While Paul Flaherty has become a household name amongst the aficionados of high-octane improvisation, the saxophonist's early career is a mystery to most. After the formation of his ever-satisfying duo with Chris Corsano, Flaherty has been a part of no small number of releases with musicians like Spencer Yeh, Thurston Moore, and Greg Kelley, though his work preceding these albums remains rather elusive to fans, much of it released by small labels and now long out of print. De Stijl, then, brings the public a rather notable bounty, In the Midst of Chaos, the 1978 recording debut of our young hero, playing as a part of quartet Orange, which was released in a limited edition of 200, and largely forgotten. Dug up and reissued thirty years later, the disc finds Flaherty, age thirty, already playing with fire, though he's certainly not the disc's sole attraction.
Led by guitarist Barry Greika, Orange played a mix of standards and Greika's originals, laced with extended free improvisations that lasted, Flaherty recalls, up to forty minutes. In the Midst of Chaos, recorded (for the most part) after the quartet's demise, largely abandons composed material in favor of improvisation, but, despite the album's title, it's not always the freeform freakout that one might expect. Greika and Flaherty, along with bassist Bob Laramie and drummer Glenn "Hobbit" Peterson may not be the most revolutionary force jazz had to offer in the late seventies, but In the Midst of Chaos was jarring enough to listeners to elicit some choice reactions (Flaherty tells of one fellow musician who felt a need to defenestrate the disc, and says friends returned their copies in disgust). It might be hard to fathom, given the gusto with which he's know to play, but Flaherty often isn't at the forefront of Orange's music, which tends to focus more on Greika and Laramie. Mixed to the front, the duo make the album's most forthright statements, often in bright, clean tones, with Greika perhaps the more loquacious, though Laramie doesn't often fall back on the conventional keeping of rhythm, the bass happy to meander freely almost as often as its six-stringed counterpart, just as likely to contribute melodically as it is rhythmically. Flaherty and Peterson aren't as diverse as their compatriots in terms of style and timbre, but they're certainly no slouches.
What is perhaps most surprising about In the Midst of Chaos is its exhibition of the many faces of Orange. A track like "And Then She Appeared in the Midst of Chaos" give the listener what they expect: frenzied flurries from the bass and guitar, with Flaherty wailing in the background, and the Hobbit scurrying somewhere beneath, but it shifts gears halfway through and grows a tad more contemplative. This is hardly the only (or best example) of Orange's many colors; "The Liquid Nature Of" is three minutes of a dreamy haze, and "Release From" is all crescendo, heedlessly building into cacophony before dissolving into a Martian landscape of echo and swirl. "Broccoli" is the album's most straightforward track, devoid, by all appearances, of Flaherty's bluster, but it's followed in short time by "Sunset Beyond the Safety," which hints at fusion and new age tendencies, then delves into a sparse clatter that's further out than nearly anything else on the disc.
Flaherty fans will flock to this disc to hear the artist as a young(er) man, but In the Midst of Chaos is far more than a historical curiosity. Listeners thirty years ago might not have known what to make of it, but Orange's sound has aged well, and it's more than simple chronology that makes this disc a new found highlight in Flaherty's discography.
