Weird of Mouth - s/t (Otherly Love, 2024)

By Eyal Hareuveni

Weird of Mouth is one of the new, intrepid and aptly-titled bands of Danish-born, Norway-based alto sax player Mette Rasmussen that can outlive the imaginary barrier of a debut album, alongside ØKSE (Axe in Danish, with New York-based drummer Savannah Harris, Haitian electronics player Val Jeanty and Swedish bassist Petter Eldh) and the unrecorded yet The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (with British turntables player, Italian trumpeter-electronics player Gabriele Mitelli and Austrian drummer Lukas König). Weird of Mouth features pianist American, New York-based Craig Taborn, who performed sporadically with Rasmussen since 2004, and drummer-percussionist Ches Smith, who has collaborated with Taborn since 2009 (in a trio with violist Mat Maneri, in Smith’s The Bell and Interpret It Well, ECM, 2016 and Pyroclastic, 2022, and with Dave Holland and Evan Parker, Uncharted Territories, Dar2, 2018).

The debut, self-titled album of Weird of Mouth was recorded at Big Orange Sheep in Brooklyn in June 2022 (and mixed by Deerhoof guitarist John Dieterich, with surreal cover artwork by drummer- painter-tattooist John Herndon), following a handful of gigs in North America since their first appearance at Manhattan’s The Stone in 2016, and the trio reconvened recently to celebrate its release. The trio relies not only on the extensive experience of its musicians in free jazz and free improvised settings as well as its deep camaraderie but also introduces a fresh and compound comprised of Rasmussen raw sax sound, with and without preparations, the sophistication of Taborn’s piano playing and the rhythmic wisdom of Chess, who is also a devout student of Haitian Vodou drums.

The music of this trio is entirely improvised but its instrument-defying format blurs the common distinction between the composed and the improvised. The three musicians were recorded close-miked and in the same, resonant room, so you can feel the raw and immediate, tangible in-your-face energy. The stream of ideas feeds the powerful dynamics as the trio expeditiously moves between fierce and fiery attacks to brief and more sparse interplay, as the first pieces - “Wolf Cry”, “Dogs in Orbit” and the cathartic “Existension” - suggest with their fast dances of overlapping blows and jabs. And, indeed, the newly-founded Otherly Love label compares such heavyweight dynamics to the one of the legendary Japanese Yosuke Yamashita Trio (with Akira Sakata and Takeo Moriyama) that referenced boxing champion Muhammad Ali (in April Fool: Coming Muhammad Ali, Super Fuji Discs, and Clay, Enja, 1975).

But Weird of Mouth is more than just sheer power. “Brooders Of Joy” offers its lyrical, contemplative side with Rasmussen singing the soulful ballad, and on the following “Planisphere” Taborn and Smith cleverly contrast and subvert Rasmussen's commanding, soaring sax flights. “In Search of Soul Pane” is the sparsest, most mysterious piece here, with Taborn employing preparations on the piano strings, Rasmussen muting her sax and producing long tones and Smith adding ritualist percussive touches on the tuned gongs. The last piece “Proven Right, Then Left, Then Right” cements the wise, real-time architecture of the trio that relies on deep trust about what all can bring into the masterful, creative process.