Kihlstedt, Carla / Bossi, Matthias / Ismaily, Shahzad – “Causing A Tiger” – [Les Disques Victo]

whngr   11/9/2022   A Library, CD

Three improvisators strike out on a truly bizarre exploration with a wild variety of instruments, sounds and samples,vocal techniques, moods and timbres. No theme is off the table and only two tracks bear even the slightest resemblance to one another (“No Funeral At All” [Track 1] and “Still No Funeral At All” [Track 2] being a kind of strange tradition american hoedown with banjo(?), fiddle (?), and wistful female vocals). Like a roulette wheel of compositions and deliveries that could only work if the bonds between the players were seamless and infrangible… which apparently they are.

Quiet, zither(?), barking dogs, arrhythmic, trumpets of Tijuana(?), boisterous, pig snorts,  Björk(?), balloon squeaks, traditional, distortion, ruminative violin, faerie folk, keyboards, sad, irreverent, sleepy, violin bow destruction, social, bass guitar, understated, inscrutable, windchimes(?), Tom Waits(?), trumpets of The Bronx(?), synthesizer drones, art(?), extraterrestrial, whimsy, twilight, melancholy, pensive, harmonic, basketballs(?), interdimensional, drunk goblins, conversive,  etc…

Once local Carla Kihlstedt has a voluminous curriculum vitae , that includes violin, accordion, and composing, and collaboration with both John Zorn and Fred Frith (the later is credited on this album for bass guitar, piano, and fiddle) originally from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and has several other albums in our library unlike her cohorts who have none (until now). Matthias Bossi is a percussionist and composer from Boston, and Shazad Ismaily is a guitarist, bassist, accordionist and composer from NYC both of whom have sprawling CV’s themselves. Their FB page (dormant since 2016) has a thoughtful and much more insightful biography than I can provide here; however I can relate that the inspiration for the title of the group came from the Jorge Luis Borges poem, “The Other Tiger”.  

San Francisco and (?) – 2010