(Modern Creative, Improvised Music, Fusion) [WEB] Jaimie Branch (feat. Tomeka Reid, Chad Taylor etc.) - Fly or Die - 2017, FLAC (tracks), lossless

Fly or Die is:
jaimie branch - trumpet
Tomeka Reid - cello
Jason Ajemian - bass
Chad Taylor - drums
Cameos by:

Matt Schneider – guitar
Ben Lamar Gay – cornet
Josh Berman – cornet

Jaimie Branch - Fly or Die (International Anthem, 2017) *****
by Tom Burris
Much has been made of Jaimie Branch's move to NYC from Chicago a couple of years ago – especially about the fact that her new city quickly became the birthplace of her long-overdue debut album as a leader. Whatever NYC had to do with inspiring this thing, THANK YOU BIG APPLE. But make no mistake, this record is still the sound of Chicago. It's a sharply focused work that moves from one great idea to another quickly and – while retaining its originality - is also very representative of the last 20 years of a certain Chicago sound, with its musical precision and post-production work in the electro-acoustic realm of Tortoise or Rob Mazurek's many projects.
What you're getting here is 35 minutes of compacted and refined hyperactivity that is also highly sensitive, a bit stormy, and completely brilliant. Textures are extremely important, as Branch casually uses reverb to widen and deepen the landscape, or as in perfectly placed overdubs – like the dubs of Tomeka Reid's cello on “theme 001,” which build tension and add richness to the mix. Of course, before you can play with texture you have to have the goods – and with the lock-in-groove between Reid, bassist Jason Ajemian, and drummer Chad Taylor, the goods are definitely in supply. Then there's Branch herself. She plays the trumpet with skill and purpose, and her approach is both passionate and cerebral. No note is wasted. She knows what to do with every bit of space. I think her days of being a ridiculously underrated musician will be officially over once this record takes off. And there is every reason to expect that it will.
A real standout track is “leaves of glass,” on which Branch is joined by guests Josh Berman and Ben Lamar Gay on cornets. The opening chords are almost unbearably mournful and gorgeous, then the mix goes crazy as the horns start melting all over themselves in multiple washes of echoey effects. This track is followed by “the storm,” where things really get surreal as Reid and Ajemian make rain and Taylor thunders. Branch provides the lightning. Then echoed brass ghosts dance on the plains as the storm passes overhead.
The record is definitely a suite. Branch seems to turn over ideas until every workable outcome has been been revealed, and a suite is the perfect outlet for her writing and arranging methods. And for as much of a Chicago-comes-to-NYC vibe the group presents, I'm reminded as often of big open Midwestern spaces like Kansas or Nebraska – and even the Southwest. Seriously, it sits nicely as a companion piece to Jimmy Giuffre's Western Suite or Neil Young's Zuma.
I have to talk about the magnificent “theme nothing.” Taylor wallops out a horse clomping rhythm that indicates we may be headed toward the Southwest. Ajemian's bass rumble propels the music forward. The way Branch and Reid wind around each other is spellbinding. The melody will stay in your head forever – and not in an annoying way. I think it's my favorite track of 2017 so far.
And then there's the oddity at the end, which is called “...back at the ranch,” Guest musician Matt Schneider plays a freestyle campfire acoustic guitar for a minute and a half. It doesn't sound like a tag to me, although the liner notes call it an epilogue. It sounds simply like we have arrived at a new and different place where anything is possible. So is it jazz? The only answer to that question is “Who gives a shit?”

Chicago’s Own: On Jaimie Branch’s ‘Fly or Die’
Will Schube takes a look at Jaimie Branch's excellent International Anthem debut, 'Fly or Die.'
Any veteran of the Chicago jazz scene is good by me. This iteration of jazz’s Midwest hub is so varied and diverse, so wonderfully infused with the quirks and tics of genreless music, that any mainstay gets an automatic pass. Jaimie Branch says thanks but no thanks to the automatic in. Her music is too defiantly loud, too excitingly accelerant to be given a gimme.
Fly or Die is Branch’s first solo release, and there’s no better home for outwardly pushing jazz than her label, Chicago’s International Anthem. The label is home to Jeff Parker, one of my favorite modern players and a thoughtful practitioner of jazz’s modern evolution.
Branch’s debut begins with a quick introduction, followed by “theme 001,” a track led by a drum groove that could fit anywhere from The King of Limbs to Tony Williams’ Believe It. The music is tense and urgent, propulsive in its push for space; Branch’s canon-like horn needs room to explode. Accompanied by Tomeka Reid on cello, Jason Ajemian on bass, and Chad Taylor on drums, Branch’s quartet takes the ebbs and flows of jazz and twists them atop each other until what comes, goes, and what goes, comes. Take “Waltzer,” for instance, a six-and-a-half minute track that moves from ambient to exploratory to explosive to experimental and back to ambient before it settles upon a proper ending. It’s brilliant.
While Branch’s solo leanings may veer towards the avant-garde, she’s made a name for herself backing indie staples Spoon and Brooklyn heroes TV On The Radio—the place she now resides. While Branch may no longer live in Chicago, the DNA of that city’s jazz scene is all over her music. Just as ’90s-era Thrill Jockey and their stable of experimental rock bands bled into the world of jazz and vice versa, Fly Or Die is uninterested and willfully dismissive of artificial bounds. This is an album. A very good one. Sometimes it takes trying to understand where a record fits in to realize that the music triumphs above distinctions because of this very defiance.