(Avant-Garde / Modern Creative / Between the Lines) Michael Bates's Outside Sources - A Fine Balance - 2006, FLAC (image+.cue), lossless

In 2005 Michael Bates, a Canadian bass player, issued Outside Sources, a very promising album. His second, "A Fine Balance", figures in my top-10 list of 2006. Outside Sources is now the name of the band, consisting of Quinsin Nachsoff on sax and bass clarinet, Mark Timmermans on drums, and Kevin Turcotte on trumpet. This is jazz that digs deep into a broad array of source material. Bates himself cites Shostakovich, Prokoviev, Miles Davis, Tony Malaby, Dave Douglas and middle-eastern music. The music remains 100% jazz, though, with strong compositions offering lots of space for improvisation. The addition of Kevin Turcotte on this album creates more interaction than on the first CD, and by consequence also more depth and perspective to the music. It is obvious that Bates looks for effect and beauty through his compositions, and with success. The result is adventurous jazz, with in each piece sufficient bends in the road to keep surprising you with the new view you get once you've taken the turn. ~ Free Jazz's Stef Blog

The shadow of Dave Douglas hovers over bassist Michael Bates' debut recording. However, Douglas' influence is understandable, because both are faculty members at the Banff Center of the Arts. Despite the noticeable stylistic overlap, Bates contributes a strong program of originals that stretch beyond academic imitation.
Bates draws influence from a fairly novel place: Douglas' earliest writing from his days as a member of New and Used. The alternating pastoral melodies and angular urban funk of that seminal early 1990s quintet prove ripe for rediscovery. Bates extrapolates and updates an ensemble sound that never fully realized its potential during the early Knitting Factory days.
The compositions are engaging, and Bates' ensemble brings these tunes to life. The session's MVP, saxophonist Quinsin Nachoff, displays a timbre and attack far more adventurous and freewheeling than on his own recent release, Magic Numbers (Songlines, 2006). With looser articulation and a smeary, expressive tone, trumpeter Kevin Turcotte does a fantastic job of sidestepping the Douglas comparisons, marking out his own sound and phrasing. Drummer Mark Timmermans provides adept and sympathetic accompaniment throughout this varied set. Bates is an equitable team player, eschewing the spotlight for a support role.
Trafficking in the same angular linearity and rhythmic tension as many of his peers, Bates places equal emphasis on melodic development. A handful of these tunes sit comfortably in the chamber music tradition, but the majority combine classical austerity with freewheeling jazz improvisation. Pastoral melodies full of long tones and gradually ascending dramatic arcs alternate with acoustically derived urban funk rhythms full of jagged, clipped phrases and vacillating meters.
Pieces like "Coppertone" and "Prodigal" are representative. The former is a stellar example of the ensemble's finely tuned internal dynamics, featuring metric modulation, chameleonic stop-start rhythm structures, and animated group call and response.
"Prodigal" alternates a sweeping melodic theme with brusque punctuations that build to a loose free bop section invoking Ornette Coleman's classic Atlantic recordings. Fuelled by Timmermans and Bates, Nachoff's jittery, spastic tenor solo barks out staccato distress signals like Morse code.
The young bassist proves to be an excellent arranger on "Prokofiev." Based on the revered composer's Cello Sonata in C Minor, the piece quickly circumvents chamber music austerity for emotional expressionism. Turcotte's regal trumpet solo clears the way for Nachoff's magnificent, unhinged tenor solo, which is laden with controlled altissimo screaming and impassioned cries.
While Michael Bates has yet to fully shed the influence of his elders, he demonstrates prodigious talent on this excellent, inviting debut. ~ Troy Collins, AAJ

Unlike most avant-garde jazz CDs, A Fine Balance does not contain any liner notes; therefore, those who acquire this 51-minute CD will find no written explanation of what that title means to acoustic bassist Michael Bates. But one who hears this 2004 recording can make an educated guess. A Fine Balance is an appropriate title because Bates and his colleagues successfully achieve some balances -- between improvisation and structure; individualism and team playing; abstraction and blues feeling; and inside and outside considerations. The team is a piano-less acoustic quartet billed as "Michael Bates Outside Sources"; Bates (double bass) is joined by Quinsin Nachoff on sax, clarinet, and bass clarinet, Kevin Turcotte on trumpet, and Mark Timmermans on drums -- and while the players have room to express themselves, they are also mindful of the need to work together as a cohesive unit. A Fine Balance is a musical democracy; one could say that it is very democratic, in fact, but it isn't anarchic. As improvisers, Nachoff, Turcotte, and Timmermans can, to a large degree, do their own thing. Their playing is quite free, but at the same time, they are aware of the needs of Bates' compositions. As a composer, Bates draws on influences ranging from Ornette Coleman to Dave Douglas, and his compositions, although certainly left of center, are also logical and coherent. They are compositions that call for an inside/outside environment, which Bates and his colleagues skillfully provide. A Fine Balance is not a five-star masterpiece, but it is a worthwhile and enjoyable demonstration of how well the inside and the outside can complement one another in avant-garde jazz. ~ Alex Henderson, AMG

Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 5 from 4. May 2009
EAC extraction logfile from 6. February 2010, 13:37
Michael Bates's Outside Sources / A Fine Balance
Used drive  : hp      DVD-RAM GH40L   Adapter: 0  ID: 1
Read mode               : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache      : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction                      : 667
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out          : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks   : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations       : Yes
Used interface                              : Installed external ASPI interface
Used output format              : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate                : 1024 kBit/s
Quality                         : High
Add ID3 tag                     : No
Command line compressor         : C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\Flac\flac.exe
Additional command line options : -6 -V -T "ARTIST=%a" -T "TITLE=%t" -T "ALBUM=%g" -T "DATE=%y" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%n" -T "GENRE=%m" -T "COMMENT=EAC FLAC -6" %s
TOC of the extracted CD
     Track |   Start  |  Length  | Start sector | End sector
    ---------------------------------------------------------
        1  |  0:00.00 |  0:52.35 |         0    |     3934
        2  |  0:52.35 |  7:38.36 |      3935    |    38320
        3  |  8:30.71 |  6:01.63 |     38321    |    65458
        4  | 14:32.59 |  3:03.39 |     65459    |    79222
        5  | 17:36.23 |  5:36.05 |     79223    |   104427
        6  | 23:12.28 |  7:15.61 |    104428    |   137113
        7  | 30:28.14 |  2:23.00 |    137114    |   147838
        8  | 32:51.14 |  6:28.37 |    147839    |   176975
        9  | 39:19.51 |  8:52.58 |    176976    |   216933
       10  | 48:12.34 |  3:28.71 |    216934    |   232604
Range status and errors
Selected range
     Filename C:\Users\Igor\Music\eac\Michael Bates's Outside Sources - A Fine Balance.wav
     Peak level 100.0 %
     Range quality 100.0 %
     Test CRC 2DB20C56
     Copy CRC 2DB20C56
     Copy OK
No errors occurred
AccurateRip summary
Track  1  not present in database
Track  2  not present in database
Track  3  not present in database
Track  4  not present in database
Track  5  not present in database
Track  6  not present in database
Track  7  not present in database
Track  8  not present in database
Track  9  not present in database
Track 10  not present in database
None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database
End of status report