Bandleaders frequently have different ensembles that represent particular aspects of their musical personalities. Bassist/composer Matt Pavolka maintains a handful of groups, some focusing on his writing in more traditional jazz formats and others that provide more open, raucous fare. The Matt Pavolka Band represents the latter, their freewheeling style on full display on their new recording, Disciplinary Architecture.
Pavolka established this quartet nearly twenty years ago, the original ensemble featuring guitarist Ben Monder, keyboard player Pete Rende, and drummer Ted Poor. This group played frequently and had a loose book of pieces that were springboards to their openly improvised performances centered around the remarkable guitar of Ben Monder and his special rapport with keyboardist Rende.
In the 2010s, this ensemble became less of a focus, as Pavolka established a couple of other projects. Towards the end of that decade he began to focus more of his energy on this group again. By this point Rende and Poor had moved on and been replaced by Santiago Leibson and Allan Mednard to form a new version of the band.
Rehearsals and performances revealed a fresh, visceral energy from this incarnation of the group, leading Pavolka to consider a new recording. To that end, he began to write new pieces that frequently allude to another one of his passions, the written word. As a fan of many dark-toned, contemporary fiction writers, the overall feel of this new collection of pieces took on a post-apocalyptic vibe.
Though the group had initially aimed to record in April 2020, they were derailed because of the pandemic. This led Pavolka to focus more on his composing, as he took to iBeam rehearsal space in Brooklyn, where he wrote for hours without interruption. The themes of the pieces he wrote were inspired by the dour times, as he fitted quotes from his favorite writers, radio personalities, and unintentionally ironic overheard statements to fit the music.
The album title, Disciplinary Architecture, comes from a twentieth century architectural concept of influencing public behavior through design of public spaces, like putting spikes on benches to prevent sleeping or ridges on curbs to discourage skateboarding.
Though it would seem from this title that Pavolka would be setting up roadblocks for his ensemble, he readily affords them vehicles for their dynamic performances, which were finally recorded at Bacque Recording on May 31, 2022. The recording presents the pieces in the order they were recorded, usually in a single take, lending it a very visceral, live feeling.
The program begins with the ominously building “An Aged Flamingo In A Dried-Up Pool,” the title borrowing a quote from J.G. Ballard. The piece utilizes an eighth-note bassline that, with the additional four note keyboard figure, spells a twelve-tone row. An aggressive bassline and drums introduce “And Then We Towed New Zealand Out To Sea,” the piece’s winding melody opening up to a 12-bar blues in A. The title of the piece utilizes a line from one of the Bay Area radio personality Joe Frank’s surreal radio serials. The funky happy-go-lucky feel of “Lighter-Complected Invaders From The North” masks that this is one of their more abstract pieces, Pavolka repurposing a Don DeLillo phrase and directing it at Brooklyn gentrification for the title.
Using a comical line from Breaking Bad about poisoning someone, “Ricin Beans” is a piece that gets played in different iterations by several of Pavolka’s groups. Here the piece blends a Mahavishnu-esque fusion with Monder’s most metal dark powers on guitar. An homage to a favorite character in Philip Roth’s Sabbath’s Theater, “Nuts And Bulbs (For Drenka)” begins sweetly with ascendant keys and a strong, warm bassline, as the piece slides into dub reggae. This flows directly into “Defeating The Porpoise.” Inspired by a mispronunciation Pavolka heard in an interview, this quixotic piece has a cheesy, triumphal theme, as if an imbecile chose to settle a vendetta with porpoises. Though meant to be tongue-in-cheek, the piece remains a poignant vehicle for the groups’ solo statements.
The haunting “The Word For Moonlight Is Moonlight” is a gorgeous, floating ballad over a pedal point, a palette cleanser from the knotty pieces presented previously. The title refers to Don DeLillo’s novella, The Body Artist, the ghostly feeling paralleling the mysterious young man who visits the protagonist. The title track is the oldest on the album, having been written in 2016. It is a tricky piece with the melody being played over rhythmic cells of different lengths, creating a claustrophobic feeling. The program concludes with “Vile, In The Sunshine Crawling,” a reference to junkies haunting city streets that came second hand from John Hawks’s Second Skin. The piece serves as the group’s regular closer, as it builds from soundscape for improv to blatantly rocking barnstormer.
Matt Pavolka is a man of wide appetites, as his frequent references to literature and obscure references demonstrate, but he doubles down on the visceral with this quartet, as can be heard on his mind-bending new recording, Disciplinary Architecture.