Closing track here, Return Trajectory is a good for instance of the excellent rapport existing among the aforementioned [“flesh-and-blood”] players, whose parallel traveling seems to suggest a good dose of telepathy—check the final moments, the two winds going towards a note in teleological mode. This is the track that, in my opinion, clearly shows more than a trace of these musicians’ formative influences, with Schroeder’s soprano reminding me of Evan Parker (elsewhere on the album she sounds quite more personal), while Coates’ alto is clearly reminiscent of the zig-zag wondering of Anthony Braxton (an influence that is also quite apparent elsewhere on the album, both on alto and sopranino). Han-earl Park’s guitar sits somewhere halfway between Joe Pass and Derek Bailey, being quite aware of the jazz vocabulary and the art of comping, though of course filtered through a modern sensibility, starting with timbre, but not as ‘indifferent’ to the surrounding as Bailey’s sometimes could be.

Were the album as good as its closing track, well… we’d only have a good album, nothing more. But—surprise!—as per its title, we have an ‘unknown quantity’ called io 0.0.1 beta++: a ‘musical automaton’ created by Han-earl Park whose improvising—so rich when it comes to timbres (which are sometimes more than a bit old-fashioned, a fact that goes well with its bizarre physical aspect, so reminiscent of 50s sci-fi movies), so mysterious when it comes to its decision-making—works as a valuable stimulus for its fellow musicians.

If on an aesthetic plane the main parallel that I can trace (one that I hope can be useful to readers) is with mid-80s Company, here the work as it’s offered to the listener appears to highlight the issue of the decisional process which is at the basis of improvisation when seen as a conscious ‘discipline of choices’. And in the CD liner notes penned by Sara Roberts I seemed to detect more than an echo of those debates which flourish about the famous (?) Turing Test. [Read the rest…] [In Italian…]

— Beppe Colli (CloudsandClocks)

[More info on the recording…] [All reviews…]

‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531) is available from SLAM Productions. [Details…]

personnel: io 0.0.1 beta++ (itself), Han-earl Park (guitar), Bruce Coates (alto and sopranino saxophones) and Franziska Schroeder (soprano saxophone).

© 2011 Han-earl Park.
℗ 2011 SLAM Productions.