No Doughnuts In Hand

One wonders if England realizes how much of a national treasure Phil Minton is. His vocal experiments and all-out creativity have inspired scores of improvisers, male and female, yet none of them sound quite like him. No Doughnuts in Hand is his third solo album, following A Doughnut in Both Hands in 1981 and A Doughnut in One Hand in 1998. If his hands are empty this time, his voice is still holding strong -- and instantly identifiable. This album consists of 37 short improvisations -- vignettes, in fact, ranging anywhere between 30 seconds and a few seconds shy of three minutes. Although fragmented, the album works out very well just the same. The trap would have been to present a catalog of Minton's extended techniques. Luckily, that is not what No Doughnuts in Hand is about. Short as they are, the pieces are not mere exercises or examples, but surprise-packed improvised miniatures. The voice is naked, purely acoustic, and covers a huge range of sounds and textures, from all-out screams to belches, rasps, and whispers, not forgetting Minton's patented Donald Duck singing and mad stream-of-consciousness rambling ("No Doughnuts in Hand 7," as impressive as it is hilarious). The "Breath Out" series (seven pieces) features Minton singing on a single exhalation (about 30 seconds), working out a gamut of possible approaches in this limited territory. No Doughnuts in Hand will not change your perception of Minton and his uncanny vocal art: fans already know this is a must-have (after all, the man releases one solo album per decade), and detractors would probably find a few more arguments with which to detract. In the end, though, this is a fun and cheerful album to listen to, in a radical free improvisation kind of way. ~ Francois Couture|