(Avant-Garde / Modern Creative / Thrill Jockey) Sticks and Stones - Shed Grace - 2004, FLAC (image+.cue), lossless

Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (or AACM) has been home to some of the most forward thinking jazzers to come out of the US for over thirty years now; Anthony Braxton, Muhal Richard Abrams, and of course the Art Ensemble of Chicago are but a few. Common to all of these players (and central to Chicagoan musical history in general) is an unforced eclecticism that treats R 'n' B honking, free improvised blowing and 20th century classical composition as equal partners in the creation of new, adventurous jazz.
Sticks and Stones are a trio very much in that tradition. Fronted by alto saxophonist and AACM member Matana Roberts, they're as likely to cover Fela Kuti as Monk, which incidentally is just what they do on this engaging record. Bassist Josh Abrams and drummer Chad Taylor complete the trio, taking time off from other projects including the Chicago Underground duo/trio/quartet/orchestra and acoustic minimalists Town & Country. This is their second album, and it's clear from the outset that this is a band with a lot of playing under their belts.
Roberts is a fluid, elegant player who rejects the star soloist approach of many a saxophonist faced with the trio format. Her empathy with Abrams and Taylor results in a genuine trio music, and her thoughtful, assured contributions are occasionally confined to providing riffs or melodies throughout a piece rather than extended displays of scale crunching.
Even when Roberts raises the note count,she never overpowers the warm, supple drive of the rhythm section, and on the slower pieces she plays with a lovely sense of space. It's hard to pin down her influences which is always a good sign - on "Ishtafan" she sounds like early Steve Lacy with a whiff of Johnny Hodges.
Many of the pieces ride on spare, quietly insistent pulses that owe as much to dub or African grooves as to jazz. Taylor is turning out to be one of the most consistently interesting and inventive drummers around, as anyone who's seen him live will tell you. Like his partners, his technical ability is matched by a willingness to listen to what's going on and respond sensitively to it. Which is what jazz is all about, isn't it? Highly recommended. ~ Peter Marsh, BBC Review

When hearing the Chicago-based saxophone-bass-drum trio Sticks and Stones, it helps to remember what their style is steeped in. Sticks and Stones reminds jazz fans that its openly improvised format, sound, and playing is rooted both in Ornette Coleman's famous 1959 engagements at the Five Spot in New York where the iconoclastic saxophonist turned the bebop world upside down when he played his "new thing" to curious listeners, and in the sax-bass-drum team of Sonny Rollins, Wilbur Ware, and Elvin Jones at the Village Vanguard in November of 1957.
Sticks and Stones is made up of AACM member/saxophonist Matana Roberts, bassist Josh Abrams, and drummer Chad Taylor. Their second release from Thrill Jockey Records, Shed Grace , fills the listener's mind with the abstract ramblings of Coltrane's late '60s work and the free-jazz explorations of Ornette Coleman. Shed Grace contains mostly originals but also features covers by Fela Kuti, Thelonious Monk, and Billy Stayhorn.
The second track from Shed Grace , "The Refusal," highlights drummer Chad Taylor's expectional use of percussion, making for an authentic sound of indigenous Africa. Saxophonist Roberts, who has played with jazz greats like Ravi Coltrane and Don Byron, plays sweet melodies that hover above Taylor's ride cymbal and mingles with Abrams' bass solo.
With a funky opening beat, "Colonial Mentality" mantains a steady bassline throughout most of the song while Taylor and Roberts trade solos. By the middle of song, Taylor goes back into the opening beat and Roberts laments as the song closes.
"Isufahan," one of the longest tracks on Shed Grace, is a perfect example of Sticks and Stones' capability of on-the-spot improvisation. "Isufahan" is a walking urban blues number that shows the trio can sound just as live in the studio as they can at the late-night sessions at their favorite Chicago club, the Velvet Lounge. ~ Aaron Rogers, AAJ

Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 4 from 23. January 2008
EAC extraction logfile from 11. April 2009, 20:55
Sticks and Stones / Shed Grace
Used drive : TSSTcorpCD/DVDW SH-S182M Adapter: 2 ID: 2
Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction : 6
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 : -8 -V -T "ARTIST=%a" -T "TITLE=%t" -T "ALBUM=%g" -T "DATE=%y" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%n" -T "GENRE=%m" -T "COMMENT=%e" %s -o %d
TOC of the extracted CD
Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
---------------------------------------------------------
1 | 0:00.00 | 5:20.60 | 0 | 24059
2 | 5:20.60 | 10:48.20 | 24060 | 72679
3 | 16:09.05 | 3:39.47 | 72680 | 89151
4 | 19:48.52 | 1:55.70 | 89152 | 97846
5 | 21:44.47 | 3:40.15 | 97847 | 114361
6 | 25:24.62 | 3:43.38 | 114362 | 131124
7 | 29:08.25 | 4:02.60 | 131125 | 149334
8 | 33:11.10 | 4:24.27 | 149335 | 169161
9 | 37:35.37 | 8:26.68 | 169162 | 207179
10 | 46:02.30 | 4:20.12 | 207180 | 226691
Range status and errors
Selected range
Filename C:\Documents and Settings\Igor\My Documents\My Music\eac\Sticks and Stones - Shed Grace.wav
Peak level 99.8 %
Range quality 100.0 %
Test CRC F90E8970
Copy CRC F90E8970
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