1234 - Ol' Sparky
(4Boxs)
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1234 - Total Improv!
(4Boxs)
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Typewash - Beekey
(4Boxs)
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Though the idea of a vanity label, especially of the CDR variety, gets a lot of criticism from people, one needn't look far to find more that a few artists whose self-released work was more than just music that no one else wanted to release, artists whose tactics take their music straight from themselves to the consumer with no one in between. Chicago's Mike Hagedorn, who began the 4boxs Recorded Entertainment project in 2001, releases his groups' recordings on the imprint, in order, he says, to revert music to "a more primal state" where "any further notion of style or genre is flushed away."
1234, the flagship group of Hagedorn's efforts, builds upon his experience with the city's improvised music scene in order to create improvised music that, while based in some form of free jazz ancestry, surpasses easy codification as such. Hagedorn and Co.'s debut, Ol' Sparky, is a temperate excursion into the world of highly altered improvisation. Featuring Hagedorn on trombone, Steve Ivan on trumpet, Andre Marquetti on saxophone and David Lee Smith manning the Roland Handsonic, an electronic percussion tool that, in Smith's hands, becomes a more ambient tool than was probably intended. Ol' Sparky, the group's first recorded foray into their own brand of improvisation, is a blend of acoustic and electronic output, with the sax, trumpet, and trombone being altered to some degree at almost all moments. The original source of the sound, however, is usually evident, and the electronic cosmetics performed upon the horns is subtle and tasteful, creating, in conjunction with Smith, what sounds like a dark new breed of science-fiction tinged minimalist free jazz.
The group's second album, Total Improv!, continues the development. Grounded in a thick, droning tapestry created by Ed Reardon's Polymoog and Bob Falesh's MIDI/computer work, Hagedorn, Andre Marquetti, Richard Theodore, and Steve Ivan improvise on various instruments of the brass and woodwind families, flowing easily between protracted groans that mimic the electronics' hum to more aerobic bursts of high-energy blowing. With the saxophones, trombone, clarinet, and trumpet frequently warped and transformed by effects, 1234 further blur the lines digital and analog, acoustic and electric, jazz and experimental electronic musics.
Typewash is Hagedorn's attempt to move rock forward, a funk-fueled, beat-heavy trio of trombone, drums, and strings (guitar, bass and cello) topped off by Hagedorn's distorted vocals. Surprisingly, Beekey, their debut, feels far more forced and heavy-handed that Hagedorn's work with 1234, and Typewash's variation on party rock relies too heavily on grooves, with the trombone doing little more than a bass might in another band of similar style. Someday, the same sense of innovation and exploration that makes 1234 such a promising collaboration may have a similar effect on Hagedorn's rock music, but I have a feeling that when Hagedorn's ten-year plan has run its course, Beekey will stand out like a sore thumb among more accomplished and genre-transcendent work.
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