Raw Demoon Alchemy (A Lone Operation)

The last time saxophonist/composer Darius Jones issued a recording under his own name was 2015s Le Bebe de Brigitte (Lost in Translation), an album-length tribute to groundbreaking vanguard singer Brigitte Fontaine, recorded in collaboration with French vanguard composer/vocalist/pianist Emilie Lesbros. Since then, Jones has remained busy performing solo, with his trio, and in various groups as a sideman. Raw Demoon Alchemy (A Lone Operation) is a live solo saxophone outing, drawn from a deeply emotional 2019 live performance in Oregon. Its five tunes include four covers by world-building Black artists -- Georgia Anne Muldrow, Ornette Coleman, Roscoe Mitchell, and Sun Ra. The other selection is a moving reading of a 1930s-era jazz standard that is closely associated with Doris Day and, later, pianist Bill Evans. Jones was processing the end of a decade-long romantic relationship when he performed this concert. There is something unspeakably vulnerable in these performances. His unhurried approach discovers and rediscovers creative possibility to crystallize at the moment when an ending and a beginning interact simultaneously. His reading of Muldrows Figure No. 2 offers the core lyric line as a mutant blues. Though his delivery is seemingly stoic, it gains emotional depth and dimension with every succeeding chorus. Ornette Colemans Sadness grinds on the high note in the first phrase; it fades amid pregnant spaces. Jones holds single elongated notes until he literally runs out of breath, and they decay naturally as he delves into the horns lower register, unhurriedly underscoring both melody and emotion. Beautiful Love opens with a quote from the Addams Family theme before Jones engages its lyricism. He finds the tunes melancholy backbone by adding adorning fragments from On a Clear Day, The Sheik of Araby, and even the bridge of The Star-Spangled Banner before registering knottier, more exploratory runs. The reading of Mitchells Nonaah -- one of the composers most enduring tunes -- commences at mid-honk as economical blips and bleats emerge via breath control. About two and a half minutes in, Jones begins to explore the notes in the tunes well-known vamp, and brings them closer and closer to one another until the vamp -- raging, raw, and unruly -- reflects the seemingly inexhaustible creativity inside the melody, and he juxtaposes a range of colorful possibilities. Sun Ras Love in Outer Space clocks in at nearly 14 minutes. Jones throws himself into its modes and tones. He adopts the blues and the liberating freedom with which Ra imbued it. Jones reaches across the horns registers, following both the literal and expressed intention of the lyric, and hovers about the tension before turning it inside out without losing sight of its spacious, haunted beauty. Raw Demoon Alchemy (A Lone Operation) is presented utterly unfiltered. Jones grabs on to what drew him to these tunes, seeks out the composers intentions, then imbues their creativity with meaning from his life experience as a collective past meets the prophetic spirit of the future. ~ Thom Jurek

インパクトのあるジャケットとタイトルからなんとも言えない妖しさが溢れ出ているこの作品は、サックス奏者ダリウス・ジョーンズによる一枚。最近ではマーク・リボー率いるセラミック・ドッグスのアルバムにも参加していた現代フリー・ジャズ界の旗手です。じっくりとソロ演奏でその変幻自在・唯一無二なサックス・ヴォイスをお楽しみください。さまざまな音楽が鳴り響く現代に奇界スポットのように存在し、スピリチュアルなパワーを放つ表現. . .まさにジャズならではの魅力です。真夜中に耳を委ねて聴き入れば、新たな開眼が訪れることでしょう。
intoxicate (C)谷本真悟