Adams/Bucko/Cunningham – Every Way But What Came to Mind

4.9.19 by Ryan Masteller

Listening to this supergroup of outsider improvisers ABC (not this ABC, or that ABC) is akin to stumbling through Germany’s Black Forest in a Grimm Brothers fairy tale: you’re running from something, you feel like you may get away, but the forest is always getting darker and denser and there are so many tree roots to trip over! In a word: disorienting. In another word: revolting.

Wait, did I say “revolting”? Not revolting – more like “revolutionary.”

Well, at least “listenable,” if we’re being fair. With Adams on drums, Bucko on sax, and Cunningham on violin, there’s no telling what we’re getting into here. “Hound of Space”? “Elective Decay”? Sure, “Midwest Inferiority Complex” has a ring of self-deprecation about it, but it’s a self-deprecation that’s flayed like skin from Ramsey Snow’s many victims. (Gross, OK, I get it.) This is a roundabout way of saying that while you’re stumbling through Germany’s Black Forest, you’re almost CONSTANTLY getting attacked by spirits or witches or evil circus performers or, say, bees, or maybe even space hounds. Point is, everything’s fair game with these three in the same room, chaotic sounds reverberating off the walls and through the rafters (because they forgot to soundproof the room with that foam egg-crate material).

So let’s all put on our imagination caps and pretend we too are being chased by invisible horrors while we’re listening. We’ll get out in the open, get some fresh air, ratchet up our heart rate a little. It’s terror-based exercise, fantasy style, with our pursuers pounding in our ears and jumping out at us from behind tree trunks and rocks and shrubbery. And we love it, because we love a good chase scene, even when we’re the subjects (or maybe objects) of it. And although the pace is not always at its breakneck-iest, it still feels at least like a dream pursuit, where your legs don’t work right. I should know – I’m insanely fast in real life (able to outrun all pursuers), so when my legs turn to sponge cake in dreams, I can really tell the difference. But hey, a thrill’s a thrill.

Your chase scene music awaits at Already Dead Tapes. Edition of 75.