Critical Mass - Dave Holland Quintet

Aug

10

Critical Mass - Dave Holland Quintet

≡ Category: 2000s, Post Bop, Recommended, Reviews |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

JAZZBO NOTES RECOMMENDED RECORDING

Rating:

The first thing you notice about Critical Mass (issued on the Sunnyside label) is the unusual instrumentation: Robin Eubanks on trombone, Steve Nelson on vibraphone, and the more standard sax (Chris Potter), bass (Dave Holland), and drums (Nate Smith). I don’t recall ever having seen the combination of trombone and vibes before.

The choice of using vibraphone instead of a more conventional piano or guitar is a compromise between no chordal instrument, which allows for ultimate flexibility and a really intense focus on improvisational clarity, and being locked into specific harmonies.

Bandleader/bassist Dave Holland directs Steve Nelson to use the vibraphone variously as a color instrument, a harmonic backbone, a carrier of the melody, an improvisational voice, and a secondary harmonic instrument. Robin Eubanks is used mostly for harmonies, countermelodies, and solos.

The next thing that’s unusual about Critical Mass is the overall strategy of using contrapuntal voices throughout. Dave Holland isn’t big on tutti passages. Even on the rare occasions when the horns employ them, there’s some contrasting figure in the vibes or bass. I don’t know whether these lines are composed or not, but it feels as if the players were instructed to improvise the countervoices, so that there are two independent but interlocking melodies going on a lot of the time. That’s interesting and not often encountered in jazz.

Easy Did It has an interesting staggered rhythm along with stripped down chord changes based on tritones. It sounds as if it were inspired by John McLaughlin’s tune Miles Ahead off of the Mahavishnu Orchestra’s Firebirds album, but of course the feel is totally different.

Easy Did It is actually an exception on Critical Mass in that it has a fairly easily grasped song structure. More typically, the songs feature lots of ambiguous harmony, lots of major sixths, suspended chords, ninths. There are very few altered chords, such as a dominant 7th flatted 13th, that would place the harmonic scheme in a specific tonality. The result is that much of the music on Critical Mass is elusive. It is difficult to grasp where it’s going. You kind of have to just follow along with it. The solos, while they have a rigorous internal logic, don’t give us the same pleasure they would if we able to comprehend the underlying structure of the tune. At the same time, the harmonies are rarely dissonant, so it doesn’t grate on the ears. A combination of such extreme ambiguity and dissonance would probably be too much to take, so that’s probably a good thing.

Dave Holland’s strategy for the band has some interesting consequences. While the music on Critical Mass is always interesting, and never offends, neither does it inspire.

Should you own it? Well, the Dave Holland Quintet doesn’t sound like any other band and the musicianship is top notch. I’m glad I own it, but let’s just say I’m glad they don’t have a lot of imitators. One Dave Holland Quintet is more than enough.