Shoup in the can
*****

Jazz CDs: Wally Shoup/Toshi Makihara/Brent Arnold - Confluxus (Leo)

Reviewed by David Keenan

 

 

Although Seattle-based saxophonist Wally Shoup has been playing out since 1974, it's only in the last few years that he has come to the ears of most free-thinking listeners, thanks in part to musical associations with hard-hitting new breed players like drummer Chris Corsano, reedist Paul Flaherty and guitarist Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth. Shoup is 60 this year, and his lifelong presence beneath the radar is mostly down to his uncompromising belief in the creative primacy of free improvisation.

He has a raucous saxophone style, combining an exacting attention to atonal timbral detail with a singing, vocalised style and the kind of hyped energy levels of musicians like Pharaoh Sanders and Albert Ayler.

Confluxus, a new trio date on Leo with long-term shadow Toshi Makihara on drums and Brent Arnold on cello is more of a crafty sideways step than another tongue to infinity, with Shoup shaving some of the bluster from his horn in favour of a lonesome zoned style that's closer to the black blues of Julius Hemphill. Makihara is on particularly staggering form ­ his nuts-and-bolts approach to percussive detail colliding with some supremely assertive rhythmic interventions.

18 July 2004