Twenty years after his last performances in New York, former Hüsker Dü bassist-turned-restauranteur Greg Norton hit town this weekend for a pair of performances with his new combo, The Gang Font feat. Interloper. I caught the second, presented on Sunday night at the Knitting Factory's Tap Bar. It's an impressive band, featuring guitarist Erik Fratzke (of Minneapolis jazz-rock trio Happy Apple and the excellent instru-metal band Zebulon Pike), drummer Dave King (also of Happy Apple, as well as this other trio you may have heard of) and the always amazing keyboardist Craig Taborn.
I wasn't entirely sure what to call the music the Gang Font makes on its eponymous debut CD, recently issued by Thirsty Ear. But leave it to my most excellent TONY colleague Hank Shteamer -- to whom I happily ceded dibs on previewing these gigs, in light of his immediate and powerful connection to the disc -- to find a suitable tag: this is indeed a wild and wooly intersection of math-rock and electric jazz.
I haven't spent enough time with the Gang Font's disc to provide a track-by-track rundown, but given that Norton announced the set's last number as "the last song we know," I'm guessing they basically played the whole record. We heard a stormy instrumental that suggested Larks' Tongues in Aspic-era King Crimson dosed by Captain Beefheart drummer John "Drumbo" French, and another that resembled a bloodier version of a later Crimson's "Industry": Norton throbbing on a note arguably too low to actually be played on his instrument, King pounding toms, Fratzke and Taborn wreaking mechanical meltdown in slow motion over the top. Elsewhere, the band twisted scary fractals from electric shards of what might have been Gang of Four's "Damaged Goods" -- maybe this is what Tom Johnson at blogcritics.org likened to Fugazi gone jazz?
Fratzke, the player whose previous work I knew least, played with intensity and abandon. Taborn, of course, is a genius who never fails to provide something surprising yet completely appropriate to whatever situation he finds himself in (see also: James Carter, Roscoe Mitchell, Tim Berne). King's precision-tooled chaos was as impressive as ever. And if at some point Norton was out of practice, it surely didn't show tonight. He played with genuine power and precision throughout the set.
In the encore, which Norton described as a work in progress, the bassist howled snatches of lyrics from Harry Nilsson's "Jump Into the Fire" and -- yes! -- Hüsker Dü's "What's Going On," and intoned the Sun Ra mantra, "There are other worlds they have not told you of." Introducing the song, Norton quipped that he'd been studying the vocal stylings of Ethan Iverson and almost had them down. That Iverson, pianist of The Bad Plus and chief blogger at Do the Math, was standing about ten feet away in the audience at the time just made Norton's joke that much funnier.
Prior to the Gang Font's set, local trio Skeletonbreath played a set of what could only be described as pogo-prog. Some of this suggested what might have happened if Danger Money-era U.K. (refer to this post) had borrowed a page from the Police. Impressively, given that prog rock is still considered a boys-only clubhouse, one lithe woman bounced to the music with giddy abandon.
Opening the show was the punky local composers' collective Anti-Social Music, which I'd long been hoping to catch live. That their set ultimately offered considerable cause for despair had nothing to do with the performers or the music, and everything to do with the venue. Alex Ross, characteristically receptive and perceptive, described the positive aspects of the current blurring of borders between contemporary chamber music and post-rock in his latest New Yorker column. Unfortunately, Anti-Social Music's set vividly demonstrated the potential pitfalls that also factor into this particular mix.
Clearly, there were significant and interesting things to be heard, especially in Andrea La Rose's Concerto for Anybody, which featured some remarkable playing by designated soloist Jeff Hudgins on clarinet and alto saxophone, and Pat Muchmore's Babel, a strong piece for amplified cello with pre-recorded accompaniment. But neither required the services of the bassist and drummer from in the punk band playing downstairs in the Knitting Factory's Old Office (a.k.a. that space where my desk was located ten years ago), who were clearly audible throughout the performance.
I walked out of a Tap Bar show by Matt Haimovitz, another valiant boundary breaker, under precisely the same conditions (recounted here, about halfway down), and had it not been for the Gang Font I most certainly would have done the same tonight. In situations like this, the Tap Bar might be the most depressing space in the entire city for performers who wish to actually reach a new audience. The prospect of hearing Anti-Social Music's next local show, on May 12 at the comparatively establishmentesque Renee Weiler Concert Hall at Greenwich House, is far more appealing.
Playlist:
Andrew Russo - Dirty Little Secret (Endeavor Classics)
Black Sabbath - Seventh Star (Castle)
The Bad Plus - Prog (Do the Math/Heads Up, due May 8)
brakesbrakesbrakes - The Beatific Visions (Rough Trade/World's Fair, due May 8)
Sonic Youth - EVOL (SST)
Tim Berne's Hard Cell - Feign (Screwgun)
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