John Fordham 

Farmers By Nature: Love and Ghosts review – breathtakingly fluent free jazz

With its free-piano excursions of breathtaking speed and fluency and lightness, this is just the kind of free jazz that recruits new followers, writes John Fordham
  
  

Farmers By Nature
Breathtaking speed, fluency and lightness … Farmers By Nature Photograph: PR

This double set, recorded at two French concerts, is the third release from Farmers By Nature, the all-improv US trio of drummer Gerald Cleaver, bassist William Parker and pianist Craig Taborn. For improv listeners who like to hear jazz roots, Taborn is the most satisfying of pianists, balancing percussive abstractions with supple, Herbie Hancockish lines; former Cecil Taylor bassist/composer Parker is a revered virtuoso, and Cleaver is the kind of drummer who's as interesting on his own as in company. Parker's remarkable bowing resources open proceedings, with fast-sawn, jittering high-end sounds diving downward as Taborn's stomping chords arrive; while the 18-minute title track spans delicate, themeless rhythm explorations, lopsided swing, and fierce chordal outbursts. But the 10 pieces here offer many alternatives – pulsing-heartbeat sounds that turn to chugging train rhythms; densely orchestral long-tone themes that quicken to swing; long free-piano excursions of breathtaking speed, fluency and lightness. It's just the kind of free jazz that recruits new followers.

 

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