Laubrock daub spare unison patterns that cumulatively trigger stunning harmonic effects; a simultaneous drone and haunting melodic miniature, until it opens up in the final couple of minutes, with a surging Rainey joining the fray. “Satomi” is named for the exceptional Deerhoof bassist and singer Satomi Matsuzaki, who became a close friend of Cline’s wife Yuka Honda during the pandemic. It delivers a remarkably sharp simulacrum of Deerhoof, although it never gets as close to the abyss as its inspiration, and the second half of the tune goes somewhere else entirely. “The Bag” underlines the deep connection between Laubrock and Rainey with their extended duo improvisation in the middle of the piece demonstrating their uncanny rapport and fiery energy. These folks all work in countless projects, but here’s hoping the Consentrik Quartet sticks around for a while.

Liam Grant’s Evolving American Primitive Exploration

There’s no mystery about the musical antecedents of New England guitarist Liam Grant, who inhabits a tradition that’s surged and ebbed over the decades. His fingerstyle approach is rooted in the broad American Primitive ethos of John Fahey, connecting blues, raga, and country in various ways, and while his sound might not be especially original, that doesn’t make it any less captivating and rewarding. I’d say I’m a latecomer to his music, but considering that he’s only been making records since 2021 that seems a bit overstated, but after reading about him a bunch over the last year I finally got to hear his latest album Prodigal Son (VHF), which opens with an overdriven slide guitar romp called “Palmyra,” adding grime and distortion to a rollicking fingerstyle blues, spiked with gritty asides. The playing behind the performance fits neatly into the lineage I mention above, but as the album proceeds we can hear Grant trying to forge something new, experimenting with the classic tropes. It was all strong enough to lead me to check out some of his earlier work.

While its offers nothing particularly new, his account of the Charlie Patton classic “A Spoonful Blues” from his 2021 debut Swung Heavy: Gitarr For Fanatics (Sound-O-Mat), is pretty hard to resist thanks to its easy vitality and clarity. This dude gets it. There are some convincing drone and Indian flourishes that turned on his excellent sophomore album Amoskeag (Carbon), which benefits from the presence of older fellow travelers like Pelt’s Mike Gangloff, further suggesting the experimental spirit on the new album is gaining traction. While the five pieces on Prodigal Son don’t dispatch his core sound, there’s a notable increase in aggression, density, and intensity, with an evolving sense of timbre and an enhanced interest in extended structures. Below you can hear one of the longest pieces, “Insult to Injury,” a multi-movement fantasia that finds Grant digging deep into contrasting sections, with steep shifts in tone, emotion, and attack that are all threaded together with an impressively coherent compositional sense. Dude is only 25, so his rapid growth is understandable, but still cause for optimism. But he’s already making music that keeps pulling me back. He’s on a lengthy European tour, and the fact that his Berlin hit happens at Bis Aufs Messer Records, and not a proper venue, on Wednesday, May 7, suggests his desire to play his music trumps any other concerns.

The Elusive Judith Hamann Returns to Berlin

The Australian cellist Judith Hamann is a nomad in multiple ways. In the traditional sense she seems to wander geographically, never staying in the same location for very long. Although she’s based in Berlin, she’s hardly ever around, which makes this weekend’s solo performance at KM28 on Saturday, May 10, noteworthy. But her music occupies a similarly peripatetic space. She’s virtuoso on the cello, whether improvising or playing notated material, with an especially keen sense of pitch. In 2023 I presented a program of music by the singular French composer Pascale Criton at Frequency Festival in Chicago, with pieces she had developed in close collaboration with violinist Silvia Tarozzi and cellist Deborah Walker. But by the time the concert finally happened after several pandemic-driven delays, the latter was pregnant and thus unable to travel. Hamann was brought in to take her place, becoming the recipient of the very first transference of the composer’s music, which is expressed through oral transmission. It was a demanding, tricky task and Hamann’s remarkable ears and instincts allowed her to pull it off with stunning beauty, sensitivity, and interplay.

She’s made a number of recordings over the years, most of them developed through improvisation and meticulous editing. They mix her stellar cello work with electronics, field recordings, and her warbling voice, all deploying various admixtures and rooted in instinct. In March she released Aunes (Shelter Press), her first album in three years. I’ll admit that I didn’t pay close attention to the music the first time I played it, which was my mistake, because one I dug in I’ve been increasingly riveted. Whether dealing with harmonic intricacy of tuning work, an almost diaristic way with field recordings, or homespun yet indelible melodic sensibility, Hamann makes music that hews only to her own impulses, utterly ignoring genre, programmatic thinking, or convention. The entire album is suffused by an almost narcotic dreaminess, but at the same time its aesthetic couldn’t be more clear-eyed.

Each of the six pieces feel discrete yet somehow they all organically bleed into one another, whether it’s the warped and woozy, sepulchral synth line over which Hamann layers frictive contact mike noises and tuneful, wordless vocal melodies we experience on the opening track “by the line,” or the magical field recordings of “Casa di Riposo, Gesù Redentore,” in which she chronicles a hushed uphill walk toward an outdoor mass in Chiusure, Italy. We hear her whispering to a companion, the sound of her footsteps, the chirping of cicadas, and finally a beautiful homemade choral melody heard in the distance. The stunning “seventeen fabrics of measure” is one of my favorites, a meditative blend of cello, electronics, voice, and field recordings that both radiates and levitates with exquisite, complementary harmonies that glow like the sun. (The title is a reference to the album title—an ancient measurement term for fabric). Below you can hear the lengthy closing piece “neither from nor towards,” an extended cello and voice where her instrument ocassionally vibrates with psychedelic harmonies, her overdubbed vocals enveloping its viscous materiality in clouds of gorgeous ethereality. While Saturday’s performance won’t focus exclusively on the new album, Hamann will play several works including “neither from nor towards” which will feature guest singing by the great Dina Macabee and possibly a second guest vocalist. She also promises a version of “seventeen fabrics of measure” for cello, voice, and tape. Hamann shares the bill with veteran Australian percussionist Vanessa Tomlinson, who performs the second of the two works on the brand new Annea Lockwood album On Fractured Ground/Skin Resonance (Black Truffle).

The Overdue Berlin Debut of Adam O’Farrill’s Stranger Days

Last year I wrote enthusiastically about Stranger Days, the excellent quartet led by New York trumpeter Adam O’Farrill. As I noted then he’s quietly become a crucial presence in some of the best bands of our time—Mary Halvorson’s Amaryllis, Anna Webber’s Shimmer Wince, and Patricia Brennan Septet to name three—but his own projects are on par with any of his sideman work. The quartet makes its overdue Berlin debut on Thursday, May 8 with a performance at KM28, but since the group dropped its excellent album Hueso last summer O’Farrill has returned with For These Streets (Out of Your Head), his most ambitious and sophisticated project yet, an ornately composed and arranged suite for octet. O’Farrill thrives on creating crystalline but sophisticated settings for improvisation, and while there is plenty of top-flight soloing within, the grand revelation is his writing and arranging. I reviewed the album in the brand-new issue of We Jazz Magazine, so I won’t repeat myself here, but I will say that the trumpeter is a major talent waiting for people to take notice. You can read what I wrote about Hueso last September here. While I posted an album track back then, you can hear another one, '“Dodging Roses,” below.

Recommended Shows in Berlin This Week

May 6: European Music Ensemble (Anna Clementi, voice, Antonis Anissegos, piano, Hilary Jeffrey, trombone, and Simone Beneventi, vibraphone) play Sani, Schwartz, Clementi, Esposito, Simonacci, Bailie, and del Rosario, 8 PM, BKA Theater, Mehringdamm 34, 10961 Berlin

May 7: Bakr Khleifi, oud, 7:30 PM, Pierre Boulez Saal, Französische Straße 33d, 10117 Berlin

May 7: Liam Grant, guitar, 7:30 PM, Bis Aufs Messer Records, Marchlewskistraße 107, 10243 Berlin

May 7: Mia Dyberg, alto saxophone; Dudù Kouate, percussion; and Adam Pultz Melbye, FAAB (Feedback-Actuated Augmented Bass), 8 PM, Zwitscher Maschine, Potsdamer Str. 161, 10783 Berlin

May 7: Fear O’She (Jeremy Viner, reeds, Felix Hauptmann, piano, Elisabeth Coudoux, cello, Roger Kintopf, double bass, and Tancrède D. Kummer, drums), 8 PM, Panda Theater, Knaackstraße 97, (i.d. Kulturbrauerei, Gebäude 8) 10435, Berlin

May 7: Lisa Ullén, piano, Lisen Rylander Löve, saxophone, Aaron Lumley, double bass, and Sofia Borges, drums, 8:30 PM, Sowieso, Weisestraße 24, 12049 Berlin

May 8: Circuit des Yeux; Anchoress, 8 PM, Kantine am Berghain, Am Wriezener Bahnhof, 10243 Berlin

May 8: Adam O’Farrill’s Stranger Days (Adam O'Farril, trumpet, Xavier Del Castillo, tenor saxophone, Walter Stinson, double bass, and Zack O'Farrill, drums), 8:30 PM, KM28, Karl Marx Straße 28, 12043 Berlin

May 8: The Forestry Commission (Biliana Voutchkova, violin, Antonis Anissegos, piano, and Alexander Frangenheim, double bass), 8:30 PM, Kühlspot Social Club, Lehderstrasse 74-79, 13086 Berlin

May 8: Lisbeth Quartett (Charlotte Greve, saxophone, Manuel Schmiedel, piano, Marc Muellbauer, double bass, and Moritz Baumgärtner, drums), 8:30 PM, Donau115, Donaustraße 115, 12043 Berlin

May 8: Bliss Quintet (Oscar Andreas Haug, trumpet, Zakarias Meyer Øverli, tenor saxophone, Benjamín Gísli Einarsson, piano, Gard Kronborg, bass, Rino Sivathas, drums), 9 PM, B-Flat, Dircksenstr. 40, 10178 Berlin

May 10: Vanessa Tomlinson, percussion; Judith Hamann, cello, 8:30 PM, KM28, Karl Marx Straße 28, 12043 Berlin

May 11: Kantine Musik (Petter Eldh, Tamar Osborn, Mariá Portugal, Cassie Kinoshi, and Bex Burch), 3 PM, Kuppelhalle, Silent Green, Gerichtstraße 35, 13347 Berlin

May 12: Olie Brice, double bass, Jasper Stadhouders, electric guitar, and Tobias Delius, tenor saxophone, clarinet, 8:30 PM, Kühlspot Social Club, Lehderstrasse 74-79, 13086 Berlin