By Nick Ostrum
Now, approaching 18 years into their existence, the Benelux sextet has released the latest installment of their uniquely energetic and scattered brand of spunky free jazz. The roster includes some names familiar (John Dikeman, Jasper Stadhouders, Gonçalo Almeida) and some less so (Tobias Klein, Bart Maris, Philipp Moser), but a quick internet search and listen render that distinction arbitrary. These musicians are all well document and, more importantly, have chops.
Undrilling the Holecaptures them in the Werkplaats Walter studio in Brussels in February of last year. From the get-go, it is clear that the album will be a chaotic romp, an act of construction-through-deconstruction, an unmaking, as the title denotes, of a space, rather than simply its filling. This is a tape real, run forward and backward, and every which way. Much of the writing surrounding this release focuses on its punk orientation and, indeed, this leans toward the bouncier and more playful end of that spectrum. One might also note that this draws from bebop speed and precision, progressive builds and releases, and a Willem Breuker-tinged lust for rapid marching band motifs, carnivalesque tunes and frequent and tight turns of phrase, melody, and tempos. In short, Undrilling the Holeis an acrobatic exercise as much as it is a fully realized musical vision.
The band is generally tight amidst the chaos. The latter especially applies to Stadhouders. I am not sure if I have ever heard him play a straight line before, and here he does with a precision that is striking for how normal it sounds. Still, he is most compelling when he lays those wiry figures – sometimes sounding more like overwrought pig iron rubbed with a corroded nail more than a traditional electric guitar – that have made him the singular guitarist that he is. When much of the rest of the band are laying sheets of sound in one direction, he quietly punctures rusty pockmarks on the path and encircling it with fine razor wire. It makes for an interesting listening experience, especially considering the finely layered if divergent filaments that the rest of the band produces. This is not to say the rest of the band is tame or conventional, however. Quite the contrary. They are exceptional and unpredictable, more often scrumming over an unwieldy center than settling on a melody. Those whose ears might be more familiar with Klein, Maris, or Moser, for instance, might notice one of these figures slyly sabotaging any movement toward unison or dragging a given composition toward craggier terrain. This music has no leader, but also no single outlier. It does, however, now have my attention, and I look forward to hearing what the band comes up with in the future, as they move into their third decade as a unit.
Undrilling the Holeis available as a download and CD from bandcamp: https://spinifex.bandcamp.com/album/undrilling-the-hole-2 .
PS: For those interested, see Eric McDowell’s insightful review of a couple Spinifex releases from 2016. I am not sure how I missed this band back then, but clearly they have been making an impression for some time.
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