Mats Gustafsson says about Mexican-American, Los-Angeles-based prolific noise sax player, filmmaker, photographer, and the head of the new label Wash and Wear Martín Escalante’s first collaboration with legendary Japanese drummer-vocalist Tatsuya Yoshida (of Ruins – and Sx Ruins with Ryoko Ono, Koenjihyakkei, Zubi Zeva, and Painkiller): «This is the JAZZ we need! URGENT! DEDICATED! RADICAL! Unique-face-peeling-cutting- edge- and- totally-in-your-face-MF! This is ALL we need for a better living!» Drummer Chris Corsano added: «The sax sounds like it’s laser-cutting its way through the atmosphere while the drums expand and contract the time/space around the sax. Hit after hit///make your head spin».
On the Sound of Raspberry was recorded at live bar Aja in Tokyo in December 2023, and offers 30 packed minutes of merciless, super-intense, and super-fast (slightly modified alto) sax and drums (with a few piano samples) duel. Think of John Zorn’s Naked City, then up the volume to eleven++, and accelerate the commotion to 300 km per hour, and you may come close to what happened in this small bar. But it is certainly not only about power. Escalante and Yoshida play with extreme control, surgical precision, unpredictable twists and turns, and a few ironic comments. It ends before you manage to grasp whatever happened there fully. All pure, 100% free improvised music, with in-your-face, brutal sound, with no edits, effects, or post-production tricks. Tomás Orrego’s cover artwork captures the playful, consume-it-all spirit of this performance.
Otomo Yoshihide is another fan of Escalante (who recorded with him Soto, Wash and Wear, 2000), and he said about his solo album Playing Harsh Noise on the Saxophone since 2012, recorded at At Hall in Oita, Japan in November 2023, is: «A gem, a badass». Japanese noise musician Toshiji Mikawa (who also recorded with Escalante, MNE Is Not NME, Love Earth Music, 2024) called it «Desperate death throes roaring from a man playing the saxophone with more agony than anyone has ever seen before». This 31-minute performance was recorded with no electronic effects or manipulations. Just a lonely sax player, equipped with tons of reckless energy and some radical extended breathing techniques, spitting thunderstorms with such focused, extreme intensity that his head looks like it is about to pop off. At times, Escalante was lying on the dirty floor of a bar, playing the sax, shirtless, the veins in his neck bulging. But it is executed with a clever, disorienting, and often disturbing voice, sketching layered, brutal textures.
Race matches Escalante with the San Diego-based archtop guitarist Camerom Presley, whose guitar is connected to prepared speakers. The album was recorded in Guanajuato, Mexico, and Vista, California, in December 2024, and features ten very short pieces, most of them a few dozen seconds. Escalante and Presley distill a brutal and noisy idea, then kick it with a mighty force, and move to the next one, with no attachment or any mercy.
This Molten Salt is the trio of Esclante with frequent collaborators, Peruvian, New york-based bassist Teté Leguía, and American experimental, metal, and noise drummer Charlie Mumma (of noise-grind-musique concrète Sissy Spacek). The album features three extended improvised pieces, recorded in a studio session and during a tour of the trio in the United States in October 2021. The trio describes its dynamics as fitting «somewhere between extreme free jazz and the works of Iannis Xenakis». It sounds and feels like this trio is propelled by a massive and senseless flow of dense magma, fully possessed by its intuitive motion, with no attempt to suggest any structure or form, «like a dream that serves to process the apparent nonsense and absurdity of real life».
Eyal Hareuveni
Martín Escalante (alto saxophone, soprano saxophone, voice), Tatsuya Yoshida (drums, voice, electronics), Cameron Presley (archtop guitar), Tatsuya Yoshida (drums, voice, electronics), Teté Leguía (electric bass), Charles Mumma (drums)
