Exuberant Scars is the fourth album of American, Chicago-based sax player-composer-bandleader-label-owner Jon Irabagon’s power unit I Don’t Hear Nothin’ but the Blues, featuring like-minded, News York-based peers drummer-percussionist Mike Pride, and guitarists Mick Barr and Ava Mendoza. The album was recorded live at the Stone in New York in September 2023, mixed and mastered by Pride and released by Irabagon’s label, Irabbagast Records).
I Don’t Hear Nothin’ but the Blues began as a duo of Irabagon and Pride (the self-titled album (Loyal Label, 2009), expanded into a trio with the addition of Barr (Volume 2: Appalachian Haze, Irrabagast, 2012) and became a quartet with the addition of Mendoza (Volume 3: Anatomical Snuffbox, Irrabagast, 2020). Exuberant Scars continues where Anatomical Snuffbox left off. The album offers a 46-minute, free improvised piece that exhausts the full power of the quartet and highlights the ecstatic, intense and tight dynamics, always searching for raw and tough collisions and often flirting with chaos. The dynamics of the quartet become more complex when Pride colors the commotion with the chromatic thumb piano and marimba.
Bakunawa is a studio recording of Brooklyn-based free jazz drummer-percussionist Andrew Barker (who plays in William Parker’s The Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra and has recorded with Daniel Carter, Sabir Mateen, Sonny Simmons and Roy Campbell), Parker himself on double bass, pocket trumpet and the Catalan traditional double reed gralla, and Irabagon, who alternates between soprano to tenor saxes (with whom Barker recorded a duo album, Anemone, Radical Documents, 2020). Bakunawa was recorded at Phantom Ear Studio in Brooklyn in January 2022.
Barker and Parker’s propulsive and powerful rhythm section pushes Irabagon higher and higher into stratospheric skies in the 14-minute, opening, title piece. But this trio is not only about the power and the intensity of free jazz. The second, pulse-free piece «Morgan Avenue Second Line» demands sharp and immediate instincts as Parker and Irabagon explore extended breathing techniques on the sax and the b flat pocket trumpet, and are challenged by the fast-shifting and fragmented drumming patterns of Barker. «Fly Anew» and «For Goya» rely on Parker’s hypnotic double bass motifs, and allow Barker and Irbagon to dance playfully around these uplifting pulses. Parker ornaments the latter piece with a snake-charming melody that corresponds with T.J. Huff’s cover artwork of a snake eating the moon. The last piece «Was One» returns full circle to the free jazz dynamics of the first piece but in an almost swinging mode.
Eyal Hareuveni
Jon Irabagon (tenor saxophone, sopranino saxophone), Mike Pride (drums, thumb piano, marimba), Mick Barr (guitar), Ava Mendoza (guitar), Andrew Barker (drums, percussion), William Parker (double bass, b flat pocket tuba, gralla)
