Reviews for Transcendental Numbers
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jazzreview.com (by Glenn Asteria)
Guitarist Terrence McManus' plight is to create a "personalized sonic language." Moreover, he aligned with revered drummer, composer and bandleader Gerry Hemingway for a wide-open sonicscape on the well-received outing, Below the surface of (Auricle, 2010). Amid investigative frameworks with like-minded jazz and improvisation artists, McManus builds and uses his guitar arsenal and is making a name for himself as a stylist who flouts convention.
Recorded at The Stone in New York City with co-leaders, Hemingway and bassist Mark Helias, the trio delves into abstract minimalism and chugs along with the upsurge of a steam engine via unorthodox phrasings and subtle hues. McManus bends and scrapes his strings to elicit numerous effects and slants. He's a sound design artist and ups the ante with rifling single note licks and fractured chord voicings.
The trio often turns up the heat as Helias serves as a fluid anchor and reinforces the foundation with Hemingway who pulls more than just a few tricks out of his bag. Unanticipated surprises are a staple of this inventive set. Some of the movements are designed with loose groove swing pulses, but it's an uncanny exposition where the musicians fuse avant-ethereal passages with off-kilter metrics.
From a conceptual stance, McManus often presents an impressionistic account of modern music. But on "Junction," he injects a series of dour circumstances into the mix, akin to a social breakdown and touches upon funk, the blues and some oddball use of electrical ground noise, intermittently peppered by Hemingway's snappy rim-shots. And he soars upward while seemingly inflicting pain on his guitar during "Products of Primes."
The band tones it down in spots, offset by variable deconstructions that intimate angst and tumult. In sum, McManus possesses the goods to impart a significant impact within many jazz-improvisation based factions. He's an idea man who merges enviable technique with a broad spectrum of nonconformist, and perhaps innovative approaches, yielding a profusion of rewarding factors.
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The New York City Jazz Record (by Fred Bouchard)
Guitarist Terrence McManus’ solo Brooklyn EP and duo with drummer Gerry Hemingway Below the Surface Of... explored edgy urban night-moods with eye and ear cocked to the weather, seismic disturbances, thermal spikes. This band - live at The Stone on New Year’s Day, 2009 - cubes the possibilities intimated in those other dates by including intrepid bassist Mark Helias.
The opening track, “Written In The Cracking of the Ice”, hearkens back to the duo’s concepts of elemental delving beneath surfaces and McManus scratches and swoons in teasing, pleading firebursts, sparking shards of crazed tension. “Upperside” engages all in amiable jostling, industrious push and shove, before McManus’ prepared guitar breaks into ‘song’ - bent, bluesy, chopped-and-channeled.
As the duo’s longer pieces sought to maximize dramatic impetus, Helias’ presence sets up a buffer zone to extend them further: the pliant solo with which he opens “Junction” evolves into conversation with Hemingway’s blunt chopping and McManus’ patently bluesy feline mewls. Once guitar mines Motown strums halfway through the 12-minute track, it gradually rebuilds momentum, chills the groove and eventually tapers into sighs and a signature coda: stuttering percussive tapping focused around a single tone. “Product of Primes” pits Helias’ bowing multistops above buzzing and rattling guitar and percussion. All three take off into an increasingly furious splintered rampage that gradually slows, blunts, thickens, but never quite fades. “The Radio Astronomers” picks up micro-static from stardust and gamma rays (quick picking around the bridge) before McManus goes high beyond the bridge to parse descending blues fragments.
The closer peals taut bluebell carillons that hark back to his solo “Double River”. McManus seems to be quietly assembling a cogent guitar vocabulary from the ground up, intent on forging a boldly resonant instrumental personality like, say, Harry Partch: a new brand of rare earthiness. For their part, Helias and Hemingway are largely content to sound like bass and drums (Helias does go were-wolfy on “Astronomers”) as firm supporters of the guitarist’s quixotic quests.
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Touching Extremes (by Massimo Ricci)
Flanked by a pair of stalwarts who, in his own words, “have a history going back over thirty years”, guitarist Terrence McManus brings the right attitude and a considerable number of no-frills approaches to an instrument that, especially in jazz, has the potential to become the mother of all commonplaces. On the contrary, ever since the opening track “Written In The Cracking Of The Ice”, an unexpected subversion slashes the ears: not a clean pitch in sight, clumsily introverted structures succeeding one after another until the density is spread in different directions at once, a slanted kind of disdainful lyricism ultimately achieved. Instead, “Upperside” sounds like Bill Frisell’s vibrato bar constantly bumped upon by a stumbling drunkard, with added pepper. McManus shows an obstinate, nearly obsessive concise incisiveness, Helias and Hemingway finely sustaining him by shifting the dynamics from classic swing to near-absence of pulse in a matter of instants. Remote echoes of John Scofield appear in certain bluesy phrases during “Junction”; but the most intriguing chapter is perhaps “Products Of Primes”, in which the guitar remains camouflaged under strata of rubbing noises throughout the piece’s first half, before gargling with venomous intentions across the remainder of the improvisation.
All of the above notwithstanding, the album is characterized by a substantial balance between strident dissonance and absolute enjoyableness. McManus picks and plucks in unusual places, with musicality to spare and in thoroughly dissimilar contexts. The clever alternance of grimy and semi-polished tones makes sure that one’s never welcome with smiles and open arms; however, the trio is positively willing to engage the listener in an efficient interaction, typified by Hemingway’s challenging elasticity in terms of metres (and relative dissolution) and Helias’ hypersensitive class. At times, tics and neuroses are ably contained by a relatively subdued interplay (case in point, “The Radio Astronomers”), the disembowelling of a lone snippet always preferred to gormless Pindaric flights. Three artists unafraid of letting people look at their deviations enriching a record permeated by a healthily explorative temperament.
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All About Jazz (by John Sharpe)
Guitarist Terrence McManus helms a stellar trio on Transcendental Numbers, through six collective concoctions recorded in New York City's The Stone, straddling and blurring the line between textural improvisation and the more traditional sound of guitar and rhythm section. Brooklyn-born McManus is carving a niche for himself on the scene. Having worked with drummer/composer Tyshawn Sorey, and performed with fellow guitarist Bill Frisell and saxophonist John Zorn, McManus is currently a member of drummer Gerry Hemingway's quintet, and finds his boss returning the favor here.
With an association dating back more than 33 years, the synergy of Hemingway and bassist Mark Helias is a wonder to behold. The pair first came together in the orbit of reed man Anthony Braxton, but they have been featured in each others bands many times since, most notably the cooperative BassDrumBone, along with trombonist Ray Anderson. Alongside their vast experience they also wield an armory of extended techniques which they delve into with gusto, making this a set which would also have been fascinating to witness live.
The breadth of unconventional sounds for guitar trio is reminiscent of guitarist Bruce Eisenbeil with Totem> on Solar Forge (ESP, 2008), though the overall ethos is not one of such complete deconstruction. Even though there are passages when there is no hint of tune, melody or meter, there is still a sense of form and trajectory, whether it is the steadily increasing crescendo of "When We First Left The Oceans" or the bell-shaped curve of "The Radio Astronomers." While the threesome flaunts the intensity of a power trio the density is reduced, so there is lots of air in many of the pieces which allows full appreciation of the constituent parts.
At times the bass and drums slip into their regular roles as on "Upperside" where McManus builds a statement of incisive, insistent phrases and broad slashes over a conversational mid-tempo. Likewise on "Junction" mournful horn-like phrasing from the guitar with blues intimations sparks a loose choppy groove from Helias and Hemingway and an impromptu riff from McManus. "Products of Primes" deals in flinty improv with the bassist's sweeping arco prominent, pitched against white noise guitar and thudding percussion, before evolving into a propulsive churn.
Transcendental Numbers shows where the guitar trio might go without totally severing the links to the instrument's vernacular.
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Music and More (by Tim Niland)
Guitarist Terrence McManus writes in his notes to this album that he was:
“…interested in developing a personal sonic language on the guitar, in an attempt to be able to do things I have been hearing, which were not possible though standard ways of playing the guitar.”
Setting up a very nice open minded rhythm section with Mark Helias on bass and Gerry Hemingway on drums is certainly a good way to start and they support McManus regardless of how far out he tries to go. On tracks like “The Radio Astronomers” he sculpts pure noise, distortion and feedback before resolving into a more standard improvisation, like a SETI astronomer trying to hone in on an alien signal. “Written in the Cracking of the Ice” has the leader playing splintered notes and runs against an abstract and challenging backdrop of bass and drums. The whole album is a challenging listen, but it is well worth the effort. McManus, Helias and Hemingway give their all in an attempt to develop a new improvisational paradigm.
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Gapplegate Guitar and Bass Blog (by Gregory Edwards)
Someone who doesn't listen to avant improvisation of the sort presented on Transcendental Numbers (No Business NBCD 27) might be at a loss to evaluate it. It's a free-flowing series of improvisations from the electric guitar of Terrence McManus, the contrabass of Mark Helias and the drums of Gerry Hemingway. There are a few things that can help you evaluate and understand what you hear.
First, "free" doesn't mean you are entitled to download this gratis. Do that on a pirate site and you'll make this music impossible to produce on every level and it will disappear. Seriously. Second, keep in mind that "free" doesn't mean "play any old shoot," at least in the hands of the accomplished avant improvisers. It means that the players have spent their lives honing their musical abilities so that they bring all they know and can do into the musical session. It means that this trio is free to go in any direction that they see fit. So you get bluesy sounding passages, free commentary of rock-funk forms and earlier jazz without direct engagement or quotation of the licks. It means working within pitch centers (both near and far away from the elemental expression of them). Third, it means directing the musical results toward sound color creation--different ways of playing notes timbre-wise, noise elements, sounds as sound-music. Fourth, "free" music implies a state-of-mind on the part of the players and audience. The moment is the message in some ways. The moment and what the players can do within it. Sixth, a brewing up of tumultuous energy has long been a part of the free avant repertoire. They do that here at times in convincing, moving ways, with McManus sometimes at the same time making a nod to the psychedelic rockers of yesteryear.
Seventh, the players try to develop a feel, phrase, a rhythm or any number of other elements to unify the improvisations. (The alternative is to never repeat anything and that is in part related to the serial composers of the Post-Webern sort, and mind I am not saying that this is a cheap copycatting--it's just a shared trait. It's a akin to the idea that music usually utilizes or implies scales. It's pointless on a certain level to try and pinpoint exactly who first articulated, say, the harmonic minor scale and then go on and accuse everybody else of stealing it.) There is probably an eighth, a ninth, and an x-to-infinity number of points I could make here, but it is 7:24 AM in New Jersey and it's Tuesday, so I'll simply press on.
Judging by these criterea and the others I have not systematically articulated on this lovely seasonal morning, Transcendental Numbers hits the target, so to say. McManus can play well with outside electric sounds in what Barry Altschul used to call a "make a sound, make another sound" methodology. McManus can jump in and out of blues and rock tonalities in a meta-commentary sort of way. He can vary his attack so that some figures have staccato rhythmic emphasis (and set up possible counter-commentary in the trio), or he can go for a-rythmia, and/or for legato or alternate-sounding means of producing tones. He can play some clusters of tones, chord-like, articulated in all sorts of ways. And there is more there to his playing on this recording, too. The point is he remains engaging, interesting and freshly creative throughout. Mark Helias and Gerry Hemingway are well-known as adepts at this sort of improvisation. Suffice to say that they do all the things that we've alluded to above and they do them well.
The trio in fact is dedicated to that "doing it well in the moment," and they succeed fully. McManus is too pomo to stick to pure sound as the late Derek Bailey mostly did; and he is too restlessly creative to remain in the land of tone for long periods. He shows throughout that he is one of the more interestingly inventive out guitarists working today; and the trio comprises some of the very best avant improvisers.
So you should try and support this music by buying the CD. You want to know what frio-trio with guitar is all about, here's a good example. For those who know all that, McManus has his own vision which is apparently in the process of congealing nicely. It's an encouraging recording for the future McManus and quite interesting listening beyond all of that.
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Buscando un nombre (by Pachi Tapiz)
translated:
New collaboration between guitarist Terrence McManus and Gerry Hemingway. After the duo album Below the Surface of published by the drummer on his label, the training was expanded with the addition of Mark Helias. The result, Transcendental Numbers, evocative improvisations mathematics, published in the restless and always interesting Lithuanian NoBusiness Records label. Mathematically, the concept of transcendental number is very interesting, as are those that can not be obtained as roots of equations with rational coefficients. Some well-known transcendental numbers and even popular are Π and Φ (the golden ratio in mind since antiquity in the Greek Parthenon, to this day in the proportion of credit cards). However, the number 3 does not fall within this category. But the music developed by McManus, Hemingway and Helias well could be framed under this classification, if that could make a projection of that concept from the mathematical to the land of music. As such, the trio of guitar, bass and drums in jazz is not new at all. But what is notable in this recording is the use of some very common elements, (as happens to the golden ratio can be obtained from a shortlist as "exotic" such as numbers 1, 5 and 2 ) to get a result with a special appeal. It certainly has an important role that musical relationship between the three musicians. This trio is set some years ago, while Gerry Hemingway and Mark Helias have a relationship that has lasted several decades. The result are pieces that go from the diffuse to the concrete, embodied with the intensity of "The Radio Astronomers", "Upperside" and "Written in the Cracking of the Ice", the solemnity along this "When We First Left the Ocean "and part of the" Junction ", or math again references" Products of Primes. "