“I write down what I feel in order to lower the fever of feeling,” Fernando Pessoa, the Portuguese author and poet, once wrote.
It’s a fitting epigraph for To Lower The Fever of Feeling, the debut recorded collaboration between Stefen Robinson (aka Yea Big, on bass clarinet), Jon Byler Dann (double bass), and the percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani.
The album is also the inaugural release on Robinson’s new private-press label, Black Flag Bonsai Club, which is described on Bandcamp as “Yea Big’s low-budget, anti-capitalist, tree-loving record label.”
The trio first shared a stage when Robinson booked Nakatani’s Gong Orchestra, seizing the chance to open the evening with Byler Dann in tow.
Something clicked, and this record feels like the logical flowering of that encounter: feverish clarinet lines that burn and convulse, propulsive percussion that spreads like a contagion, and bass that binds it all together.
Each musician brings a distinct, strange gravity. Robinson is a polymath and Zen Buddhist practicioner whose scattered curiosity has led him through noise, hip-hop, and collaborations with Greg Saunier of Deerhoof.
Byler Dann anchors Central Illinois’ improvising community, equally fluent on bass and keys, and steeped in projects that span from jazz society gigs to spiritual improvisation trios.
Nakatani, meanwhile, is a force of nature: the Osaka-born, New Mexico-based percussionist with more than 80 recordings to his name, and a relentless touring schedule that exceeds 150 concerts a year.
On To Lower the Fever of Feeling, the trio conjures an unwieldy sound collage. It’s like a gang of mischievous student virtuosos breaking into a high school band room, gagging the bewildered teacher, and unleashing an anarchic storm of clattering, braying, and rattling sound.
The five tracks unfold as “movements” in an anti-classical suite (“Fever One” through “Fever Five”), where slow, sometimes ominous textures swell, fracture, and reform. Each fever breaks only to surge back stronger, the trio at times thrashing at their instruments like they’re locked in combat.
Yea Big’s bass clarinet barrels forward in a gonzo mode reminiscent of Coltrane’s late-period cries, while Nakatani’s drumming veers between jazz precision and messy abandon.
Strange, unplaceable sounds slip in and out of the mix, leaving you unsure whether the players are high on something or just gloriously weird. Either way, it’s exactly the kind of fever we welcome at The Third Eye.
Fans of experimental music will dig it, as will fans of any weird, noisy instrumental music. While it’s hard to categorize the avant-garde nature of this record, there’s enough jazz influence to say this fits along the lines of experimental jazz.
The record will be released on December 5th in CD and digital formats. We hope the trio lowered the fever of their feelings by making this, but even if they didn’t, they at least recorded the collaboration to share with us.
Leave a Reply