People who play off-the-wall instruments tend to write off-the-wall music. David Dominique’s axe is the flugabone, a higher-pitched valve trombone usually limited to marching-band music. As you might expect from someone from that milieu, his new octet album Mask – streaming at Bandcamp – is irrepressibly fun, and rhythmic, and sounds like absolutely nothing else out there. It seems as if he’s been listening to a lot of Ligeti and other minimalist composers, although imputing influences to musicians is never a safe bet. Reduced to lowest terms, this album combines the hypnotic, cyclical quality of a lot of indie classical music with the exuberance of a brass band. Other reference points are the snark of Mostly Other People Do the Killing (and possibly some other snarky critters), along with the surreal live techno of German dancefloor nuts the Jazzrausch Bigband.
The bright opening track, The Wee of Us has jaunty New Orleans flavor, chattering dixieland voicings and tricky, staggered syncopation. If the Microscopic Septet were just getting started right now, they might sound like this, Alexander Noice’s flickering guitar mingling with Brian Walsh’s tenor sax and the altos of Joe Santa Maria and Sam Robles while violist Lauren Baba and bassist Michael Alvidrez hold down an insistent beat in tandem with drummer Andrew Lessman.
Grief at first seems to be a very sardonically titled jazz waltz, Santa Maria’s flute at the center paired against the flugabone and Robles’ baritone, the bandleader overdubbing a da-da chorus of vocals. The music gets serious at the end over Noice’s uneasy jangle.
Beetle, a coyly nocturnal swing number, brings to mind creepy cinephiles Beninghove’s Hangmen in a lighter moment…or Tredici Bacci. To Dave Treut – a shout-out to the ruggedly individualistic Brooklyn multi-instrumentalist – shifts surrealistically from balmy swing to a riffy mashup of Terry Riley and Dopapod, with a tingly viola solo on the way out. Then the band negotiate the odd syncopation of Invisibles, a sliced-and-diced march which is just as much about space as melody.
The band follow Five Locations, a series of brief sketches, with The Yawpee, an exuberantly racewalk through a series of catchy, loopy hooks strung together, with a cynically sinister oldtimey outro. Separation Strategies, with its motorik bassline and tight counterpoint, is the one track that most vividly evokes the Jazzrausch guys. The album ends with Gotta Fumble, tense low-register pedalpoint anchoring a lively flute hook, variations from individual voices spiraling up to puncture the playful, carefree ambience. Throughout the album, the jokes – some completely over the top, some much more subtle – are as entertaining as the band’s tightness and Dominique’s completely unpredictable seismic shifts.