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Sketch #26 01:53
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Starer 04:34
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Sketch #29 04:37
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Sketch #21 05:17

about

Nick Fraser's drumming is like a tide rushing in, its momentum surging and receding with engulfing force and polyrhythmic spray, cradling and upending its accompanying voices as it pours out into sonic space. In the flow, you can hear callbacks to some of the great free-jazz innovators - the wide-ranging tonality of Tony Williams's ride playing, the "multi-directionalism" of Rashied Ali - seamlessly incorporated into a style that feels individual but also bigger than just him, as though he's holding the kite strings while greater forces are at work.

Starer is the Toronto musician's fourth record as a bandleader and composer, and it features Tony Malaby on reeds, Rob Clutton on bass and Andrew Downing on cello. Clutton and Downing provide a thrumming low-end core not unlike the expanded ensembles of Ascension-era John Coltrane and Free Jazz-era Ornette Coleman, alternating between heaving saws and knotted entanglement that Fraser digs into, kneading and caressing the texture as though he's pulling taffy. Malaby's saxophones drape the performances with forlorn colours, a wary tentativeness that spills out into ecstatic glossolalia with Fraser's coaxing. The band rips through a series of broad "sketches," from the slowly congealing melody of "Jupiter" to the bull-in-a-china-shop barrelling of the title track, augmented by a simple but thoughtful mix that places the listener in the centre of Fraser's kit, flanked on either side by Downing and Malaby.

It's on "Sketch #20/22" that the band stretches out most, progressing from an ominous bell-tolling call-and-response into propulsive nerviness until the whole thing careens off a cliff with wailing anguish. Fraser's movement from dull clanging death knells to thumping snare drum to cascading cymbal action is breathtaking, a constant shape-shifting that never feels rootless or contrived, the perfect balance between total control and complete surrender.

Mark Streeter, NOW Magazine

Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZV16gqkrJMM

credits

released April 29, 2016

Nick Fraser: drums, composition
Tony Malaby: saxophones
Andrew Downing: cello
Rob Clutton: double bass

recorded by Fedge
artwork by Ryan Driver

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about

Nick Fraser Toronto, Ontario

Nick Fraser has been a drummer and composer in the Toronto new jazz and improvised music community for over twenty years. His quartet features saxophonist Tony Malaby, Andrew Downing and Rob Clutton. For ten years, he co-led the group Drumheller. Other projects that occupy him regularly are Peripheral Vision, Eucalyptus, Ugly Beauties and the Lina Allemano Four. ... more

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