Innova Recordings
Personnel:
Jared Sims – soprano and tenor saxophone, clarinet
Matt Steckler – soprano, alto and tenor saxophone,
flute, shaw whistle, holler
Charlie Kohlhase – alto and baritone saxophone
Drew Sayers – alto, tenor and baritone saxophone
Arie Werbrouck – acoustic upright bass
Bill Carbone – drums and percussion
Bill Carbone plays Turkish cymbals
Tracks and Soloists:
2 - SOS
Ankara (5:54)
Bass
– Werbrouck, Tenor
- Sims
3 - Hepcat Revival (5:21)
Tenor
– Steckler, Soprano - Sims
4 - Myopia Hunt Club (4:28)
5 - Hear My Flow (7:56)
Tenor
- Sayers
6 - Cats: Is It Fish or Finite?
(7:15)
Alto
– Sayers, Bass - Werbrouck
7 - Dis You, Dear (5:32)
Bari
– Kohlhase, Flute - Steckler
8 - Angelic & Podlike (6:45)
9 - I
Once Was Vaccinated With a Phonograph Needle (4:11)
Bari
- Kohlhase
10 - Department of Homeland
Strategery (7:13)
I would like to take the time to
thank my family – Megan, my closest and dearest (and Angelic &
Podlike muse); my parents, Charles and Rosemarie, for their inexhaustible
support; my band mates, Bill, Arie, Drew, Jared and Charlie, without whom this
music could never be realized; Craig & Brian at Q for their vision and
execution; Alex & Mike at Pyramid for their elegance under pressure; Philip
at Innova for the opportunity to spread this music; Fred Bouchard for his wild
& witty insight; Meet the Composer for rewarding the creative spirit;
Time-honored DCB alums who helped paved the way; my cats Talmot (the county magistrate)
& Mingus (chairman meow); the great music heroes, too plentiful to name but
honored daily…
The Notes
When your jaded, unslaked Boston music critic
saunters into an Irish pub (Matt Murphy’s or An Tua Nua) for an innocent
pint and is confronted with the impassioned bleats and untamed caterwauls
emanating from the unruly passel of saxophones plus bass & drums, he is
dangerously tempted to liken the band to one heretofore unheard of. As he
gloats over the dionysiac dance of the glinting brass players shoehorned in a
dark alcove that clashes with the clang of pans from the nearby kitchen and
tiptoes betwixt the happy patter of youthful patrons, he is nearly overwhelmed
by the false aroma of discovery, grabbing for his pad to announce Dead Cat
Bounce as a first-coming of something uniquely unquiet. Dangerous words rush
in: Are these twenny-sumpn’ reedmavens a weed-smoking six-gun, a
poisonous six-pak of too heady a brew, a mystic hexagram of itching youth?
Morning light harshly reveals the truth: Dead
Cat Bounce is in the tradition, a cleverly anti-catatonic cantilever across the
mainstream! Yass, they’ve been acclaimed Boston’s Outstanding Jazz
Act by Boston Music Awards, Boston Phoenix Music Poll and Improper Bostonian.
Head-cat Matt Steckler has written works commissioned by Meet the Composer and
Chamber Music America. Dead Cat’s earlier albums go to show that, in
addition to "having sprung, like Venus on the half-shell, full-blown from
the brow of Zeus," it has in fact derived its own purling meow from
irreverently unslavish study of its forebears (Charles Mingus, World Saxophone
Quartet, even Either/Orchestra and CK5) and three bears (Roland Kirk, Sonny
Rollins, Coleman Hawkins). Doing penance, that abashed critic does his gloss of
the current album’s tracks.
1 Hiram Hinckler’s Shrunken Heads presents a score for
an unmade Indiana Jones B film. Listeners beware after Charlie’s
rip-snorting alto solo: the head that shrinks may be your own. Spell relief:
"Drew’s bari outburst" under flagellating flauts.
2 Long unison runs swirl through SOS Ankara, with quick-time
sections spelling alto narration and bass solo (Arie over dry sticks). We
continue under vamps, as ensembles (in unison with drums) lead to gritty,
earthy tenor mudness (Mr. Sims) – brewed in a piping hot brass briki and
served with lots of sugar.
3 Hepcats unite! You have nothing to lose but
your squaredom! This full-blown composition (with a title out of Lord Buckley)
opens thus: Quick-step Capetown highlife riddims lead to fast 2/4 (soprano and
bari canoodling on top) then to bass & drum street vamp with oily smears.
Horn chorale punctuate Matt’s tenor preaching (as reverend, not muezzin)
and Jared’s soprano echoing before the Mingus Prayer Meeting overruns the
sanctuary and chases everyone back to S. Africa.
4 Myopia Hunt Club, a blueblood
aggregate on Boston’s toney Nawth Shawr, used to hunt fox but now play polo
and rugby. Brits, say you? Celts, counter The Cats, who lay on more Gaelic than
King’s English tales. Matt opens on pennywhistle for reel-like spins,
then jumps to alto (courtesy of Phil Woods, Charles McPherson). Brilliant band
charges on the out-chorus are in league to nail that fox!
5 Hear My Flow is a slow
elephant-walk for bass and flute, fading to a bass / bari quickstep,
soprano/alto-led ensemble; bass, drum & bari-punctured ensemble;
Drew’s tenor solo rides on and builds over mixed ensemble activity; more
ensembles, drum break for final rock-like chorus and rallentando ending.
6 A catpella Cats quietly rally
‘round a fishbowl, admiring an infinitely mirrored view: twin sopranos
add twin altos for angling with tambourine and shaker. Drum rumbles and
Arie’s distant-thunder bowing (under Drew’s nagaswaram alto) evolve
into barreling bass over thrash snares. An ominous ensemble rears its heads
like beasts in a post-King Kong animé flick. Somehow, these cats mutate
into sabre-tooth tiggers; yet, after a brief silence, they squiggle back thru a
wormhole, roil, and fade whimpering.
7 In Dis You, Charlie’s
galumphing bari states a Sun Ra-like proto-bop theme (eight bars repeated) over
Bill’s second-line back-heavy beats; Matt’s flute varies it over
clarinets and bari, then Jared and Matt put it through Dixie variations. After
Arie and Bill pick up the melody, Charlie solos close to the bone, then
stretches with flute and clarinet on top. Jared’s clarinet warms, then
Matt heats up his flute with Rahsaan-like incandescence. Clarinets cool it down
and bass backs it out.
8 Angelic & Podlike again offers filmic
possibilities as William Blake (or Breuker?) meets Donald Sutherland. Concert
band waltz meter creeps in tripletting. Matt’s soprano launches itself in
a pod piece (shades of a C. S. Lewis sci-fi classic) over tight horn harmonies,
then floats it further over Bill’s naked skins. The waltz circles back,
as Matt keeps flying under descending staccato riffs and drum press rolls. The
closing ensemble smacks of The Blues Project gone Alien.
9 Deadslow and darkling, I Once Was… opens vistas
out of deepest Africa. Our grizzled griot on bari is Charlie, telling anguished
tales of post-colonial rapacity. He climbs the slopes of Kilimanjaro, melting
under the heat of sustained saxophones.
10 Aah, home speaks to the wandering at last,
with timely, good-humored political satire on the grill! In the Department
of Homeland Strategery, Dubya’s extra syllable translates to Jared’s
gefluffled tenor indignation at the turkey farm and smears a la Shepp.
Crescendi and accelerandi are homemade side dishes on the groaning buffet. Bill
and Arie parade paramilitarily before top brass usher us out to the patio to
review with alarm the raging cosmos.
With that, ye privileged listeners go forth
and babble to the rabble about the wondrous sounds heard herein!
--- Fred Bouchard
November 27 & December 7, 2003
Turkey Day & Pearl Harbor Day
Fred Bouchard writes for Downbeat Magazine and
teaches at Berklee College of Music.
Produced by Craig Welsch and Matt Steckler
Engineered by Brian Brown and Craig Welsch
Recorded July 30 & 31, 2003 at Q Division Studios,
Somerville MA
Mixed November 2003 at Q Division
Mastered by Alex Perialas and Mike at Pyramid Sound Studios,
Ithaca NY
Artwork and Photography by Charles Steckler
Liner Notes by Fred Bouchard
CD Layout by Philip Blackburn
All compositions are by Matt Steckler (Chonsky Music, ASCAP)
This
music was made possible through a generous commission from Meet the
Composer/Commissioning Music USA
©
copyright 2003 Matt Steckler/Chonsky Music • all rights reserved
unauthorized
duplication is a violation of applicable laws
For
ordering CDs and other information, contact www.mattsteckler.com
or www.deadcatbounce.org
Or
contact:
Innova
Recordings
332
Minnesota St. E-145
St. Paul,
MN 55101