MATTHEW SHIPP
Songs (Splasc(H))
Reviewed by DJ Johnson

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Thank you, Matthew Shipp, for never, ever being boring. For never doing the same thing twice. For always taking a machete with you and hacking your own trail as you fuse bits of traditional piano jazz with this or that innovation. Not everyone appreciated the experimentation with electronic music and piano, but I got thoroughly drunk on the textures and sounds. I don't know why I was surprised to put this on and find something shockingly different. What else would I find on a Matthew Shipp recording?

Songs indeed. Songs that are well-known, like "We Three Kings," here renamed as "We Free Kings" to allow for Shipp's brief foray into free jazz territory in the middle of the song's structure. "There Will Never Be Another You" is taken apart to reveal its tiniest threads and is left disassembled. Most players in the deconstruction field feel it's impolite not to put the damn thing back together. Shipp may have reduced this one to atoms. What fun he must have, like an electronics genius taking apart machines, as he gently slips open the covers of old classics like Dizzy Gillespie's "Con Alma" and Milt Jackson's "Bags' Groove" and gets right into the unseen guts of songs like "On Green Dolphin Street," "Angel Eyes," "East Broadway Run Down," "Almighty Fortress Is Our God" and "Yesterdays."

At times the listening can be challenging, as it is during a rather long discordant segment of "Con Alma," but if Shipp was trying to build tension there he succeeded, because when he suddenly switched to a broad and tonally pleasant chord I felt my shoulders drop. One of many fascinating and somewhat intimidating things about Matthew Shipp is that he doesn't always let you off the hook. As I said, he never does reassemble "There Will Never Be Another You," and some listeners feel they need to be brought back all the way from any foray into free waters. Those people were left on the hook. I don't mind being dropped off in most crazy neighborhoods. With this particular album, I'm never left with my shoulders up, but I'm also never bored for one moment. One man, one piano and a headful of endless ideas make for a hell of an avant-garde jazz CD.

© 2002 - DJ Johnson