Aram Shelton's Arrive - There Was (2011)

Aram Shelton's Arrive - There Was (Clean Feed, 2011)

Personnel:
Aram Shelton - alto saxophone
Jason Adasiewicz - vibraphone
Jason Roebke - double bass
Tim Daisy - drums

Tracklisting:
1. There was...
2. Cradle
3. Lost
4. Fifteen
5. Frosted
6. Golden

There aren't many musicians tied to more than one musical scene, but Aram Shelton is one of those rare examples.Both the Chicago and the Bay Area avant-jazz and free improv circuits benefit from this horn player who improvises with a composing perspective and composes to serve collective improvisation. Arrive, which dates back to 2001, is one of Aram's Chicago bands, and you can sense the connections with this city's jazz and experimental traditions, including the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. His individual alto saxophone style makes us think of the early music played by Roscoe Mitchell and Anthony Braxton: it's bitter and argumentative, but also ascetic, expressionist, with a sense of measure. Aram Shelton's parallel interest for electroacoustic music isn't strange to this approach. His partners in "There Was..." are the right ones for such an "in-between" focus. Vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz is an exquisite colorist, but also a master in what concerns intensity and balance.With his double bass, Jason Roebke is a secure time-keeper and a trustable space-organizer, even when he puts the "center" way out there. Tim Daisy is the kind of drummer indispensable when a band needs to keep the motor running and simultaneously to be free from strict pulses. What an astonishing quartet we find here, indeed... [Clean Feed]

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