Busting my skull to imagine direct precedents for this free-abstractionist keys-drums duo. Coming up short. Cecil Taylor and Andrew Cyrille sometimes gave Jimmy Lyons a rest for '60s duo flights, but those two never harbored the groove subconsciousness of Joshua White & Alex Cline. Best comparison wins a free MetalJazz subscription.
Indicating that he considered this gig jazz rather than world, the usually mega-equipped Cline perched behind the tiny shotgun kick of the blue mini-kit given to him by Peter Erskine decades ago. It remains in mint condition.
Cline inaugurated the first improvisation by rolling his mallets on the cymbals; White joined with acoustic-piano sprinkles to suggest an open field. Miles used to set the table this way, and sure enough, White switched to electric piano, plugged in a bossy low-end rhythm and got progrockin/spacefunkin before ebbing back down to '70s Keith Jarrett twinkles. Cline picked up sticks for insistent Jack DeJohnette rim-clacks, and the two built to a dense union of texture and harmony. The parameters were established: We can do anything, anytime, in sync.
So they did. The second selection's rhythmic tour de force tossed in bits of New Orleans shake and stop-start trade-offs before closing quietly like a movie sunrise (a sunrise cuz the set was just warming up, see). White explored every corner of harmonic fission on acoustic and shivered like a buzzed Eskimo on electric; Cline conjured a Punjabi scenario on shooping cymbals and storylined it with drum drama. The whole concert was a riveting ride, soft and loud, accelerating to rocky peaks and plunging to sudden dissonant conclusions, littering the landscape with classical shards and avant inflammations.
The final dialogue sounded like an angry couple's argument in a sportscar speeding down a mountain road. The overheated auto threw a rod and saved their lives by lurching into a drained lullaby that turned out to be the Temptations' "Just My Imagination." There they hung on a cliff, looking at each other with fearful relief, steam rising around them. The end.
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PHOTO BY FUZZY BRAKE. Sorry it's only of White, but Alex always has his face behind a cymbal.
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We have a winner: None other than Alex Cline himself has claimed the free (although they're all free) MetalJazz subscription by noting loose parallels with some tracks on the 1973 album "Ruta and Daitya" by Keith Jarrett & Jack DeJohnette, both artists coincidentally referenced above. Alex, please enjoy many seconds of ad-free MetalJazz ponderation.