Lucio Capece/Kevin Drumm/Radu Malfatti : The Volume Surrounding The Task

Let this recording, The Volume Surrounding The Task, be your guide to Buddhist meditation. While the current trend in corporate America (and Europe for that matter) is to foist meditation practices upon employees to gain a competitive advantage, let's head in another direction. CEOs want to sharpen workers' concentration, but minimalist improvisation like this conjured by the trio of Lucio Capece, Kevin Drumm, and Radu Malfatti generates a dreamlike state of distraction. The chimerical illusion of centralization is shattered when this forty minute piece is performed.

Where the players once might have been found in service of the melody, Radu Malfatti's trombone with Barry Guy's London Composer's Orchestra, Chris McGregor's Brotherhood Of Breath, or Joe McPhee, there's tones. Same for Lucio Capece's bass clarinet, which embraces thus ultra-minimalism. Kevin Drumm, a sort of chameleon of sound, can slug it out with the best noise artists, play jazz and rock, and here shift into minimalism.

The trio asks you to become absorbed in woolgathering. Your attention to this live concert from Brussels in 2011 is not prescribed. It waxes and wanes. Near silent breath and simmered notes take you away from the act of listening and into dreams. Is that note from Malfatti's trombone, or Capece's bass clarinet? It doesn't matter. The broth supplies all ingredients for the ear to switch off the brain. The experience fosters repeated spins of the disc, each time a satori occurs. Were those bells? Did that creaking noise come out of the speakers, or is someone in the house? Is my bicycle tire leaking? I'll let you know, I've got to get back inside this meditation.

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