Sometimes life can be quite reasonable if you have the new album by American, New York-based alto sax player-composer Tim Berne, and much better as it is a double album with more than two hours of Berne’s music who just recently turned seventy years old.

Yikes Too is such an album, a debut album of Berne’s new trio (while Berne’s Snakeoil is still active) with drummer Tom Rainey (who has played in Berne’s Paraphrase with Double Bass player Drew Gress, Big Satan trio with French guitarist Marc Ducret and the Hardcell with pianist Craig Taborn) and a generation younger, guitarist Gregg Belisle-Chi who Joined Berne’s circle in recent years. This trio is often called Capotosta, an Italian expression for hard-headed or stubborn, a name that faithfully captures its sonic aesthetics.

The first disc is a studio recording at Firehouse 12 in New Haven from April 2024 and the second disc is a live recording at The Royal Room in Seattle from a month earlier. Berne’s close associate, guitarist David Torn did the mixing and mastering, and another long-time associate, visual artist Steve Byram did the cover artwork with Out Of Your Head’s artist TJ Huff.

Berne wrote all the pieces except the lyrical and introspective «Julius Hemphill» by his mentor Hemphill. The new trio is a powerful one, with a restless, fierce and profound synergy of its strong individual voices that keeps pushing it forward. On the first listening, I was occupied by Rainey’s masterful, ever-versatile drumming who charged the music with instant, decisive grooves even when the trio visits sparse and fractured terrains. On later listening, I was drawn to the way Berne and Belisle-Chi resonate with each other’s melodic-angular lines and together, through stubborn repetition of motifs (one of the pieces is aptly titled «Sorry Variations») decipher the cryptic logic of Berne’s composition, and create an endless circle of immediate ideas and feedback. And then I sensed how all the pieces came together, and spiraled this trio into much higher territories and collapsed all distinctions between the composed and the improvised. The live versions are faster and more fierce and intense, exploring Berne’s compositions’ raw and spiky edges but the live performance ends with the gentle and touching «Middle Seat Blues».

Don’t waste your time. Waste your money and grab a copy of this excellent album. There is even a limited edition of 500 vinyls.

Eyal Hareuveni

Tim Berne (alto saxophone), Tom Rainey (drums), Gregg Belisle-Chi (guitar)