Cloud Of Black Birds

Amazon.com
From Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grapelli to John McLaughlin and Jerry Goodman, the pairing of guitar and violin in jazz comes with a lot of baggage. Guitarist Joe Morris and violinist Mat Maneri emptied the clichés from their trunks before they recorded A Cloud of Black Birds--this quartet doesn't sound like anyone else. Morris's vocabulary is defined in part by what he doesn't use; he shuns effects and hardly ever plays chords. Instead he uses intricate, quizzical melodies as launch pads for dense, single-note flurries whose organization reflects his studies of both West African kora players and free-jazz pianist Cecil Taylor. Maneri's pungent, slurred attack subtly shades the spaces in Morris's carefully articulated lines. They don't trade licks but weave in and out and around each other with an intricacy that repays repeated listenings. The flexible rhythm section of Chris Lightcap on double bass and Jerome Deupree on drums negotiates the transitions between swinging unison passages and pulseless abstractions with impressive ease. --Bill Meyer

From Jazziz
Guitarist Morris writes in the liner notes that, as a troubled youth, watching the "natural beauty and mystery" of a group of migrating starlings shifted his perspective outward: "Their collective movement was held together by a loud and seemingly chaotic sense of order." As fine an analogy as any for this type of music, but perhaps a little misleading: Although the pulsing, microtonal sound-shapes here expand and contract with an organic, three-dimensional feel, it's hardly the gut blowout inferred by words like "loud" and "chaotic." For one, Morris and violinist Mat Maneri are prone to duet with a delicate, precise sense of placement, breaking up into expressive flurries less often than one might expect. Not to say there isn't a free-form, improvised aspect at work - there is. It's just sculpted and controlled. In addition, where other guitarists of an experimental bent might find subtlety in scraping, dense harmonics, Morris' cleaner, fluid style lets the listener experience each individual note, even when they're propelled into compact squiggling clusters. Maneri underscores Morris with sliding, shifting tension, occasionally stepping forward with a sharp, scraping attack. Drummer Jerome Deupree tumbles and rolls in the background, while Chris Lightcap builds little pyramids out of bass notes, and, as a rhythm section, they manage to be at once cohesive and distinctive, never sacrificing underlying momentum for the sake of showy dynamics. Morris also writes in the liner notes: "All of the musicians who have inspired me remind me of the birds in their ability to create an elemental kind of beauty by showing order where others might find chaos." Applied to Morris himself, it's a description that fits.

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