Hound Dog Taylor's Hand and Joe Paradiso - The Structure and Dynamics Of Disordered Systems

The Free Jazz Collective 0

By Ferruccio Martinotti

What could an old Mississippi bluesman, a Seattle free band and an MIT scholar possibly have in common? Don't worry, music maps the dots and we'll connect them. As one of the legendary figures of American blues, Theodore Roosevelt "Hound Dog" Taylor was an extraordinary guitarist, interpreter of a stripped-down, rocked-out, hypnotic, emotionally powerful, and wildly energizing sound. His left hand had six fingers, a congenital anatomical trait known as polydactyly, which inspired (don't ask us why…) a sonic wild bunch from the beautiful Northwest. Hound Dog Taylor's Hand (HDTH) formed in Seattle in 2010 with Jeffery Taylor, guitars, percussion; John Seman, double bass, piano, percussion; Mark Ostrowski, drums, piano, percussion; Greg Kelley, trumpet; and Joe Paradiso, custom-designed modular synthesizer. They have performed with the likes of Eugene Chadbourne, Acid Mothers Temple, Jooklo Duo, Lori Goldston, Sir Richard Bishop, Lee Ranaldo, Kinski, Chris Corsano, James Brandon Lewis and Mike Watt: all solid swimmers in our cups of tea. John Seman is a truly interesting, larger-than-life cat. With an academic background at the Oberlin Conservatory and the University of Maryland as an ethnomusician, he joins forces with Mark Ostrowski, ingesting every drinkable musical beverage: Zappa, Black Sabbath, free jazz, Mingus, Stravinsky, Motorhead and more. As a festival organizer, John leaves no stone unturned in the musical field. Together with Mark, modeled on the AACM, he founded The Monktail Creative Music Concern, a collective of composers, musicians and artists based in Seattle, “who thrive on the atypical and demanding; the real weirdo stuff.” Could we ever remain indifferent to a mission statement like that? No kidding. And here we are, the scholar. Joe Paradiso is the other partner in crime, a guy who to define smart is a euphemism. To understand who we are talking about it is more than enough to read the official bio infos. Joe is Professor of Media, Arts and Sciences at MIT, where he directs the Responsive Environments group and serves as the Media Lab's Academic Head. He is a pioneer in the development of the Internet of Things and renowned for work in wearable sensing, energy harvesting technology, electronic music systems and controllers. His current research explores how sensor networks and AI augment and mediate human experience, interaction and perception, encompassing wireless sensing systems, wearable and body sensor networks, ubiquitous/pervasive computing, human-computer interfaces, space-based systems, sensate materials, digital twins in virtual worlds and interactive music/media. And the music? you are certainly wondering. A teenage interest in prog rock switched him to synthesizers, and after moving to Zurich in the mid-70s to study at ETH, Paradiso built his own very epic modular synth from scratch: “I was obsessed with building modules, by the end of my stay I had built over 70 of them”. Photos of his creation are readily available on the web, and we highly recommend you to take a look to see what kind of Leviathan we’re talking about. The paths of the Professor and the Hand cross on this album, the group’s seventh, if memory serves: 38 minutes of turbo charged, free-form intensity, declined in a single suite that envelops us like a Texas Twister. “Reverence for the roots of improvised music meets an unbridled passion to push boundaries, making for a propulsive and unpredictable sound.” “A cosmic soundtrack from an alien film noir playing in a half-remembered dream,” the press releases tell us, and we do trust them, because: 1) they say so; 2) we're addicted to press office definitions, and 3) listening carefully to the record confirms the image's correct focus. For those who have never seen an alien film noir playing in a half-remembered dream, we can say that, as reference points, some of Gustafsson’s Hydros projects, Keiji Haino's sonic spirals and, above all, Sonic Youth’s extraordinary (and criminally underrated) works with icp, the Ex, Merzbow, and their double-CD reinterpretations of Cage, Cardew, Kosugi, Maciunas, Oliveros, Ono, Reich, Slonimski, Tenney, and Wolff, came to mind. We’d dare to add the mighty Hawkind as well. The six fingered hand is definitely worth a listen: the surest of the things.