About Catalog Shopping Cart Artists Contact Events Press Search Friends About Search Reviews: Signal to Noise, Ultra Audio, Splendid Ezine, Cadence, Jazz Word, Jazz Improv 6000° Kelvin (SQR 0003) Arto Artinian - flute Tatsuya Nakatani - percussion Antoine Roney - tenor saxophone Jonathan Vincent - piano Adam James Wilson - 7-string violin, fretless guitar [ buy ] klaxon sunrise 962K mp3 sample [ buy ] coming of the Kali Yuga 832K sample [ buy ] Odessa tolchok 1.0M mp3 sample [ buy ] dogfight 893K mp3 sample [ buy ] tightrope waltz 1.5M mp3 sample [ buy ] the burning tree 931K mp3 sample [ buy ] song of Tangra 1.1M mp3 sample [ buy ] whirlpool centrifuge 1.0M mp3 sample [ buy ] vespers 736K mp3 sample [ download complete CD ] [ view album credits ] Signal to Noise [ top ] ... 6000° Kelvin is a feast from end to end. Here, Artinian and Wilson are joined by reedman Antoine Roney, along with Jonathan Vincent and Tatsuya Nakatani (nominally a pianist and a percussionist, but in effect two percussionists). 6000 was made in one day, say the notes, but it's hard to believe so tight and polished a piece of anti-matter could have been forged in so short a time. The musicians finish each other's sentences and light each other's cigarettes as if they had a shared breezeway between their brains. Every gesture vibrates with life, sustaining keen anticipation of the next combination of sounds. In the burning tree, tolling chords from Vincent generate scorching air currents from Roney, Wilson, and Artinian, sound waves beating and melting like a mirage over hot tarmac. Odessa tolchok is powered by a loose-trousered boogie-woogie with a walking bass that sounds like a rubber ball hitting tuned drums. The last track, vespers, sounds almost like a huge Bach passacaglia. It's amazing how the musicians support each other's statements (here, a questioning recitative by Roney is hauntingly caressed by Wilson's electronically processed violin strokes). Larry Cosentino, issue 38 :: summer 2005 Ultra Audio [ top ] ... 6000° Kelvin [is] a well-recorded, richly textured, warmly recommended improvisational mélange ... Mike Silverton, 2005 http://www.ultraaudio.com/equipment/isoclean_superfocus_80a3_pt3030g_ii.htm Splendid Ezine [ top ] This group, whose members hail from Osaka, Philadelphia, New York, Boston and Bulgaria, has references and degrees enough to make your head swim. Arto Artinian studied with Christopher Rouse, Antoine Roney performed with Pharaoh Sanders and Chick Corea, Jonathan Vincent has ties to Rough Trade, Adam Wilson plays the seven string electric violin and built his own replica of Harry Partch's Harmonic Canon I, and Tatsuya Nakatani performs with a drum kit that fits somewhere between Sonic Youth and a Gagaku orchestra. On their own time, this avant garde hit squad pulls in so many directions that the odds of this collaboration producing anything that isn't sonic mayhem seem slim. 6000° Kelvin is a bit eclectic, but the execution involved is an exercise to see how close the group can come from slipping off the edge. Pooling their talent, ANRVW create music that oscillates around conventional jazz fusion and contemporary composition, careful to never run too far to either point. That is, just as a piece is about to sink too far into "standards" or "far out, man" territories, they back away and counterpose to maintain balance to a style they can call their own. Klaxon sunrise begins with each musician speaking in fragments, answering another player in a pointillistic manner without interrupting. Artinian's flute flutters and overblows in response to Nakatani's tapping and clicking; Vincent's piano punctuates high and low with Wilson's microtonal skitters and drones and Roney's whispers and scalar alto contribution. As chaotic as this might seem, each member is an incredible listener to what the others are doing, knowing when to sit back and when to speak and how to achieve harmony (and dissonance) with this freeform palette. Odessa tolchok leans toward another spectrum, bouncing along like a bebop track... sort of. Wilson plucks his "bass" (low string on this hybrid violin) with black turtleneck-clad beatnik glee, while Vincent and Roney join in to swing with old school riffs, but Nakatani is firm on exploiting wood blocks and his various colors of cymbals. The group flits back and forth between these two worlds, yet maintains some semblance of a steady pulse throughout the piece. A bit more spacious in its execution, the burning tree delicately employs all manner of bowed metals, droning breathy reeds and low-register flute, all working in a more textural setting, volume low and continually pushing timbre fluctuations. Having worked in so many circles, these gentlemen are aware of the genre's endless possibilities, but they choose those which will compliment each other and form solid music. 6000° Kelvin is the sound of a group settled into its own sound, producing a body of work that stands alone, timeless and free. It saunters from genre to genre, easily avoiding labels, yet focuses on intrigue instead of abrasion. That is, ANRVW stay true to a vision and keep their audience in mind, giving us something to hold onto during their explorations -- you won't feel an impulse to plug your ears and you don't need a degree in musicology or a score in front of you to enjoy what's going on. Overall, this is a stunning collection of works that gel because of the restraint that experience taught these musicians. Dave Madden, 2005 http://www.splendidezine.com/review.html?reviewid=11180509721043900 Cadence [ top ] Arto Artinian and Adam James Wilson are two musicians who seem to have started their own label for the purpose of releasing all the improvisational work they've done with each other and fellow musicians. 6000° puts the two men in the more structured environment of a quintet where the sounds range from more sparkling improvisation to something actually resembling honest-to-pete Jazz. This starts on Odessa tolchok The piano, guitar and percussion fall into a clockwork approximation of a rhythm section and tenor player Antoine Roney starts blowing satin-lined Bop riffs with a Sonny Rollins sort of authority. The result is still too punch drunk and playful to have the discipline of real Jazz but it is a tipsy imitation that sounds good. Roney turns out to be the catalyst who brings the Jazz vibe to this CD. With his input, dogfight becomes a scratchy free Jazz piece and whirlpool centrifuge a raging storm of sound led by blazing electric guitar, frantic horns, and thunderous drumming. This CD is the most fun of the trio [Darker, Zond, 6000° Kelvin] but they are all worth listening to for showing the versatility and imagination of Artinian and Wilson. Jerome Wilson, Cadence Magazine, October 2005 issue, pp. 112-113 Jazz Word [ top ] Hopefully this CD won't cause a feud among one of the first families of the Neo-Cons. One of the most prominently featured musicians here is New York-based tenor saxophonist Antoine Roney, exploring the limits of his horn with a group of like-minded improvisers. But Roney's brother, trumpeter Wallace and his sister-in-law pianist Geri Allen could be the "Jen and Ben" of the Young Lions. Photogenic and articulate, the two have proven that musicians restrained by the tradition are still capable of heartfelt work, even if the trumpeter, for instance, often sounds too much like Miles Davis circa 1963. Yet Antoine Roney, who has worked in his brother's band and with older mainstreamers like trumpeter Donald Byrd and pianist Ronnie Matthews, spends nearly 68 minutes on 6000° Kelvin trading licks with four microtonalists whose connections are as much with contemporary New music as with jazz/improv. Conservatory-educated guitarist/violinist Adam James Wilson and Bulgarian-born flautist Arto Artinian only gravitated towards the improvisation after hearing iconoclastic saxophonist Joe Maneri in Boston. Another Bostonian in the same circle is pianist Jonathan Vincent featured here, who recorded with condanctionist Masashi Harada, as did percussionist, Tatsuya Nakatani, also a playing partner of French avant-reedist Michel Doneda. After hearing Wilson and Artinian though, the Roney reedman decided he could add something to their sound and the nine spontaneously composed pieces here are the result. Not only does the CD reveal the saxman's command of cerebral, group improving, but his presence also frees the reductionists from too rigid application of that form. Nothing swings, but the languidly moving pieces are first-class examples of modern improv. Throughout, the saxophonist's smears, slurs, honks and swirls serve as a counterline to what the others are playing. Most prominently its textures help gather the others' pointillism. On Song of Tangra, for instance, Roney's smeary tongue-stopping reaches a vortex with Artinian's singular flute notes, piano patterning from Vincent and echoing guitar plucks from Wilson. Soon Nakatani moves from singular bell pealing to constant rhythms. Hectoring guitar voicing and pulsating split tones from the reedist provide rigidity to complement the pianist's elastic dynamics and counter harmonies. Coming of the Kali Yuga and Odessa tolchok provide contrasting readings of the partnership. The former, all piano key slaps, bird-like flute twitters and pantonal reed accents moves forward glacially, with the pitchsliding from Wilson's string set wavering on top of a tuba-like continuum that could come from an echoed kettle drum or internal piano chording. Roney is barely there. On the latter, both Nakatani and Vincent provide a jazzy overlay with near Swing Era fills from the pianist and some beboppy cymbal smashes from the percussionist; Wilson even contributes a near walking bass line. All this allows the saxman to sound a sweeping, irregularly vibrated solo. Although no one would confuse his microtone trading with fiddler Wilson with John Handy's work with Michael White, the double counterpoint is a close cousin to that realm of improv. Elsewhere sul ponticello fiddling and distorted guitar pedal tones often mix it up with honks and bell-muting punctuation from Roney's sax, again spurring high frequency action from the pianist and, at times, lower pitches from Artinian. Nonetheless, as impressive as the flautist's work may be in New music contexts, most of the time here the tone range is from twitters to peeps. Again, no track comes to a conventional conclusion, but by the time the ecclesial and atmospheric vespers rolls around at the end, group melding is almost complete. Artinian's pitches are deeper and more spacious, Vincent and Wilson's backing is almost smoothly chromatic and Roney flutter tongues, whorls and twists in his solo. With no sense of either the microtonalists or the Young Lion compromising, 6000° Kelvin could be brought to any family gathering with no hesitation. Maybe that family should be yours as well. Ken Waxman, 2005 http://www.jazzword.com/nova/showreview.pl?item=artist&artist_id=104422 Jazz Improv [ top ] On 6000° Kelvin, flutist Arto Artinian and guitarist/violinist Adam James Wilson, like-minded musicians since they met at the University of Illinois where they became intrigued with the possibilities of computer music, have advanced their vision of avant-garde jazz by bringing in three other equally open-minded musicians for an even broader palette of sound. Despite the varied backgrounds of the musicians, their talents have converged with their interests in creating sonic impressions which defy conventional notions of meter and melody - or even harmony - as they explore alternative ways to convey an idea or paint a picture through sound. Despite the initial expectation from the first track, klaxon sunrise, that the remainder of the CD will be an extension of the ideas from the first track - that is, serialization of sonic fragments - the listener quickly finds out that the concepts for each of the pieces are as varied as their nominal inspirations. That is, dogfight is all chaos and fury and flurrying as the instrumentalists simultaneously portray their parts in the melee with crashing chords and whining sax voicings and aggressive, weeping and counterattacking violining, the bouts rising in volume and retreating through close listening by all five members of the group. But then, whirlpool centrifuge, though certainly free as well, consists of smears and whirls in an unceasing wall of sound, rather than the darting and feints of dogfight. Thus, it becomes evident that each piece of 6000° Kelvin, though defined by shared traits - such as microtonality, the avoidance of harmonic centers, the dramatic use of dynamics for the build-up of excitement or the use of the element of surprise - is composed. Despite the initial impression of free-wheeling spontanaiety, the music is intended to capture a distinct experience. On klaxon sunrise, not only do the musicians play in fragments, no one musician entirely carrying the theme of the piece, but also they listen intently to each other, as if one instantly knows when to finish the thought that another presents. As Wilson conceives an idea of bowed intensity, Artinian picks it up immediately without a pause once Wilson stops playing, only to have Roney complete the though once Artinian drops out. Eventually, the process of stringing fragments moves into a final section of unremitting intensity made possible by pianist Jonathan Vincent's scurrying and then pouncing work in the lower extremes of the keyboard. In contrast, the burning tree emerges as a subdued drone as the musicians extend a note, except when bending it ever so slightly or moving it up a tone, through layers of involvement. Roney comes in, for instance, as Wilson fades. Artinian overblows the flute with almost imperceptible breathiness while Vincent contributes single notes, as if cuing changes of pitch, in an eventual soundscape. Tightrope waltz at first hearing sounds anything but a waltz as it defies meter in its initial sweep and tittering of the involvement of all the instruments. Even after Vincent inserts his characteristic bass-clef notes to animate the piece, the other instruments remain free, never confined by meters of three, though suggestive of the danger inherent in tightroping. And so, the irony of the title is that the waltz is a figurative term, rather than a musical one, as it consists of sonic impressionism without conventional melody or meter. Odessa tolchok does come close to commonly accepted notions of meter as Wilson plucks the seventh string of his violin to set the piece in motion and Vincent develops an "outside" theme occasionally reminiscent of some of Jason Moran's variations on a theme. 6000° Kelvin ends with solemnity colored by Vincent's dense, dissonant, sustained chords, colored sometimes by Wilson's haunting guitar work or by Roney's plaintive interpretation encouraging at times Wilson's response to his call. 6000° Kelvin, reportedly recorded in one take, showcases musicians who already knew each other well. They can pick up on the others' hints and nods as they immediately shift moods or swell the volume simultaneously and instantly. With backgrounds ranging from Bulgaria to Japan to the United States, the musicians of 6000° Kelvin understand each other in their explorations in the possibilities of sound for suggesting an occasion or a visual event. Plus, their distinctive perspectives upon commonly accepted musical theories have created a sound that can be identified as theirs and none other's. Bill Donaldson, Jazz Improv Volume 6, Number 1, Fall 2005 issue, p. 198 © 2004 - 2010 Stone Quarry Records. All Rights Reserved.