#william hooker

Ian Mathers: As one of the Dusted folks less familiar with/knowledgeable in the many facets of jazz, I admit I was a bit intimidated here; 90 minutes of free jazz seems a lot more daunting to me than, say, listening to the almost-as-long Water Damage LP from last year. But this afternoon I had a sustained burst of editing to take care of at my day job, so I threw on The Ancients as I got going, and that hour and a half practically flew by. I know I've tried listening to free jazz sporadically before (generally with pleasure, although for whatever reason it's not something I tend to reach for) but this is just about the easiest it's ever gone down. And yet the sets here don't feel diluted or entry-level at all (as far as I can tell as a neophyte). I was mostly paying conscious attention to Collier's sax, but all three trio members felt like they kept my attention. Am I just finally at a point in my life where jazz is starting to click more, or can those more already attuned to the nuances here tell me the ways this is exceptional?

Bill Meyer: Ian, you have gone straight to the point. In any genre, there's stuff that's good, stuff that's just okay and the rest. This album is the good stuff. It is accessible inasmuch as this music, while improvised, is played with a deep commitment to stating the groove. I think that's partly a function of the Hooker-Parker relationship. In his own bands, Hooker leads from the front and the rest of the musicians have to catch up. With Parker, I think he understands himself to be performing a different role and so the two of them are really locked into each other's playing. Another aspect contributing to accessibility is that I think that Collier is is in touch with song forms even when he's not playing a song. 

Bryon Hayes: You both have managed to articulate my thoughts on this recording.  The groove and the pacing of the Parker-Hooker rhythm section, and the way that they distribute their combined energies throughout each set, really kept me riveted.  I've heard both of these gentlemen in different settings and with different collaborators but never together, and they seem deeply in tune with each other here.  I'm also not an expert in the free jazz world, so I usually go by how a recording impacts me when deciding if I like it or not: whether I'm getting punched in the guts or whether I'm being probed in the emotional center of the brain.  This one falls in the latter category, as it feels rooted in soulfulness, especially Collier's playing - even when he's blowing his lungs out, there are little snatches of melody that really sing.  I really dig it. 

Bill Meyer: I’m certainly not an expert on Collier’s work, but because I live in Chicago I’ve had some opportunities to see him in diverse settings. Aside from the bands he leads, he sometimes sits in with other people; I’ve seen him with ensembles led by Hamid Drake and William Parker, where he does some AACM-style little instrument coloration as well as play saxophone. And I once saw a very curious solo concert where he mainly played sampler, coming up with something that sounded like a collage of some basement noise and solo keyboard fragments of contemporary r&b. 

In this trio, he seems very clear about his roll. He’s the spearhead, the focus of the rhythm section’s energy as well as his own. 

Jennifer Kelly: Okay, with the usual disclaimers about my not-super-familiarity or comfort with free improv, I’m finding that I like the third track the best, “2023-05-13 LA Set II.” Maybe that’s because it lets the bass and drums lead for an extended opening, at first a barely audible rumble of low-end and hands on drums, and then more of a conventional swing on cymbals with Parker’s bass bubbling up in synchrony and Collier, just sort of growling on sax.  His first long tone blows in like a fly swooping over, the tone dopplering against a swaggering rhythm.  And then you get the sort of song part of the piece, which is most of it, and I like the way the three principals meet, but very loosely, coming at the groove from different directions, everybody on his own trip but swerving suddenly back into the thick of it.  I hear them all echoing the same rhythm but not at the same time, one long note then a couple of short ones, daaah di di daah di di daah di di, and it works like machinery warped subtly out of true, volatile, intersecting, not quite making a monolith.