Tim Dahl, Matt Nelson, Alexis Marcelo, and Richard Edson
Mama Tried
787 3rd Avenue
Brooklyn, NYC
Nov. 15, 2023
Save for Chicago, New York City seems to me to be the only place in the U.S. where the avant-garde is happening every night, at every level. Concert hall to dive bar, in NYC any night of the week you can find, without digging particularly deep, performances of Free Improvisation, Contemporary Classical, Harsh Noise, or, in the case of last night, Non-Idiomatic Space Jazz.
Last night was a performance of the dive bar variety. Mama Tried is one of the strangest little “venues” I’ve ever come across. Situated almost literally under the BQE, a high traffic expressway, in a neighborhood with very little nightlife, Mama Tried puts the hole in local watering-hole. But, because Brooklyn is weird, and NYC at large is even weirder, the event programming for this little nothing neighborhood bar is some of the best on offer if you’re a fan of music that sometimes hurts to listen to — which, thankfully, I am.
Tim Dahl (bassist for Child Abuse, Pulverize The Sound), Matt Nelson (saxophonist for Tune-Yards, Battle Trance, and the Weasel Walter Large Ensemble), Alexis Marcelo (pianist with Yusef Lateef), and Richard Edson (drummer for Sonic Youth and Konk, and actor in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Do The Right Thing) brought blinding heat to this dark bar on a chilly November night. Billed as the aforementioned Non-Idiomatic Space Jazz, the quartet played together as four voices having four different conversations.
Each player’s subtle approach buried in the aggressive aggregate of the group’s sound — thunderous prehistoric bass beneath Ayler-esque saxophone shronk, swallowed by barraging percussion, sliced through with jabs of synth schizing from soulful to humorous. Two half-hour sets that each left the musicians exhausted and glistening.
Writing about this sort of music is a fool’s errand. There’s no way to accurately describe it. All poetic hyphenations read as flat approximation. Despite the declaration of existing outside style and idiom, there is an ethic to this music — do everything you can, do it all at the same time if you are capable. Dahl howls into a digital-effects-laden vocal mic while simultaneously brutalizing his electric bass with a glass slide and wah-pedal. Nelson’s got both a soprano and tenor sax hanging out of this mouth, playing simultaneous octave lines. Edson is studiously working out how to play every part of his drum kit all at once with only two arms and two legs. And Marcelo’s synth is screeching over-driven like a glass scalpel cutting everything down to size.
In light of language’s failure here, I’ve only one recommendation: Go to the shows. This music is transformative for the uninitiated and cleansing for those of us who are familiar. The way some people talk about psychedelics as a mental reset button, so too with this specific brand of improvisation. Those who don’t listen have certainly never heard anything like it — and after having listened, will never hear things the same way. What kind of music is it? Well … it’s music, everything you love and hate about it, everything that moves you or turns you away. The ambition of this genre, going back to its roots in the late-50s free jazz and the revolutionary spirituality of the 60s, is toward a total experience — to tie the knot between joy and terror, to remind us that every emotion at its most extreme will render tears upon our cheeks, to reveal that sometimes to dance is to flee.
