From the late Eric Dolphy and one-time World Saxophone Quartet linchpin Julius Hemphill to New Yorker Tim Berne, there’s a stylistic alto-sax line in which a caustic instrumental tone cohabits with a rigorous sense of structure. All three players could fox listeners as to whether they were playing a composition or making it up. Berne, long a developer of Hemphill’s intricately contrapuntal work, has updated the Snakeoil group with which he ingeniously joins intricately multi-voiced music, lyricism, contemplation, and rugged avant-funk. The original alto sax, clarinets, piano and drums now expands to include the subtle and cinematic Ryan Ferreira’s guitar. Though this is the most collectivised edition of Snakeoil, a wealth of fascinating detail remains, such as excellent clarinetist Oscar Noriega’s improvisation with Ferreira’s tone bends behind him on the ducking and diving Lost in Reddy, the quiet tapestries of guitar, vibraphone and piano before the traffic-jam clamour and warbling reeds meditation on Embraceable Me (the strongest track), or the unexpected fallback to a fragile and gently winding unaccompanied guitar feature as the title tune. Some Berne followers might find the sense of being lost within his tightening mazes increases with this more collective venture, but DownBeat magazine nailed Berne’s current music by declaring that it “rocks and thinks, explores, deconstructs and, yes, it swings”.
