Arcane Candy

Offering up five tracks of solo instrumental intensity from this NYC street musician and torch-passed-to rep of ’60s free jazz motions, Charles Gayle, Unto I Am is a pressure cooker that is definitely worthy of a place in your kitchen. “Innocent” (for tenor sax), “Pastures Colors” (for bass clarinet), and “Child’s Love” (for tenor sax) possess the kind of skruff, throat-toot-wail-gargle glory that guys like Albert Ayler and Kaoru Abe did more than hint at with their ground shoveling work of yore —and fans of those two characters should have a little bit more than a passing crush on these definitely-not-dainty passages. “Eden Lost” is an energetic, dissonant piano romp with a super pissed Sunday morning sermon weaved throughout. “You said, ‘I want to find my own way. I want to do what I want to do—no matter what.’ Because you say, ‘I’m good—Oh, I’m just a little bad.’ Christ said, ‘There’s no way. There’s none righteous. I’m The Way, The Truth and The Light. Ain’t nobody comes to the father but by me.’” The disc closes with an 11-minute overdub mix called, “Good Shepard” for sermon, percussion and tenor sax.

Label: Victo Catalog Number: VICTO CD 032 Format: CD Packaging: Jewel case Tracks: 5 Country: Canada Released: 1995 More: Downbeat, Wikipedia

Text ©2003 Arcane Candy

Charles Gayle Trio at Olé Madrid in San Diego, California on Tuesday, February 27, 1996. Photo ©1996 by Rich Jacobs. Photo enlarges.

Olé Madrid
San Diego, California
Tuesday, February 27, 1996.

“Charles Gayle is a free jazz spaceship engine that has been igniting New York launching pads like the Knitting Factory for the last decade or two. This evening involved two long sets of ’60s-inspired free clamor divided by a half-hour break. The stand up bassist and drummer each soloed up their fair share of intense improv freedom as Gayle offered up anti-abortion / pro love / pro-Jesus sentiments punctuated by scratching sawmill violin; crude, ominous Casio keyboard chords; and cascading waterfalls that shoot up into the Sun via some really intense sax note / sheet wailing. It was a spontaneous sound aquarium that simultaneously stapled me to my chair and hurled me through distant expanses of beautiful uncertainty. It’s safe to say this performance was pure lift-off that took me a little bit further than out on a limb.”–GSD, Lou’s and the Abstract Truth (Lou’s Records newsletter), February 1996

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The first time I heard Charles Gayle, I actually saw him, too, at a live show he headlined in San Diego back in 1996. Word was floating around amongst the spaghetti, I mean cognoscenti that Mr. Gayle was enjoying the fruits of a proper national tour brandishing the torch of 1960s free jazz, after suffering through years of homelessness. All human heads in the small but packed house that night got completely incinerated by an infinite amount of molten noodles emanating from Charles’ gale force breath blown through a smoldering sax, as he preached the gospel of Jesus Christ briefly in between tracks. Aside from the latter, the program on this excellent CD is quite similar, cleanly recorded five years earlier in late 1991. Occasionally, the maelstrom subsides to let William or Rashied take a mellow, soulful solo.

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