Brotzmann/Van Hove/Bennink
Balls

Once, I saw a man, of a certain age, without amplifiers no less, who single-handedly brought down a theater with his saxophone. It was a period of uncertainties, in which my convictions were falling one by one under the relentless blows of the harsh and ever-changing reality. It reminded me of the live impact of Slayer; after all, they also made quite a racket, but damn, there were four of them, in front of a wall of amplifiers, and then there were the punches I took in the mosh pit that made everything more extreme. Never, before that little bearded man, had I felt that sense of instability, that feeling of impending catastrophe, that fear that the theater walls might collapse on me at any moment. And it was in that juncture, going home and pondering over it, that I truly started to fear the avant-garde. This musical form, which in practice I knew from how rock metabolizes it and returns it to us: in small doses, skillfully distributed, so as not to create too much turmoil and at the same time give that right touch of cool and very frizant and ganz that we are. But a whole album of avant-garde…

That man was named Peter Brotzmann, I was intrigued, and I was recommended this "Balls" from 1970.

Brotzmann's free jazz, not directly traceable to the school of various Anthony Braxton, Ornette Coleman, and Don Cherry, but rather to Albert Ayler's experiments (the sax contortionist who reinvented the instrument by expanding its expressive spectrum beyond human imagination) is an experience that transcends the very boundaries of jazz to reach the most enigmatic avant-garde. Accompanied on this occasion by the virtuosity of Fred Van Hove and Han Bennick, on piano and percussion respectively, Brotzmann is able here to set up a symphony of disorder that recreates precisely that sense of instability I spoke of at the beginning, although the live impact is something else entirely.

Brotzmann's music lends itself more to being described with a graphic representation than with words: imagine a huge scribble, a tangle of segments that twist and turn with no apparent sense. Get a little closer, and you can notice that this tangle of lines is not uniform at all; in some areas, it thickens, in others it thins out, and the lines become sometimes more bold, sometimes lighter. If you finally use a magnifying glass, you may discover small arabesques, small images, some sketched, others more defined, that compose a world of meanings that were impossible to notice at first glance. Although divided into long sections, the work effectively has the structure of a puzzle and is articulated and evolves in small scenes and fleeting sketches: a labyrinth of anarchic scenarios and hallucinatory geometries.

The impact cannot be anything but traumatic: rustlings in the background, a tinkling piano, broken sax phrases that seem to lead nowhere. The autism of the instruments. Bennick’s grunts. Then the earth-shattering percussions, like avalanches of scrap metal and bolts on our ears, and the sax escaping in cacophonous crescendos, squeezed like a sponge, wrung out to the very last sound. Until quiet returns, an inevitable prelude to another outburst, in a continuous up and down that seems to find no rest.

That's the first glance. Paying more attention (it's certainly not one of those listens where you can let go), you will gradually be able to trace more and more numerous oases of sense, silly games even, like the drumbeat that echoes a bouncing ball, or the sax imitating a car driving away. Small things, indispensable points of support to navigate the tangle, especially for those who (including myself) are not exactly accustomed to this type of listen. However, as we gain familiarity and discover new facets, we can't help but grow fond of these three madmen, responsible for something that, even in its incomprehension, we perceive as something great. We won't fully understand them (after all, the genre itself is impermeable by definition, unless one has knowledge of music theory), but we will nonetheless cherish them, imagining them working frantically solely to damage our eardrums and brain.

For example, it's not clear what the hell kind of percussion kit Bennick has, which he abuses to such an extent that he seems more like a carpenter than a drummer, giving the impression that at times he stands up and starts hitting the walls and the heads of his companions. Van Hove is among the three the one who seems to make a more "normal" use of his instrument: sure, often among the strings of his piano, besides his fingers, there end up bunches of keys, springs, bells, and everything that can disturb the calm, but you have to give him credit that at least, occasionally, he tries to get closer (I said closer) to something that can resemble a melody. Bizarre harmonies, drunken touches, then, suddenly, virtuosity reminiscent of La Scala, where his quick hands sweep back and forth across the keyboard. It's a matter of moments before the mechanism seems to jam and get stuck. Repetition, paranoia. Then a note escapes from the chorus, then another, and yet another, and one by one they will flit like sparks off-track, finally going insane into increasingly crooked and oblique melodies.

And it is precisely this non-scheme (the repetition of a theme, its evolution through imperceptible variations until it becomes something else; the departure, ultimately, for new digressions) that seems to be the mechanism at the base of the entire work. This non-scheme also underpins the nonsensical developments of Brotzmann's sax, whose emergence is always enigmatic: truly comprehensible in its broken phrases, its sudden epileptic attacks, its coming and going. Brotzmann attacks his instrument in the most unorthodox way possible: he blows, huffs, makes noises, disappears for minutes and minutes (who knows what he does in the meantime), then suddenly bursts into the general din, and it's always a shock. Now he vomits notes that pile up like sandpaper arabesques in our ears; now he attempts sudden escapes; now he tries to remain faithful to a certain theme, but the notes, as if they cannot be controlled, end up shooting off in all directions; now he grabs piano and drums by the neck and leads them to devastating crescendos; now, left alone, he throws himself into desperate blues that seem more like the lament of some agonizing bird, which in its intricate exploration of high tones struggles to take flight: thus it remains, suspended in the air for a few moments, like a foolish seal clapping its hands, like a balloon that is about to pop, but suddenly deflates and flies away, like a drunken seagull that has lost its sense of direction. A bit like us.

Definitely recommended for lovers of the less crowd-pleasing avant-garde, but also for all those who have the guts to venture into the challenging world of music-induced mental musings.