North America

by Curlew.
Cuneiform Records,
Silver Springs, MD, 2002 .
audio cd, with booklet,
rune167

Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen
Jan Delvinlaan 115, 9000 Gent
stefaan.vanryssen@pandora.be

Curlew is a New York 'downtown' formation around George Cartwright and Tom Cora, and including Mark Howell, Fred Frith, Rick Brown and J. Pippin Barnett. North America was Curlew's second album, originally released only in Germany in 1986. This cd has additional material from a live performance at Mort's Place, N.Y, when the group was composed of George Cartwright and Tom Cora, Otto Williams, Micky Skopelitis and Anton Fier.

The cd has 17 tracks, most of them composed by Cartwright and Cora. Six of them are available in two versions, one recorded in the studio and the other live. Recordings are by Martin Bisi, who also assisted Fred Frith in mixing.

Perhaps this is an important historical document. It illustrates what happened in the early eighties of last century, when the borders between free jazz, rock and experimental were starting to break down. Basically it is a collection of very self-similar exercises - one of the track is appropriately called 'The Ole Miss Exercise Song' - in overlaying a beat (drums, sometimes two, bass and occasionally cello) with a simply repeated tune in one group of melodic instruments and a free improvisational layer in another group. The use of accordion, cello and violin results in a distinct musical timbre or 'sound', which is the hallmark of the group and probably its raison d'etre as well.

The booklet has a transcript of a conversation between George Cartwright and Michael DeCapite and tells us nothing about the music. It only serves to illustrate the lighthearted cynicism of the interviewee who knows that certain days are over and unrecoverable, and allows the interviewer to show off.