jeffrey hayden shurdut williamsburg_14

Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut - The Williamsburg Sessions II (Ayler Records, 2007)

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Here is another excellent record by Ayler Records, by Jeffrey Hayden

Shurdut on guitar and amplifier, Blaise Siwula on alto sax, Brian

Osborne on drums. Shurdut is the "inventor" of environmental tuning or

"Etuning" with which he is trying to reflect the sounds of every day

life. On this album the three environments are the lumber yard, the

warehouse and the waterfront. Hence the titles of the three tracks

"Etuning The Lumber Yard", "Etuning The Warehouse" and "Etuning The

Waterfront". It sounds silly but it shouldn't put you off : the music

is great. Jeffrey Shurdut uses his guitar to bring back to life the

sounds that he heard at these locations, with or without electronic

changes. Osborne carefully plays his percussion around this, gentle

and precise, with all the attention going to Siwula's wonderful

playing on the alto. "Etuning The Lumberyard" starts with slow blowing

and soft-spoken guitar and drums, but gradually the rhythms get more

halting, louder and uptempo, industrial if you want, noise if you

like, but still focused and rhythmic, then falling away completely for

some beautiful solo alto, a little sad that the end of the day has

arrived and all activity has clearly stopped in the lumberyard. On the

second track Siwula's melodic and bluesy blowing flows like waves over

the splintered drone created by guitar and drums, structureless,

even-toned. The third track "Etuning The Waterfront" is by far the

best. Now drums and guitar create regular sounds but in an irregular

way, coming and going, like boats or heavy trucks passing by or

power-drills or helicopters, and through those sounds Siwula is

playing his plaintive, melancholy notes, adding the emotional contrast

to the harsh sounds, then, as the music slowly evolves, all of these

background noises coalesce into a wall of noise, and Siwula turns up

the volume, playing anguished, painful melodies, and when the wall of

noise becomes rhythmic and counter-rhythmic like hell, the sax is

being drawn in by the rhythm, generating some hair-raising distress,

maybe even terror, and when at the end the rhythm becomes tribal,

hypnotic and intense, Siwula starts playing repetitive phrases for the

first time since the beginning of the record, and once he does that

... magic emerges, as if he's become totally sucked up by and

surrendering to the madness around him, sounding like a

self-sacrificing liberation. Stunning!

Downloadable from many sites. Do it.