Arcana: The Last Wave

Bill Laswell has made it one of his stocks-in-trade to bring together musicians who have not or would not likely be found together in the studio or on stage and give them the leeway to do their thing.  While such experiments may not always be successful, they are almost always interesting.

After the death of the staggering guitarist Sonny Sharrock put an end of the pounding, uber-loud quarter Last Exit, which intermittently performed from 1986 to the early 1990s, Laswell put together the Arcana project, centered around the remarkable drummer Tony Williams and the idiosyncratic guitarist Derek Bailey with Laswell, as always, keeping the bottom line with his bass consistent and accommodating to the other instrumentalists.

In April 1995, Williams, Bailey and Laswell entered the bassist's Greenpoint Studio in Brooklyn and recorded The Last Wave, a churning, boiling, blasting and freely chaotic collection of improvisations that, when it works, is astounding.

This is especially true in the opening "Broken Circle," in which Bailey wails away with his angular approach to the electric guitar, while Williams pounds away with hard washes of cymbals and aggressive snare attacks.  Laswell wisely plays it cool and doesn't try to match the power and propulsion provided by his bandmates.

"Cold Blast" starts out slow and atmospheric, with Williams using his cymbals as a wash of sound, Bailey picks out bits of discordant notes and Laswell lays out undertones of bass.  When Williams starts hitting paired notes and occasional long fills, which is common on this recording, on his snare and Laswell plays with heavy rhythms on his eight-string bass, Bailey is all over the place coaxing strange and wonderful sounds from his axe.  About 4:45 in the piece really comes together with Williams hitting his stride with great fill and cymbal work to correspond with Bailey's always restless explorations and Laswell holds down the bottom end admirably.

The lengthiest track is "Pearls and Transformation" with Bailey's jagged and trebly riffs underlaid by Williams' polyrhytmic approach that is familiar to those who've heard the drummer's music from Miles Davis to Lifetime and elsewhere.  Again, Laswell keeps his bass playing simple and in control to allow the others to riff accordingly.  The piece goes quiet and atmospheric about 2 1/2 minutes in and again at about 6  and then 11 minutes and then goes into some interesting exploratory group improvising that might sound like aimless noodling, but, to this hearer, is a cohesive journey taken by three musicians that do listen to each other even while pushing and prodding to move in several directions during the long piece.

Produced by Laswell with assistance from longtime collaborator John Zorn and his Japanese partner in the Tzadik label, Kazunori Sugiyama and released on the Japanese DIW/Disk Union label, the recording, by Laswell stalwarts Robert Musso as engineer and Layng Martine assisting, is clear and crystalline and makes the most of cleanly distinguishing the instruments.