In this album, saxophonist Ethan Helm has achieved a very personal balance between highly composed sections and solos rooted in harmony and free playing.

Wet Electricity: Volume I, Ethan Helm.

Cover art for Ethan Helm’s “Wet Electricity: Volume 1.”

By Steve Provizer

This is one of the most unusual recordings to pass my way in some time. Ethan Helm, composer of the music, cites an eclectic group as inspiration — Tim Berne, John Hollenbeck, György Ligeti and Christian Marclay — and he has achieved a very personal balance between highly composed sections and solos rooted in harmony and free playing. There’s a high level of musical intelligence at work here. Apart from Helm on alto sax and flute, other members of the group are Matt Honor (drums), Noah Berman (guitar), Jon Snell (piano), and Gabe Terracciano (violin). They all make important contributions to the music.

“Diverse Reflections #1” starts with an extended section of multiple church bells ringing. Piano softly enters, with notes that clash with the tonality of the bells. As the church chimes fade, the piano continues with a fragile, dissonant melody, which is joined by an electronic keyboard or possibly a synthesized guitar, painting broad strokes beneath. Drums enter with mallets on cymbals and low tom and then alto sax and violin enter, rhythmically together but in dissonant harmony as the drummer roils the waters. Eventually and fairly suddenly, this shifts to a mostly consonant release to a quiet ending.

“Diverse Reflections #2” is propulsive, evoking a synthesis of Northern Indian music and Balinese Gamelon. The time signature is complex. The tune stays mostly in one harmonic area then suddenly changes, in a “So What” half step movement. The melody becomes more fragmented and is broken up by sudden stops. A development section comes in in which rhythm section churns underneath some alto sax improvisation, which continues to move between the two keys. There is a repeated riff by the sax at the end of the episode which is picked up by the whole band. But the harmony begins to become more dissonant and poof! — it’s over, as quickly as it began.

“Diverse Reflections #3” has some of the quality of #2, although it’s less propulsive. A moving bass line contours a disjunctive melody played in counterpoint by sax and violin. Sax plays a riff, which is picked up by the group. The tune shifts often between repeated riffs and small contrapuntal sax and violin interludes, sometimes written, sometimes improvised. Eventually sax and violin move into a repeated riff together. A number of short sub-sections follow in which the sax-violin relationship continually shift, although the bass line in the piano stays moving most of the time. Again, we have a quick ending.

“Everything There is To Know” is very different from the tracks preceding it. Each member of the band seems to be improvising freely. Segments of connection and independence  pass by as the composition moves among various levels of busyness, finally growing more spacious, until we hear only sporadic sounds: mostly violin, drums, and what sounds like altered piano. It grows sparser and quieter and fades to an end.

Saxophonist and composer Ethan Helm. Photo: courtesy of the artist.

“Structure #1” is another free improvisation, concentrating more on sax and violin. Piano eventually surfaces as the main instrument, then violin and guitar. It’s a meditation with some edge to it.

An apeirogon, I found out, is a polygon with a “countably infinite number of sides.” The next tune, “Apeiragon,” presents a possible musical analogue. It opens with the whole group playing a riff in off meter in unison; the drummer solos. Then, a unison riff with a pentatonic feel is taken up by sax and violin, with piano playing a pedal tone. Then a violin enters, performing an improvisation similar to that in “Diverse Meditation #2,” although the harmonic movement here is more complicated. Violin works up a good bit of energy and then passes off to the piano. Drums are still active, the volume goes down a bit, but the piano solo keeps the energy up. Sax comes in for a solo and there’s a touch of “A Love Supreme” in his approach until guitar comes in and, after a bit, sax solo moves more into bluesy terrain. Rhythm section then takes over with some guitar fills and the key definitively changes. The repeated pentatonic riffs come back in behind while the violin, piano, and sax trade rhythmic space –can’t call it 4’s, really. They begin to play atop each other and then join in a unison line — it is a variation of what we’ve heard so far. That line shifts slightly as the rhythm fractures, and we’re out. I don’t know if there’s a “countably infinite number of sides,” but there is no doubt that multidimensional would be an appropriate way to describe the tune.

“Heart, Mind, Body,” begins with multi-tracked flutes placed in a free floating relationship of ambiguous tonality — an unusual sound. The flutes move briefly into a unison melody and the band enters supplying a dirge-like tempo and feeling. Alto sax emerges and submerges. The dynamics vary, while the dirge continues. I hear a snatch of “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” from the sax. There’s a slight leavening in mood, as sax and violin play a unison melody with a yearning quality. There is a repeated riff similar to those in other tunes, but this time played slowly. Then comes a shorter, more dramatic section, and back to the riff, slightly varied, a tentative solo by violin and a melody with multi-tracked violin. Guitar and piano back that with moving lines, until those riffs come upfront and we move to a quiet close.

“Dodo Codes” enters, as the first track did, with church bells, albeit a little less obstreperously. Guitar and piano emerge from the bells more consonantly than on the first track. In a longish section, alto sax and violin offer brief statements to a sustained harmony. This is one of the few periods on the recording of sustained improv without “development.” Eventually, the violin emerges with a solo, as the rhythm section sustains a consistent beat. The soloing is very varied and expertly done. There is a slow build as violin is overtaken by a sax solo; there’s a slightly varied rhythm section background. This too builds until, briefly, violin reenters and leaves the sax to finish the section. A repeated riff alternates with repetitious eighth notes, almost as if the two ideas are vying for dominance. Variations of this continue until the riff dominates. Then there arrives a free section of dissolution that seems to carry the preceding section into a natural entropy which fades back into the church bells.

Open fifths mutating into other intervals open “Structure 2.” The piano steps out in a slightly bluesy vein and then back to a more varied free improvisation as sax and violin enter with a sustained background. Polytonality and microtonality dominate in this tune, which feels both meditative and disturbing. Sax and violin remain static and tonally ambiguous as the piano roams across the keyboard. “Structure 2” enters and exits stealthily, a bookend to the first tune on the recording, “Diverse Reflections #1.”

The fine-grained details of this recording, as well its macrocosmic musical vision, reflect considerable thought. Highly recommended.

Steve Provizer is a brass player and bandleader who has been blogging about jazz for 15 years and written about the music for many publications.