CUT

Une composition de Daniel Studer, Cut and Cue (21:22) et une autre signée Studer, Strinning et Weber, Sea and Seed. Vous entendrez rarement un trio sax – contrebasse – batterie débuter de la sorte. Si ce groupe a adopté l’instrumentation rituelle du free-jazz, c’est pour mieux mettre en évidence ses possibilités créatives au niveau de structures pensées au service de la créativité sans mimiquer des habitudes bien ancrées qui font que ça lasse. Du côté du contrebassiste compositeur, on appréciera son focus sur le jeu col legno, soit des battements rapides et millimétrés du revers boisé de l’archet sur les cordes. Il commence seul et est suivi par le batteur, lui-même tout à fait remarquable dans un drive échevelé et pointilliste du bout des baguettes agitées en une profusion asymétrique. S’ajoute ensuite le souffle hachuré et mordant du souffleur au sax ténor. En fait, il s’agit d’une suite où un ou deux des trois comparses travaillent une approche très précise indiquée dans la partition dans des duos séquencés entre l’un ou l’autre et de brefs trios que soulignent des conclusions ou amorces en solo ou carrément un silence. Le souffleur alterne ses interventions en passant du sax ténor aux clarinettes basse et contrebasse d’une fois à l’autre. Un découpage du temps dans un montage précis de dialogues à la fois préconçus et instantanés/ spontanés. Pour ce faire, les trois musiciens exploitent de multiples options sonores et instrumentales. Leur expérience de l’improvisation engendre une croissance de l’empathie ludique et de la complexité des échanges au départ des éléments bien distincts du début. Le deuxième et dernier morceau de 15:12 , Sea and Seed, est signé Daniel Studer Sebastian Strinning et Daniel Weber. Il s’agit sans doute d’une composition qui débute dans un quasi silence suivi par des sqwaïiïkkk de la pointe de la baguette sur le métal d’un cymbale ou le souffle maugréant en boucle de Strinning. Cela fluctue précautionneusement par des arrêts sur image ou des passages obligés et on transite d’un quasi minimalisme - ambiance très aérée tant pour la percussion, la contrebasse ou la clarinette contrebasse vers une activité quasi souterraine et anarchique un moment (percussion !). Clarinette contrebasse seule distillant des gargouillements suivie ensuite par quelques notes tenues à l’archet … Un contraste se crée plusieurs instants entre les vifs coups d’archets puis les grincements d’harmoniques face au jeu zen du percussionniste. Puis le silence. Un album intéressant ou des formes contingentées encapsulent avec distinction la pratique de l’improvisation libre échantillonnée avec précision et une dynamique parfaite

Lisbon’s Creative Sources – an imprint that since 2000 has mapped countless improvisational byways – welcomes a Swiss threesome whose trade is conducted, as expected, along the margins. Daniel Studer (double bass), Sebastian Strinning (tenor saxophone, bass and contrabass clarinets) and Daniel Weber (drums) settle in a grey area where free improvisation, free jazz proper and subdued stretches overlap, none of them permitted to claim supremacy. The overall coordinates are rather legible. Selected timbral events may border on the foreseeable (rarely), and nobody would affirm the trio’s vocabulary was minted yesterday. Yet the three behave with freshness, alertness, at times a glint of enthusiasm, thus sparing the enterprise from routine. Indeed, habit is hardly the issue when focus is this sharp. The quieter junctures prove decisive. A lone voice left exposed, or an interplay stripped to its barest tension, obliges the ear to stiffen and lean forward, like a sentinel detecting movement beyond the hedge. This lends the set its logic: loudness is optional, but vigilance is not. When the temperature climbs, it does so by accumulation; the descent never feels like a retreat. Each member contributes a specific ballast. Studer supplies gravity and friction, his strings serving as anchor and irritant. Strinning, hopping across the reed family, regulates the aperture of each exchange, widening or narrowing it as required. Weber, at times, seems to listen harder than he strikes: percussion as punctuation, commentary, occasional courteous interruption. And then, uncontrollable collective flurries expressing “that” urge. Captured in November 2023 and released two years later, the pair of extended tracks – “Cut & Cue”, credited to Studer, and the jointly signed “Sea & Seed” – allow ideas to flow without impediments, across roughly twenty-one and fifteen minutes respectively. Sonic anatomy is spontaneously emerging from dialogue, no blueprint appearing to dictate who speaks next. In synthesis, nothing in Cut reinvents the grammar, but a well-worn syntax – uttered by people actually listening – can still deliver sentences nobody had quite heard.

Cut is the first release by bassist Daniel Studer, reedist Sebastian Strinning, and drummer Daniel Weber in the studio. It consists of two tracks, or cuts, "Cut&Cue" and "Sea&Seed". But then again, cut does not necessarily refer to the individual selections. Instead, it also points to the ways that each is segmented by predetermined structures and improvisation, not unlike John Zorn's game pieces. That reading would also account for the "cue" in the first track title, and maybe even the seed, or germinal idea, in the second. And one might even be able to tie that reading into the crest of a wave sectioning the sea, to complete the symbolism of the second title. Though, in light of the liner notes, that reading might be a step too far. No matter, Cut captures the trio playing the bare bones of free jazz, stripped of most of its melodic flesh and exposing the underlying nervous energy. One hears elements of forward-driving rhythm from the sometimes-rhythm section of Weber and Studer. Even in these passages, it can be a challenge to decipher who is making which clattery run or gravelly rustles (chains, too, in "Sea&Seed"). Strinning often joins in the rummaging, as well, as when he releases soft airy ribbons through clattering of keys. But then he bites down and out come the howls and contortions and the occasional ecstatic blast. And, often enough, he entangles his lines, whether strained screeches or motoric trills with the scrapes and jangles of Studer and Weber. All of this sounds remarkably close-miked. Strinning's breath comes through, as do the grains of Weber's tools of abrasion, and the fibers of Studer's bass strings. Keeping in mind this basic aesthetic world, the music is surprisingly varied and remarkably tight. A jam (for lack of a better term) abruptly intensifies, only to just as suddenly go silent, before the next motif takes over. At times, Studer and Weber combine into an oddly polyrhythmic, but ever-scratchy latticing. Studer even walks his bass, however briefly and subtly, leading to a tangled swinging session. This sets a notable contrast with the plodding doom back beat overlain with striated reeds that draw the album to its conclusion. A well-cut but wonderfully unpolished and overlooked gem from 2025.