Dave Rempis and Frank Rosaly have a history together. Between 2001 and 2016, the saxophonist and drummer played together in innumerable bands and one-off situations, but one looms especially large. The Rempis Percussion Quartet, which also included drummer Tim Daisy and (serially) bassists Anton Hatwich and Ingebrigt Håker Flaten. When Hatwich was in the band, Rempis surfed a rhythmic maelstrom. After Håker Flaten took over, the sound became variously more atomized and electric. Either way, the RPQ was one of Chicago’s most reliably thrilling musical units of the past two decades.
But nothing lasts, and sometimes a change for the better brings with it some loss. In 2016 Rosaly fell in love and moved to Amsterdam, and while that did not bring about the Quartet’s demise, it became a primarily European phenomenon and has been on ice for some time. Fortunately, that cool down has not necessitated the termination of the Rempis-Rosaly partnership. It’s easier to get one guy across an ocean than a band, so this duo, which first split off from the RPQ in 2009, has made one previous recording and toured repeatedly in both Europe and the USA.
Codes / Myths was recorded in concert when Rosaly last visited Chicago in January 2018. The double album reproduces two sets, over which the two men revisited anew the various possibilities present when one guy brings three saxophones (alto, tenor, baritone) and the other sits down at a drum kit and drops a few extra items on top of it. Both musicians have a lot of latitude to move within their personal and shared continuums. Rempis is a famously loud player who can maintain impact when he holds back and plays sparingly; Rosaly can swing a gentle pulse, or create multi-faceted sound sculptures out of apparently accidental events. All of that happens within the first minutes of “Patterns in Distance,” the 29:25 performance that dominates disc one. Rempis’ baritone snuffles and pops, then digs a circular breathing-fueled tunnel of sound that resolves into a soulful wail. Rosaly stacks quick circuits around his kit with the apparent effortlessness of a veteran air traffic controller managing the whole airport’s incoming flights, and then draws back to find just how many sounds one can get out of a single cymbal.
If that first half hour was all this record contained, it would not be a cheat. But there’s plenty more to hear as each musician switches up implements and attacks. Well into the second half of disc two, they get around to the sort of intricate/aggressive/propulsive amalgam that was one of the RPQ’s strongest suits. If feels like both a re-staked claim and a confirmation that even though it’s just the two of them, they bring a surfeit of artfully unvarnished sound.
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