Thumbscrew: Never Is Enough

Editor's Choice

Rating: ★★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Michael Formanek
Mary Halvorson (g)
Tomas Fujiwara

Label:

Cunieform

May/2021

Media Format:

CD, LP, DL

Catalogue Number:

045775047812/29

RecordDate:

Rec. 8-11 September 2019

You know how it is. You pop into Woolies for a can opener and come out with zircon encrusted tweezers. So similarly, this formidably talented trio entered the studio to record Anthony Braxton material to celebrate the master's 75th birthday. But they'd also brought songs of their own and these now emerge as Never Is Enough. It's no surprise that something of Braxton's soul suffuses the nine tracks, three from each composer, not least in the relationship between composition and improvisation, where each is generative of the other. So, Halvorson's ‘Sequel to Sadness’ dances between quirky rhythms and her own lithe soloing before erupting with some Tony Williams-esque hip drum shit from Fujiwara.

Formanek's title track (featuring him on electric bass, itself an event) likewise moves between jagged ambience and fractured soloing, reflecting the band's experience of the Trump administration. Indeed, the mental health stresses of those mad years emerge in Halvorson's ‘Fractured Sanity’ in which the Wichita lineman seems to have his wires crossed as the guitar's increasingly desperate Morse messaging shatters against the rock-like bass and drums. Always is never enough to have this band (and Braxton) generating the new, the hopeful.

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