Astral Spirits’ hundredth release is a dream! More precisely, the debut release from trio Susan Alcorn, Joe McPhee, and Ken Vandermark is an Invitation To A Dream, an invitation to dream the very dream that is shared below!
Sometimes I wonder what sort of music might remain once all exigency has been erased, what reverberant nothingness might radiate from what strings, what lips, what wound. What flutterings, whisperings, bumps, brushes, hoverings, waverings, what percussive rumblings might ensue from what empty point once music is reduced to the hesitancy of what to play when all has been played or when to play anything (unless it’s about trees, precious flowers, or children) is almost as criminal as silence.
How could this happen
What does it mean
Empty echoes
Fading
…writes jazz radical Joe McPhee in “Less than Zero,” a poem appending the dream like its dreamer, who lies restful and unyielding. The zero-point where reflections are clouded and dreams are broken, where music turns in on its own emptiness, and, asking, what does it mean, and, asking, how could this happen, that, there, where music disappears, is precisely where the sounds we’re already caught up in come flowing mellifluous, a desert spring, a last horizon’s thin razor edge, a dream!
I think it has something to do with that pedal-steel guitar you like which is coming back in style!
More about: Joe McPhee, Ken Vandermark, Susan Alcorn
