RANGDA FALSE FLAG (DRAG CITY)
Chasny’s description of the process is succinct: “going for it.” Though Rangda does write the occasional pure tune, the trio works mostly with the improviser’s toolbox. Parameters are set, and for any piece that consists predominantly of improvisation, desired ends are roughly mapped out in advance—but once the musicians start to play, “going for it” is how they coordinate the action.
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French thinker Jacques Attali, in his 1985 book Noise: The Political Economy of Music, called improvisation an “exchange of coded messages” wherein musicians offer up their individual codes or plug into a shared code in the process of elaboration. If in rock ‘n’ roll each player is governed by rules specific to his instrument, then improvisation is essentially an amendment to that activity. Some rules are stripped away, so that governing power falls largely to the means of communication: musical language. It’s no coincidence that AC/DC’s “Let There Be Rock” and Little Richard’s rendition of “Keep a Knockin’” maintain flirty contact despite coming two decades apart. They speak the same language, plug into the same code.
When musicians lose themselves, it often makes for unruly, “difficult” music, which regardless of pedigree gets shoved into the recesses of the jazz closet. The word jazz isn’t just for saxy ballads one slurps soup to; it’s attached to grizzled African-Americans in dashikis setting stages on fire with volcanic overblowing and blood-sport drumming. Morphine’s fratty murk-rock ends up in the same big pile as the heady large-ensemble game pieces of composer and saxophonist John Zorn, guided by a conductor’s hand gestures and other visual cues. So do Ken Vandermark’s blissful neo-hard bop, the “bells together” sax terrorism of Borbetomagus, and the terrific splattercore of the trio Ascension, led by guitarist Stefan Jaworzyn. Somewhere in this gamut falls False Flag, which harnesses the dualism of horror and euphoria exemplified by the free-jazz bands of the mid- to late 1960s—volatile urban provocateurs whose records could be found on ESP-Disk and BYG Actuel.
“These songs could be charted on something of an improv/composed continuum, since each piece has a little of each,” Chasny says. “Chris actually conceptualized ‘Fist Family.’ He wanted a song where the guitars are bending notes very close to each other in order to create the beats that happen with wavelengths when they are nearly in tune. When we asked what he was planning to do, he sort of just gave a ‘don’t worry about me’ response and then it was done. I definitely see ‘Fist Family’ as more of a minimalist composition. But I guess one with maximalist drumming! We’re only sliding between two notes the entire time. Corsano is the engine keeping that song flying.”
