Last month, my guitar idol Nels Cline released my favorite album of the year so far, but on the same day his twin brother, drummer Alex Cline, also released a pretty damn good album called Continuation. I've mostly heard Alex before as a supporting player on a number of projects with Nels (Destroy All Nels Cline, Gregg Bendian's Interzone, New Monastery), but I've always felt a weird sort of kinship with him, since my name is Alex, I'm a drummer, and I learned to play growing up with a brother who played guitar/bass. But Continuation is the first album I've heard from him as a bandleader, and while his avant jazz is a little less avant than his brother's, it's still damn creative stuff that constantly grabs your attention with intriguing instrumentation and arranging choices.

Cline's quintet on Continuation is string-heavy, matching his percussion with violin, cello, bass and piano, and Jeff Gauthier's violin is more often than not the dominant texture; Cline is a generous writer and arranger who never lets virtuoso drumming dominate the proceedings. "SubMerge," written to accompany a choreography piece by Japanese Dancers, brings out the rough theme of Eastern scales and textures more explicitly than on other tracks, but you can hear the influence on Gauthier's playing throughout the album. It's also one of a couple tracks where pianist Myra Medford switches to harmonium, which is one of those instruments that I pretty much adore hearing in any context, and she uses it to particularly great effect on "Clearing Our Streams." In a way, I feel bad that Alex Cline chose to release this album the same day as his more famous brother released one, but I'm happy to have both records anyway.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 14, 2009 at 3:42 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.