Review
NATE WOOLEY QUARTET   Live Performance 2004  

On a recent live recording, trumpeter Nate Wooley introduces his final number by promising a "nice little melody embedded in the typical Nate Wooley crap." That "crap" is the menagerie of squeals, blurts, rasps, and grunts Wooley routinely squeezes out of his horn. But on his latest solo CD, Wrong Shape to be a Story Teller (Creative Sources), there are no nice little melodies to be found. Instead, the single, 51-minute track almost belligerently avoids anything identifiably "musical."

Remarkably few modern trumpeters manage to escape the looming shadow of Miles Davis and find their own voice, but while Wooley is nowhere near as taciturn a personality, his extended silences make even Miles look like a gregarious blabbermouth. Between the short eruptions of noise and aggressive howls, there are sometimes minutes-long gaps, where faint background noise — coughs, shuffling movements, traffic ambience — creates a Cagean absence, a physical sense of place and a tangible peek into the trumpeter's thought process, as we sit uncomfortably eavesdropping on real-time contemplation before he resumes and assaults our ears once again.

- Shaun Brady, "Philadelphia City Paper"

Review
NATE WOOLEY   Wrong Shape to be a Story Teller
creative sources recordings 038

If you really want to test yourselves, putting your money where your mouth is during those discussions with your friends about "lowercase", "reductionism" and other by now trendy definitions, look no further than this exquisitely hostile work, where Nate Wooley tackles silence and calmness through a series of postcards from the hell of deviant trumpet. Wrecking all institutional conventions, Wooley extracts pneumatic excursions and electrostatic aromas from the nails of a buggy muteness, at times provoking the listener with machine-like holds/ostinatos and eruptions of charged clumsiness, then inviting the surrounding environment to take his place while he develops the next ideas as soon as they come to mind. Clucks and breath become a challenge to the sophistication of what is "acceptable" in improvisation and certainly Wooley is not the kind of artist likely to look back after his corrosive statements; in this album, even the absence of events becomes dangerous.

- Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes, August 2005

Review
BLUE COLLAR   Lovely Hazel
public eyesore pecd 81

Wooley's trio Blue Collar places Nate Wooley's mutated blowing in a group context, with trombonist Steve Swell and percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani, both equally willing to use their axes in ways for which they were not intended. Their second CD, Lovely Hazel (Public Eyesore), is far less minimalist than Wooley's solo works, if only because there are two other performers filling in the gaps when he pauses. Compared to most sane people's definition of music, this is still willfully obscurantist, aggressively atonal music, but relative to the lowercase world in which Blue Collar resides, this is boisterous enough to sound like fucking P-Funk. 9 tracks, primarily residing in the 6- to 8-minute range, each named by some obscure numbering system that ensures that abstraction rules the day. Titles would only implant ideas in the listener's mind, after all, and the idea here is the exploration of pure sound. But by the second track, they have allowed their instruments, at least sometimes, to sound like what they are. All three are equal partners in building from tiny points of skronk and scrape into multi-faceted aural sculptures; the conversations often work best when all three chatter at once. There is an almost gleeful compatibility of sound at these times, and if Blue Collar can't carry a tune, they sure as hell can sing.

- Shaun Brady, "Philadelphia City Paper"

Review
BLUE COLLAR   Lovely Hazel
public eyesore pecd 81

This is the companion album to
last year's Rossbin release by this NYC trio, material from the same
2003 recording sessions with the same vivid and powerful recording
quality. Like that fresh jewel of multi-directional free improv,
there's a lot of variety from piece to piece on Lovely Hazel, and
there's no difference in overall character I can cite. This disc
really captures Nakatani's current sound as well as any other; on the
opening track "48/1" (check out the elegant numerical titles!) you
wouldn't even really know there was a percussionist with his
incredible bowed and scraped textures blending with the trumpet and
trombone noise sculpture--for that matter, it's not even obvious
there's a trumpet and trombone!

Dense, shifting textures of complex
acoustic timbres with mysterious dynamic shifts--I'm in heaven! But
Nakatani usually favors isolated, dramatic percussive strikes, like
the resonant booms on "47", which is almost like slow Kodo drumming
without the predictable licks. Swell and Wooley's confident, loud,
sustained brass tones cannot be punctuated by this punctuation; they
defy time and occasionally collapse into unexpected and inexplicable
chunks of sound complexity. In "74" Nakatani shows his knack for
making sudden, powerful composite gestures, pounding his bass drum at
the same time he creates a fast buzzing/scraping sound with a metal
rod, and in "110" he shows he can tear it up with some Lytton-grade
high-velocity skitters, a bit of an anomaly for a generally slow-paced
disc. On "48/2" Nakatani's trademark massive bowed percussion blends
with sustained brass language extensions to create a shifting, thick
meta-drone with a bracing, penetrating sharpness and exquisite
slowness. If Dumitrescu were to hear this album, I bet he'd have these
guys on the first available flight to Romania!

By and large, the
defining sound of Blue Collar is the unconventional and unbridled
brass experimentalism of Wooley and Swell, who freely range from
microscopically detailed and quiet Doerner-style
acoustics-as-electronics passages to harsh blustering at the outer
fringes of brass timbres. The music cuts across recent trends in
improvised music, often favoring a restricted, economical, sparse,
slow style, but it's usually somewhat loud, explosive, and faintly
"expressive" instead of being quiet and austere. Unique and powerful
music by accomplished musicians at the nexus of current developments
in improvised music. This is that hot mix of FMP-style free improv and
Tibetan ritual orchestra jams you've been waiting for all these years.
It's here. Dig it.

- Michael Anton Parker

Review
BLUE COLLAR  ___ is an apparition
rossbin records 016

  I've been deeply impressed by trumpeter Nate Wooley's playing in very diverse situations over the past few years, and I'm ecstatic to finally have an official recorded document that captures him so well. Wooley has found his own way in a post-Kelley/Doerner/Hautzinger world, with an openness to different musical situations that puts him in a similar category as masters like Daniel Carter and Jack Wright, two of his major inspirations and favorite playing partners, musicians that make the music happen in almost any situation. He is known for his visibly spiritual immersion in the improvisational moment, freely switching back and forth between trumpet and restrained, trumpet-like vocals. Although he has a subdued, thoughtful lyrical side that's been shaped by his studies with Ron Miles and his deep admiration of Maneri music, with this trio he focuses on his more unconventional trumpet explorations, creating amazing new shapes and textures in tandem with the awe-inspiring virtuosity of trombonist Steve Swell, who is one of the true heroes of current jazz, part of that small circle of musicians who are really sustaining jazz as a living tradition. This is not a typical jazz-related outing for Swell though, but rather a rare showcase for him as a radical improvisor who can find meaning in exploratory concepts of sound and motion without relying on pulse or melody. Percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani brings his abstract ritualism to the trio, pushing things even further into unknown territory with his bells, gongs, bowed cymbals, rumbles and scrapes.

  Track 7 finds them dealing with sustained rhythmic flurries that recall the wild double-trumpet and percussion trio album by Herb Robertson, Paul Smoker, and Jay Rosen on CIMP, but besides that passage this disc is much more unconventional rhythmically, with a total deconstruction of the usual roles of the instruments. Wooley and Swell avoid typical "brassy" passages and focus more on percussive sounds and air-blast textures, such as the mind-blowing passage in track 6 that sounds like a storm on another planet. Even though they often give the feeling of "acoustic instruments making electronic music", the music is more biological than mechanical--sound shapes moving in an unidentifiable biological space, waddling over leaves, tripping over a rock, plopping into a puddle. It's the sounds of animals that don't quite exist, with motions and moods that defy human understanding. The three instruments softly bump into each other, jerk in opposite directions for a second, circle around each other. The togetherness is stunning, but without any cliches of groove or call-and-response; it's an abstract togetherness of moving around in the same small space. Even though it's completely improvised music, they have a genuine group sound from regular gigging around NY over the past few years, and it's appropriate that they have a band name ("Blue Collar") instead of just "Wooley/Swell/Nakatani".

  This disc feels like a fresh new point in the space of musical possibilities, within visiting distance of the early British free improv traditions, current traditions of abstract gesturalism, 90s free jazz, and the primal/sublime dialectic of the Jack Wright school. It's packed to the brim with magic and detail, another masterpiece from the discerning and impeccable Italian label Rossbin.

- Michael Anton Parker


Review
AS A SIDEMAN  

New Jersey resident Nate Wooley contributes a major trumpeting voice to this pair of quartet discs. His sound is not one to ignore. Besides possessing a notable deftness of phrasing, he's also equipped with a tonal range that either rips into the ears, making its immediate mark, or seduces softly when negotiating its quieter spells. Wooley is comfortable with excess and restraint alike, even though the resultant sounds can often be far from comfortable.

Evil Eye is co-led by tenor saxophonist Jonathan Moritz and drummer Mike Pride, although the latter comes across as the dominant force in a live setting, perhaps because his approach is so extroverted, in the powerhouse complexity fashion. The remaining member is bassist Ken Filiano and he's the only player who doesn't contribute a composition. Placed right at the start of Doin' It All For My Baby, the second album from the band, to scare away complacent listeners, Amhorikkka makes a strident attack, Pride pounding out an insistent punk beat, over which the horns do their Ornette/Cherry squabble, swiftly skipping into a fanfare theme. Wooley is at his most extreme, sandblasting down his power-surging tubes. At this point, the band is covered in rough textures, but soon engages in a gentler expression. Wooley's lone contribution, 3am Swedetown Bluff, offers space for an extended bass solo, then allows full exposure for the trumpeter's own scaly patina.

It might not be too surprising that the standout feature of Brooklynite tenor saxophonist Stephen Gauci's Basso Continuo is the presence of two bassists in a drummerless lineup. Even Wooley's trumpeting can't match the compelling interaction that exists between Mike Bisio and the Norwegian Ingebrigt Haker Flaten. Though listed as four separate tracks, these live pieces of Nididhyasana (recorded in January 2007 at Downtown Music Gallery) have the quality of a suite, a lengthy cracking of a single faultline. The basses are kept wide apart, one in each speaker's spatial extreme, which draws even more attention to their pointillist twanging, or even their twinned droning. As if in keeping with these deep emanations, Wooley concentrates on a muted needling, as if trying to rise above the low thrum. When all four players are coinciding in motion, a termite's nest bustle erupts; but some of the most striking sections are when the two bassmen are left alone to conduct their own conversation. Gauci almost finds himself standing on the perimeter, his warm foxglove tone acting as a soothing agent.

- Martin Longley, "All About Jazz"