Lina Allemano's Titanium Riot - Squish It!

The Free Jazz Collective 100

It’s been two years since trumpeter Lina Allemano’s last record with her electro-acoustic Titanium Riot (Kiss the Brain, reviewed here by Stef). Personally, I consider this quartet is a cousin to Peter Evans Quintet, with Ryan Driver on analog synth, Rob Clutton on bass, and Nick Fraser on drums. At first glance, and listen, the album has a distinct variation-on-a-theme aspect. Squish It! begins with Allemano unaccompanied, setting the mood, as it were, before Allemano, Clutton, and Fraser’s punchy thematic opening to “Squish It” proper. On “Squish It Now,” Fraser plays foil to Allemano early on, with crisp snare and trumpet describing arcs along the melodic path. Meanwhile, Clutton moves laterally through the music, calmly urging the group forward, then suddenly dropping octaves to layer in a deep, almost loamy richness to music.

“Squish It Nicely” highlights Driver’s fascinating synth with Allemano’s more experimental playing. Having spent time abroad studying with Axel Dörner, Allemano’s techniques are amplified (or, more accurately, dampened) by her homemade mutes. Most of the track reads as an negative exposure of “Squish It Now,” with Clutton and Fraser hanging back for most of its runtime.

Allemano and Driver play a fantastic duet, augmented by Fraser’s spacious interpolations, on “Squish It Forever.” As a group, Titanium Riot plays with space and dynamics in fascinating ways, reminding me at points of some John Stevens’s Spontaneous Music Ensemble. Allemano is in peak form here, with a remarkably piercing yet languid melodic line. One last time, on “Squish It Again,” the thematic explorations are flipped on their head. This closing statement also serves to close the loop of the album, with Titanium Riot recapitulating some of the ideas surfaced in “Squish It” and “Squish It Now.” My 2017 favorites list did not include this album, only because I had not fully caught up with it. It’s a remarkable set, and very highly recommended.

Squish It! by Lina Allemano's Titanium Riot

Sat Feb 03 04:59:00 GMT 2018

The Free Jazz Collective 90

By Stef

Two years ago, trumpeter Lina Allemano's first album with Titanium Riot ended on my end-of-year list with a five-star ranking. On this album she continues the experiment with Ryan Driver on analog synth, Rob Clutton on electric bass, and Nick Fraser on drums.

It's hard to categorise the band's music. The album's five tracks all move in the same sonic universe, one that is both familiar and unfamiliar. Allemano's trumpet-playing is very warm and voiced, while Driver's synth playing is disruptive and bizarre. There are no apparent melodic lines or harmonics structures or fixed rhythms, and the music moves as in a dreamlike state. You recognise the approach, the tone, the approach, the phrases, as if you try to understand and know what is going on, but then it is that little out of wack that makes it interesting and fascinating, like a good dream. It's a little bit like a Murakami novel. All the ingredients are present for the familiar, but then something happens that you can't really put your finger on that makes it beyond recognition, beyond the familiar.

In that sonic world between two worlds, many things happen, but always with an element of surprise and wonder. The music hesitates sometimes, as if not daring to go where it is going, or phrases end with question marks, increasing the pitch ever so slightly, in strange anticipation of what might happen now. And it is only after having listened to this album many times, and wondering about the question marks, that I saw that they were on the cover of the album. There is no sense of urgency in the music. There is no urge to prove anything. The music flows. It flows full of contradiction and contrast, but warmly, gently, despite the atmosphere that something strange is going on. Strange and pleasant.

You can listen and download the album from Bandcamp.

Watch a concert by the band in Ulrichsberg, Germany, exactly a year ago.

Sat Feb 03 05:00:00 GMT 2018