Weasel Walter, Mary Halvorson, Peter Evans - Electric Fruit

(Thirsty Ear, 2011)

Contemporary jazz--the good stuff--the stuff that peels itself apart limb from limb, lurching and creaking, banking towards every wall at once before reverse-cohering, enmeshing into some glottal lip-purse; the kind of stuff hell-bent on engining forward, pushing, ever pushing, finding the boundaries (are there pushable boundaries anymore?) that we don't even know exist and making beautiful war with them--contemporary, or should I say free--no, lets say forward-thinking, avant garde: this album in there somewhere, these players--Mary Halvorson with her lightly dissonant strumming and plucking, Weasel Walter with his machine-gun percussion, cluttering, Peter Evans trumpeting bursts flitting up and down the scale--are of that kind, and Electric Fruit, then, is one of the more enjoyable free jazz--or whatever--albums that I've heard lately.  The interplay here is as playful as it is disorienting, dismantling and destructive.  A really wonderful record from three of my favorite players.