GUSH - Afro Blue

The Quietus

Contemporary free jazz and improvisation are strangely ephemeral yet timeless. While the extemporaneous characteristics of these styles imply continuous evolution, a certain continuity at play can make a decades-old album sound just as vibrant and forward-thinking as something recorded today. Afro Blue by saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, drummer Raymond Strid, and pianist Sten Sandell – or simply GUSH – is one such record.

Originally captured live in 1998 at the Fasching club in Stockholm, the album documents GUSH at a very different stage of their career than where we find them today, yet feels just as inspirited and artistically mature as the music they’ve been releasing since (including 2015’s The March and 2023’s Kraków 2018). Formed ten years earlier, in 1988, the trio started out by playing textural, droning music inspired by the tone and timbre of the Armenian woodwind duduk. By the time the music on Afro Blue was played, they had shifted towards more traditional free jazz forms, but retained some of that tactile textural sensibility in their music.

This is clear right from the onset, as Sten Sandell assembles a series of exquisite piano progressions to open the half-hour long piece ‘Behind The Chords V’. Unlike the firmer, cerebral style reminiscent of Misha Mengelberg that he came to explore with GUSH during the past decade, here his playing is nigh euphoric, occasionally touching upon the sort of rapture elicited by Keith Jarrett’s seminal The Köln Concert.

When Gustafsson and Strid join him with a flow of subtle touches, their elegant contributions evoke the subdued aesthetics of Carla Bley’s ensemble with Andy Sheppard and Steve Swallow. Soon enough, though, they start digressing into increasingly fervent freak-outs – met with some well-warranted whoops from the audience – fuelled by Gustafsson’s emphatic phrasing, simultaneously fiery and melodic.

While Gustafsson has always been an acolyte of John Coltrane, rarely can that influence in his sound be heard so clearly as here. Whereas his style would later gravitate towards a filthier, punk-inflected grunt – especially when playing with The Thing and Fire! – here his licks are tall and crisp, soaring effervescently through high registers, snaking around Sandell’s scattered chords and Strid’s sparse but firm rhythmic lines.

‘Behind The Chords VI’ settles things down as the players begin articulating more delicate phrases. They frame disjointed, abstract shapes with moments of lovely groove, like a preview of the things that would come later in their career. Similar to the previous track, the recording, production, and mastering quality elevate the music, with each snare hit, saxophone yelp, and piano key feeling almost three-dimensional. To think that these recordings were almost lost if not for Standell’s project of digitising his archive!

Meanwhile, the titular ‘Afro Blue’ overflows with emotion. The piece unfolds like a cover of Coltrane’s rendition of the composition rather than Mongo Santamaría’s original jazz standard. At times, the fervour with which GUSH play comes eerily close to the transcendent harmony of Coltrane with McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones. Gustafsson is particularly on fire here, ripping affecting leads that skip over Sandell’s start-stop lines and Strid’s skittering drum patterns. It would have made sense to end the album here, in these moments of ecstasy and amidst a burst of free jazz chaos, but instead the trio see things out with ‘Improvisation 2 (After the Chords)’, a soothing nightcap of calm balladry.

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The Free Jazz Collective 0

By Ferruccio Martinotti

First thing first, for the sake of the transparency to the readers, in our less than humble opinion Mats Gustafsson is the one and only legitimate heir of Kaiser Brotzmann, an indispensable, larger than life musical landmark who encompasses all the features of a true artist: open, brave, maverick, insane, outrageous, label-less, pigeonhole-less, unstoppable, untamable, drive-forward only. Luckily for us, the Man is also hyper-prolific on the 360 degrees of his musical scope, offering to our insatiable palates a gorgeous menu made of bands (Fire!, Fire! Orchestra, The Thing, The End, Fake the facts, Nu Ensemble etc); lateral projects (Hidros etc); countless collaborations (Brotzmann, Sonic Youth, Moore, O’Rourke, McPhee, Vandermark, Merzbow, Nilssen-Love, Chippendale, Zu etc); solo works and even an exhilarating book about his “discaholic” addiction as compulsive records collector. Simply put, a sheer free soul. Shouldn’t be enough (surely, it’s not enough...), thanks to the always commendable Trost Records we have now the chance to discover some shining pebbles from his past: four pieces captured live in Stockholm at the Jazzclub Fasching on December 17, 1998, under the flag of Gush, a trio that, along with Mats (soprano, tenor sax) sees Sten Sandell (piano) and Raymond Strid (drums). 

To shine a light on what Gush was (is?), let’s listen to the story as told by Mr. Gustafsson himself in the liner notes of the disc. The group, born as a drone-oriented project inspired by the sound of the duduk, an Armenian double reed instrument made of apricot wood, soon developed onto new sounds and sailed towards roaring sonic waters, investing a tremendous amount of time in rehearsing, playing and travelling together. Frozen the group on a long hiatus, after 25 years Raymond Strid discovered by chance the original DAT of the above mentioned gig that has been then mastered by the Austrian guitarist Martin Siewert, granting an astonishing sound to our grateful ears, hearts and minds. The core of the recording is the 19-minute song that named the album, a Mongo Santamaria tune, delivered to the immortality by John Coltrane, the perfect paradigm of Gush’s music, described by Mats as “composed ideas, drone based structures with clear harmonic centers”. We could’ve been able to find a better claim. It's just imperative to add that, if the sax is already quintessentially Gustafsson, it deserves to be highlighted the terrific, colorful, with some Monk-esque nuances, piano of Sten Sandell, that sometimes is paving the way for the telluric Mats’ blasting screams but often is pouring himself nitroglycerin to the fire. Waiting for a better understanding if Gush will (hopefully) be fully back on the tracks, don’t miss such a beautiful piece of the infinite puzzle built along the years by this incredible musician, because, quoting him in the end, “NOW is the time. NOW is always the time. It is ALL about time. It is all about now...NOW”.

The Free Jazz Collective 0

John Coltrane's "Live In Japan" (1991), starts with a phenomenal thirty-eight minute long rendition of the Latin jazz composition "Afro Blue" by Mongo Santamaria from his 1959 album "Mongo". (On the same Coltrane album, "My Favorite Things" lasts even fifty-seven minutes!). The original Coltrane version appears on "Live At Birdland" (1964), and Coltrane and band demonstrated already then how a joyful and entertaining tune can be moved to a completely different plane, one of authentic emotional power and depth, of spirituality and aesthetic vision. The tune became a standard in Coltrane's repertoire, as much as "My Favorite Things", "Naima", "Impressions" and a few others. 

It's a challenge to bring a rendition of Coltrane's favorite tunes, and to make it work. The Swedish power trio of Mats Gustafsson on saxes, Sten Sandell on piano and Raymond Strid on drums take the risk. And they do more than survive, so much so that I have been replaying the same tune again and again for the last days. All three musicians give it their best, and Gustafsson's howling tenor is truly magnificent, as are Sandell's dramatic and ominous piano parts, and Strid's rumbling percussion. It is a phenomenal track that made me laugh out loud of sheer listening joy. It lasts around nineteen minutes, half of Coltrane's performance on "Live In Japan", and I truly wish that it did not stop. But it does, with a tremendous finale, and with a solid dry beat on the drums. So replay. Again. Gustafsson howls and wails and roars like only he can do it, with a wonderful sense of keeping the tune somewhere intact flying through this sonic hurricane. 

The album starts with two strong Sandell compositions, "Behind The Chords V" and "Behind The Chords VI", two equally long tracks, excellent pieces, very much led and structured by the piano, and with Gustafsson again outperforming himself. The compelling compositions come from Sandell's album "Behind the Chords", which was just released then in 1998, when this live performance took place at Jazzclub Fasching in Stockholm. Both pieces are long enough to give each musician ample solo time, including a truly captivating percussion solo by Raymond Strid, halfway the first track. Sandell's playing incorporates many styles, from subtle lyricism over grand chords to percussive powerplay. 

The album ends with a near silent encore, just two minutes long, a kind of lullaby to calm our spirits after all the incredible tension. 

Don't miss it!

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