NEW YORK (Top40 Charts/ Cryptogramophone Records) - It's rare to find a group that's maintained a consistent line-up for as long as fifteen years. Violinist and Cryptogramophone founder Jeff Gauthier (pronounced go-tee-ay) has been recording with the same quartet - keyboardist
David Witham, bassist Joel Hamilton and drummer/percussionist Alex Cline - since his first album as a leader, 1993's Internal Memo, released on Left Coast legend
Vinny Golia's Nine Winds label. With the formation of Cryptogramophone in the late 1990s, Gauthier recruited Alex Cline's twin brother, the chameleon-like guitarist Nels Cline, and The Jeff Gauthier Goatette was born.
Nels Cline may have been new to the Goatette, but was no stranger to its members, with a shared past that included working with his brother and Gauthier alongside the late bassist/composer Eric Von Essen in Quartet Music, an acoustic improvising unit inspired by the more pastoral Oregon, but with a grittier urban edge. Von Essen's impact on the Left Coast scene continues to be felt to this day, and remains one of the pillars upon which Cryptogramophone was built.
House of Return is Gauthier's third release with the Goatette, and continues a general conceptual design that began with 2001's Mask and continued with 2006's One and the Same: one or more pieces selected from Von Essen's bottomless wellspring of songs; new material written by Gauthier and the Cline brothers; and the occasional inclusion of material by artists influential to the Goatette's members including Ornette Coleman and Bennie Maupin, the latter now a Cryptogramophone recording artist himself, with two welcome albums since 2005 (Penumbra and 2008's Early Reflections) that have re-established the woodwind multi-instrumentalist as a vital and relevant writer/performer.
The Goatette's line-up may be the same, and its sources for material equally unchanged, but from the first notes of House of Return's opener, Von Essen's noir-ish ballad, "Biko's Blues," the old adage "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" clearly applies. What's perhaps most remarkable about the Goatette is its ability to bring together a truly eclectic set of compositions and, through the encyclopedic reach of its members, produce an hour of music that, despite its stylistic diversity, possesses an underlying, pervasive and unmistakable group identity.
"Biko's Ballad" swings amiably, with solos fitting comfortably within a mainstream context that may surprise fans of some of the Goatette's members' more extreme extracurricular work, but Gauthier's "Friends of the Animals" makes it clear that greater freedom, albeit couched in a more complex compositional form, lies just around the bend. So, too, is more expansive soundscaping, with electronics creating a modernistic aural landscape that allows for Nels Cline's more characteristically skronking solo - a style familiar to fans of his Cryptogramophone Nels Cline Singers trio releases, including 2007's outstanding Draw Breath - to set the pace for one of Gauthier's most memorable solos of the disc, propelled by Hamilton and Alex Cline's powerful groove. Hamilton's solo may be brief, but in less than half-a-minute demonstrates an unexpected virtuosity from a player whose full potential, it seems, is only beginning to be tapped.
Nels Cline's "I.O.A." may be more delicate, but once again it proves the Goatette's ability to mold itself to any context, in this case a lyrical setting that ultimately opens itself up for a middle section that, like '70s and '80s fusion supergroup Weather Report, is built on a premise where everyone solos and nobody solos. Alex Cline and Hamilton maintain a solid pulse of varying dynamics, while Witham, Nels Cline and Gauthier flex improvisational acumen as concerned with texture as it is tonality. As ever, Nels Cline's unparalleled versatility is all the more arresting for its never diluting the guitarist's singular voice.
Gauthier's episodic title track demonstrates the complexity that the Goatette can navigate with unerring ease. An opening improvised duet between Gauthier and Nels Cline incorporates elements of contemporary classicism and in-the-moment electronic wizardry, leading into a lengthy, idiosyncratic and percussively punctuated theme. A no-time, no-changes piano solo from Witham shifts into a modal section bolstered by Alex Cline's ever-intuitive kit work and a more centered, modal solo from Witham - the consummate sideman whose own Cryptogramophone debut, 2007's Spinning the Circle demonstrated the keyboardist's multifaceted ability that fans of the Goatette have known all along. Gauthier follows with a fiery solo that sits on the edge of abandon without ever quite falling over the precipice.
Alex Cline's sole contribution to House of Return is an atmospheric tone poem that would easily fit on his own Cryptogramophone releases like 2001's The Constant Flame. Cued melodies snake in and out of tumultuous free play and more electronic soundscaping, continuing the percussionist's evolving path of compositions that place unfettered improvisation within clearly directed, tone poem-like excursions into places at once beautiful and foreboding.
In 2006 Nels Cline paid tribute to the late pianist Andrew Hill on New Monastery: A View Into the Music of Andrew Hill, refracting Hill's writing through the guitarist's own personal prism. Here, "Satellites and Sideburns" pays homage to another recently departed legend, Weather Report co-founder/keyboardist/composer Joe Zawinul. Cline manages to do what no other Zawinul or Weather Report tribute has done: combine the angular improvisational aspects of the group's early 1970s emergence with the propulsive, booty-shaking grooves of its latter days. Cline and Witham apply their own electronic textures to give a new spin on Zawinul's orchestrated synth work. The references to Weather Report are many, including a serpentine unison line that, doubled by violin and bass, mirrors many of Zawinul's most memorable melodies.
Ending with another Von Essen composition, the relatively brief "Dissolution," Gauthier continues to champion the late bassist's underappreciated compositional depth. Contrasting the more lyrical ballad that opened House of Return, here Nels Cline is on acoustic 12-string guitar, for a rubato piece that harkens back to the days of Quartet Music. Dark passages contrast with poignant themes to create a deeply evocative ending to the Goatette's most inspired and stylistically uncategorizable album to date.
The Jeff Gauthier Goatette may be a group of leaders, each with their own predilections, but as with its earlier albums, House of Return proves that context drives the creation of a sound demonstrative of the players' styles while, at the same time, remaining patently unique. Despite the Goatette containing three-quarters of Quartet Music, and its commitment to bringing Von Essen's music to light, when combined with Witham and Hamilton it's an altogether different collective. Combining a rich electro/acoustic palette with compositions ranging from sketch-like to through-composed and a liberal approach to interpretation and collective improvisation, House of Return is, paradoxically, the Goatette's most profoundly lyrical and viscerally exciting record yet.
