Bobby Bradford, Tom Heasley and Ken Ross — Varistar

Bobby Bradford, Tom Heasley and Ken Rosser have a created a lengthy record of subdued, most free jazz styled nocturnal improvisations with "Varistar", using only their respective instruments, the trumpet, the tuba and the guitar.

First, the bad - This is a very, slow, stagnant feeling record.  If at any point the listener finds themselves wishing the musicians would increase or decrease the energy of their playing, build up momentum, play some dynamics... the moment simply never comes.  Each song sluggishly plods along through endless variations of (admittedly very interesting) intertwined melodies and never even attempts to surprise or progress in any way.  The lack of a percussionist is obvious.  This group is remarkably rhythmically uninspired, almost as if they were improvising to a click track.  Yet, they also never attempt to play any tighter lines or sync up in any obvious way, and to my ears, it all sounds unintentional.  With a couple exceptions, it's too distracting to be ambient music, but too unchanging for focused listening.

Due to their lengthy running times, most of these songs unfortunately become tiresome long before they end.  "Varistar" delivers a few surprises in its second half, but still can't quite make up for the monotony of the first half, or the overall uninspired quality of the whole record. In many key areas, the album simply lacks ambition.   Even if one was able to stomach the album's slowness, few would deny it is remarkably inaccessible.

To the record's credit, the melodies are often wonderful, and the players manage create an uncomfortable, simultaneously consonant and dissonant harmony for a majority of the time, which at least for me stimulates a lot of synaesthesia and brings washes of colors to mind (though perhaps I was merely influenced by the tacky screen saver-esque cover).  These musicians sometimes seem to understand the idea of themed improvisation.  Some tracks succeed in setting a subtley different tone, however admittedly some are nearly indistinguishable.

The album does have a deliciously ominous beginning.  In opener "Delicious Red", a surrealist haze hangs over an otherwise straightforwardly film noire-esque lament, setting a haunting and original tone for the album.

The second track "Ohio" has the same mid-paced rhythm as the opener, and utlizes many of the same patterns, which as a result seem all the more tedious by the end of the track.  Putting these two very similar 10 minute tracks side by side at the beginning of the album was a decision that almost renders the album completely unlistenable.  This track is unpleasantly dissonant but has no real ferocity or intensity.

The thankfully short "Crooked March" attempts to integrate some straightforward march basslines for the tuba into the dissonant free jazz noodling of the other 2 musicians, which has not changed since "Ohio".  There's nothing memorable about it.  "Not Forgotten" and "Practically Sensable" are marginally distinguishably different shades of melancholy, again in the vein of "Delicious Red".  There are again some great melodies, but all the notes run together at this point, and it really seems like the entire album will be just like this.  Much of this middle section of the album seems devoid of any real expressiveness, and due to all the stylistic repetition it's hard even to have many thoughts about "Delicious Red" anymore.

Luckily, we get another track that sounds as fresh as "Delicious Red" did when it first came on with the second to last piece, title track "Varistar", and that's because they finally decide to the instrumentation a little bit, first adding some lush reverb and distortion effects to the guitar that change the overall texture of the sound for the better, and then letting soupy resonant feedback overwhelm the mix completely.  The sounds absorb you, and the 3 instrumentalists finally play as one.  The final track "Elegy for John Carter" is similar and possibly even better, a mourning echoing ode almost reminiscent of whalesong.  Here, we've come so far into ambient territory that it almost feels like a different band than the bland first half of the album.  As they are more focused on the sounds themselves, these last 2 tracks are listenable as ambient music, and by far the best part of the album.  Knowing they can create otherworldly textures such as these,
 I really wonder why they wasted their time on the less original free jazz material.

The whole album is well recorded and sounds beautiful.  The trumpet brims with molten heat.  The guitar breathes and shimmers in a darkened, resonant room.  The sounds of the instruments keep the album entertaining longer than it otherwise would have been.  It still isn't enough.

The best moments of "Varistar" turn out to be the most ambient ones.  In "Delicious Red", "Varistar" and "Elegy for John Carter", the intertwining melodies feel fluid enough to form an ambient patchwork of emotions.  The other tracks are little more than dissonant tangents that fail to find cohesiveness, and these make up most of the album.