The staggeringly productive year devised by the members of the Extemporaneous Music and Art Society continues unabated. The many performances and prolific recordings emanating from the collective can seem overwhelming to even the most ardent enthusiasts of new music.
Ghost Tantras is among the most recent EMAS-related missives. True to form, the album is full of surprises. The album and song titles are borrowed from the poetic “beast language” invented by native Kansan Michael McClure. The improvisations mirror McClure’s free verse freakouts.
Seth Andrew Davis, a cofounder of EMAS, plays electric guitar, laptop and electronics. He’s joined by saxophonist Michael Eaton, trumpeter Kyle Quass and bassist Damon Smith. The otherworldly entropy of “Aieooo” exemplifies the blissful chaos of Ghost Tantras.
The rapid-fire “Ooogreeshk” is free jazz for sufferers of attention deficit disorders. Laden with bursts of static, “Snahrr” could be a decaying satellite transmission sent from Saturn by Sun Ra. “Gritoomrm” sounds as if a bottle containing the essence of ESP-Disk heated to a low simmer.
Eaton converses with Quass on “Whahh” and jousts with Davis on “Raooor.” And while Smith implies a routine groove on “Rahhhrr-nohh,” the quartet is hardly conventional. McClure’s epiphany in his 1964 book Ghost Tantras applies to the recording: “so far inside is a whirlwind I ride.”