Ned Rothenberg Double Band – Real and Imagined Time (CD3006)

The Double Band returns, and everything still comes in pairs. On their second album, New York saxophonist and composer Ned Rothenberg and Thomas Chapin again share the front line on alto and soprano saxophones and flutes. The rhythm section is doubled too: Jerome Harris and Chris Wood on electric bass, Billy Martin and Jim Black on drums. The album was recorded in May and July 1993 at Sorcerer Sound in New York.

The music picks up where Overlays left off and takes it further. There are interlocking grooves, odd meters, layered horn lines and bursts of free-jazz energy, a kind of “cubist funk” that’s complex and danceable at the same time. The 13-minute title track is the centrepiece, a long, shifting piece where the two drummers and two bassists build overlapping patterns. Pieces like “Goon Squad”, “Freeka Seven”, “Waltz Fracture” and “Fits and Starts” show the band’s humour and rhythmic invention.

This is a must for fans of the downtown New York scene, of groove-based avant-garde jazz and of Medeski Martin & Wood. Released on Moers Music. When you buy here, you’re buying directly from the label, and we only sell originals.

The Side Story

The Double Band was one of Ned Rothenberg’s main projects in the early 1990s. The first album, Overlays (CD2074), was recorded in Bochum in 1991. Two years later the band went into the studio in New York with an updated line-up. Billy Martin was back, and with Chris Wood on bass and Jim Black on second drums, the band had two of the most important young rhythm players of the New York scene.

Rothenberg himself is a master of the woodwinds: saxophones, clarinets, flute and the Japanese shakuhachi, which he studied in Japan. He has lived in New York since 1978, played in Anthony Braxton’s Creative Orchestra and worked with John Zorn, Fred Frith, Marc Ribot and Evan Parker. The New York Times described the Double Band’s music as “jazz-funk in cubist perspective, dizzying, yet visceral”. Bassist and guitarist Jerome Harris stayed with Rothenberg for decades, later in the trio Sync.

Tracklist

1. Raibread – 6:26

2. Goon Squad – 7:19

3. Real and Imagined Time – 13:30

4. The Medley of Unbroken Lines / Once and Future – 6:56

5. Freeka Seven – 7:15

6. Open Jaw – 3:58

7. Waltz Fracture – 5:34

8. Fits and Starts – 8:10

Total running time: approx. 59 minutes

Personnel

• Ned Rothenberg – alto saxophone, flute

• Thomas Chapin – alto & soprano saxophone, flute

• Jerome Harris – electric bass, electric guitar

• Chris Wood – electric bass

• Billy Martin – drums

• Jim Black – drums

Details

• Format: CD

• Label: Moers Music

• Catalog no.: CD3006

• Recorded: May 11–12 and July 27–28, 1993, Sorcerer Sound, New York City

• Price: €14.00