Movin' On - 1999 - Shake, Shuttle and Blow

 

Enja Records – ENJ-9374 2  290.70MB FLAC

Shake, Shuttle and Blow brings together four musicians whose individual histories stretch across several generations of European jazz, yet the album never feels like a ceremonial summit. Albert Mangelsdorff, Bruno Spoerri, Christy Doran and Reto Weber operate as a compact working unit, balancing free improvisation, eccentric composition, hard rhythmic drive and a playful sense of sonic theater. The group name Movin’ On suits the music: every piece seems designed to establish a situation, explore it briefly and then push beyond it before the structure becomes too comfortable.

Mangelsdorff’s trombone gives the ensemble its most immediately distinctive voice. His tone can be broad and burnished, but he repeatedly fractures it through multiphonics, vocalized attacks and rough-edged interval leaps. The famous technique of singing one pitch while playing another allows him to imply chords from a single horn, creating dense harmonic events without requiring a conventional keyboard or additional brass. These sounds never function as technical demonstrations. They are woven into the ensemble’s humor and momentum, making the trombone growl, split, buzz and occasionally seem to argue with itself.

Bruno Spoerri’s alto and soprano saxophones occupy a more mobile register. He moves between angular melodic lines, clipped rhythmic figures and sharp electronic-sounding cries, even when playing acoustically. His background in both jazz and electronic music can be heard in the way he treats phrases as blocks of sound rather than simply as melodic statements. Against Mangelsdorff’s weightier brass, Spoerri introduces nervous movement and bright friction, often setting up the tensions that drive the group into freer territory.

Christy Doran’s electric guitar supplies color without behaving like a conventional chordal instrument. He can support the horns with brittle harmonic fragments, but he is just as likely to scrape, distort or stretch notes until the guitar becomes another reed-like voice. His playing gives the album a faint jazz-rock edge, though the group avoids the polished surfaces associated with fusion. Distortion remains grainy, rhythms stay unstable and solos rarely resolve into predictable climaxes.

Reto Weber provides the ensemble’s rhythmic engine, using drums and percussion to keep the music lively without trapping it inside fixed meters. His patterns often begin as recognizable grooves before being disrupted by accents, hand percussion or abrupt changes in density. The title piece demonstrates this especially well. The rhythm feels buoyant and physical, but every musician approaches the pulse from a different angle. The result swings without sounding traditional and experiments without losing forward motion.

The compositions are full of memorable shapes. “Do You Like Pastrami” begins with the kind of title that immediately lowers the temperature of solemnity, and the music follows with quick exchanges, odd interruptions and a conversational looseness. “Bolghatty Dreams” opens into a broader landscape, allowing the horns and guitar more room to stretch. “Barrel Without Bottom” develops through repetition and accumulating pressure, while “Up and Push” compresses the group’s energy into a shorter, more forceful statement.

Humor is essential to the album, but it never becomes novelty. Squeals, abrupt stops, exaggerated brass sounds and rhythmic feints all arise from close listening. The musicians recognize that improvisation can remain rigorous without adopting a permanently severe mood. Even the strangest moments retain structural purpose. A comic horn figure may trigger a shift in the percussion, which then gives the guitar an opening to redirect the entire piece.

The recording has the directness of musicians performing in close physical proximity. Trombone and saxophone retain their air and metallic edges, the guitar sits clearly within the ensemble rather than covering it and the percussion has enough space to register both impact and decay. There is little sense of studio ornament. The emphasis remains on collective interplay and the changing relationships between four sharply defined instrumental voices.

Shake, Shuttle and Blow belongs to a European jazz tradition that had long since absorbed bebop, free jazz, electronics and rock without feeling obligated to choose among them. Mangelsdorff brings decades of radical brass language, Spoerri adds restless curiosity, Doran supplies electric abrasion and Weber keeps the entire structure in motion. The album’s strength lies not in any single innovation but in the ease with which these elements coexist. It is adventurous without becoming forbidding, funny without becoming lightweight and rhythmically engaging without surrendering its unpredictability. Movin’ On lives up to its name by refusing to remain anywhere for long.