Vancouver International Jazz Festival 2024: Wayne Horvitz, Horse Lords, Earthball, and Jackson Pollock's hidden cigarette

Not quite a full band shot! Wayne Horvitz' Electric Circus by Allan MacInnis 

Haven't done a jazz festival show in some time; tonight was one hell of a good night to return.

Wayne Horvitz Electric Circus, at Performance Works, saw Horvitz -- a brief bit of harmonica aside -- mostly off-instrument, conducting an orchestra of 14, I think, to make a music that reminded me at times of searching for the cigarette and paint-tube lids and so forth embedded in the paint in Pollock's Full Fathom Five, when I got to spend 45 minutes staring into it in a Tokyo museum; I recognized, in the glorious, multi-coloured, swingin' cacophony produced by the 14-piece band, riffs on Howlin' Wolf, Sister Sledge, the Bangles, and James Brown -- the respective  cigarettes and paint-tube lids -- but often they were very brief, just a hint of spice and familiarity, an emotional touch-point for audience members before stepping off for wilder (often overlapping) adventures.  Knowing that such things were hidden in the mix made it impossible not to be on the lookout for them and to try to recognize the shapes they made; when one saxophonist (with maybe a couple of other players, or maybe on her own) gave a little riff that went dah-DAH dah-DAH dah-DAHH-DAHH, I spent the next twenty minutes, fool that I am, trying to put a lyric to it. Hard to do when you don't know what filing cabinet to look in -- jazz? rock? pop? funk? (blues: it was "Spoonful"). 

It was all dense and strange enough, the music they made, that it reminded me of the time some friends and I -- were we on mushrooms or LSD or just smoking really strong weed? -- put that Jon Hassell/ Brian Eno Possible Worlds record on one turntable, and some Haitian voodoo ritual music on another (I think the soundtrack to the Maya Deren movie, in fact, Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti), and grooved to both records playing at once, except, for the purposes of analogy, to approximate music as complex as the Electric Circus makes, I'd call for a third turntable, too -- specifically, one playing On the Corner by Miles Davis. (Miles, especially at that particular juncture, seemed a definite presence, though if and when the band gestured at his music, I missed it). Horvitz, as conductor, reminded me of John Zorn conducting Electric Masada with coded hand gestures and ample pointing. It must be odd to adjust to a job where being pointed at is a norm. Some were very forceful jabs, though it was hard to know what that correlated with; the force with which someone was to play? It was fun trying to get a sense of the impact of his hands on the music, too, like watching someone paint with weather or something, sculpting clouds and wind and light with flicks of his fingers and sweeping gestures. It must feel a bit godlike, harnessing the elements with your hands, thus.

The overall effect was phenomenal, and funkier than I'm letting on. I think you could actually dance to this music. I would like to try, sometime (Performance Works is a seated venue, so it did not happen tonight). They played an amazingly fun Art Ensemble of Chicago cover (of a song I believe I saw the Cinematic Orchestra do once, as well, at a jazz festival past, the very funky "Theme de Yoyo," originally sung with Fontella Bass on lead vocals). I shot video of this song, in fact, but am not sure if the band wants whole clips of their performances out there? I did not have time to check but it seems to me the local players involved might like to see themselves... Have written Mr. Horvitz and will share if I get the okay.

Oh, Shahzad Ismaily on bass had the best face of the night -- very expressive and intense. Cannot tell you which bands I have seen him with before but I know I have. Very interesting New York Times feature on him here. 

Then it was a fast walk to see Horse Lords at the Revue Stage, which needs a better name: it was actually a great room for live music. I did not know Horse Lords until very recently. It might help to think of them in terms of a denser, more playful, more driven Don Caballero, but it probably does them an injustice to compare them to anyone, really. There are elements of prog, math rock, and American minimalism to what they do, but occasionally, especially during Andrew Bernstein's saxophone solos, you'll hear something else coming through, in a way you don't expect and can't quite justify, things that seem very much other than the style of music the band makes; at various points, I found myself "hearing" bluegrass, ragtime jazz, rockabilly, and other things "hidden" in his solos, which, unlike the cigarette in Pollock, you can't be sure are really there. Maybe it was just in my head? But this is a fucking cigarette:  

By the way, yes, the background of my blog is a detail from this Pollock, chosen because I got to spend so much time with that particular painting (in Japan, at a touring MOMA show. It was bizarre how uninterested most Japanese attendees seemed in the row of abstract expressionist stuff; I actually heard people scoff as they walked by, but lining up to see the Dalis and oohing over the Matisses, while I was going from Pollock to Pollock and studying the de Koonig...). Pollock was also - thanks to Ornette Coleman - an instrumental, visual/ synesthetic aid to entering free jazz, during my 20s. A difficult time in my life, really -- not very productive, even somewhat self-destructive -- but boy did I listen to a lot of explosively free music in my 20s.  

In any event... though I would not call Horse Lords "free," per se -- some of the sax playing was pretty wild, but there was great intensity of focus and interaction between guitars, bass, and drums. It was very, very rewarding and very unique. It was also fun that during Bernstein's turns on the second drum kit that his eyes lost so much focus, just seeming to shut off as a sensory organ, that I was reminded of watching Blind Marc. I actually wondered if he was visually impaired. He wasn't, I don't think -- just deeply tranced out. Jeremy of Earthball, whom I chatted with briefly before Horse Lords took the stage, said he had had no idea that his band was following Horse Lords when the gig was initially scheduled. He was in the audience for them, as well (and members of Horse Lords were in the audience for Earthball, too). Couldn't be more different, and yet they complimented each other perfectly. 

Earthball achieves the same intensity as Horse Lords, but in an outward-, not inward-, facing way, seeming rooted in 1960s and 1970s psychedelic free jazz, but with a driving rock element (mostly via John Brennan's drums. John, was that you who introduced yourself to me at the Violent Femmes shows? Hello, if so!). You kind of get a sense that you're in for something unusual when a member (Jeremy) brings a chair onto a stage and, instead of sitting on it to prepare his instruments, which is what my first thought was, he mics it and turns it INTO his instrument, sliding it across the floor so the squeaks and grinds of the ends of the chair legs, rubbing against the stage, become part of what you're hearing. I'm pretty sure I've seen Han Bennink drum on a chair, once, but I've never seen anyone play chair quite like THIS. 

I cannot do justice to Earthball's music, but there were enough unconventional and little instruments that I thought of a very different face of the Art Ensemble of Chicago at times, compared to "Theme de Yoyo" -- the "Illustrum" side, but without the overtly Afrocentric element; it was AECO by way of Sonic Youth, say (but more organic, freer, less song-oriented, and with more of an Ayler-esque sax than a Roscoe Mitchell one from Liam Murphy). Apparently there is a side-project called CROTCH involving Jeremy and Isabel Ford that I must investigate, as well... I had somewhat forgotten how to enjoy music that was this free, but it came back to me soon enough. In fact, for most of Earthball and Horse Lords, I just closed my eyes and enjoyed the sounds, experiencing the space in my head in a newer, richer way, though they were both amply interesting to watch, as well (I confess it was hard to keep my eyes shut at the Horvitz gig). Earthball's new full length is here, the rest of their bandcamp here. See them, too, if you can! 

So that made for an amazing evening of music; it's my first visit to a jazz festival gig in maybe ten years, and damn was it a good'un. The battery on my phone died early in my Earthball photography, but I got a few fun pictures out of it (no, Jeremy was not on chair the whole night -- he played guitar, sang, did some percussion, and even left the stage to press parts of his guitar into monitors and so forth, doing a wee walkabout, as long as his cord would let him). I wonder if there's some follow up gig tonight somewhere? 

Oh, hi to JP Carter (sitting in with both Horvitz and Earthball)!