William Hooker Trio feat. Ava Mendoza & Damon Smith – Remembering
2.19.18 by Ryan Masteller

What’s shakin’, bacon? Is it your floors, your walls, your roof, the very foundation of your abode? Yeah, mine too – we must have something in common, you and me. Is it that we both live on the San Andreas Fault? No, that can’t be it, I don’t live in California. (Do you?) I wonder then if it’s this William Hooker Trio tape. You’re listening to it too?! No way! That’s gotta be the culprit.

This Hooker guy’s a drummer, and you know what that means: lots of late-night practices in the apartment downstairs, and no amount of stomping on the floor for him to shut up at 2:00 a.m. is going to make a difference, because he can’t hear you over the sound of his drums. That’s OK though – all that practice has made him a damn fine drummer, and when he surrounds himself with, say, two other people, it is possible for magic to ensue. Here he comprises his trio with Ava Mendoza on guitar and Damon Smith on double bass for maximum jazz density, setting the stage for that aforementioned magic to be conjured in our midst.

Hooker’s an outrageous bandleader, nimble on the kit, while Smith’s fingers dance over the frets like a ballerina in “Swan Lake” or Robert Loggia in that scene from “Big” with the floor piano. Mendoza is as inventive as the theoretical progeny of Kim Gordon and Sonny Sharrock. Together, on “Remembering,” they activate seismic force, the blasts of power and tense interludes rubbing up against one another like tectonic plates for maximum friction. I am literally jumping up and down with both feet slamming on the floor, and yet they play on.

To be clear, I don’t want them to stop; I just want to be a part of the music, that’s all.

“Remembering” is part of the February Astral Spirits batch. Here’s an aid for your own “remembering”: pick up the dang thing before it sells out. Edition of 175.