Back in 2010 the tenor saxophonist Travis Laplante, guitarist Andrew Smiley and drummer Jason Nazary burst onto the scene with Throat, their full-length debut as three-quarters of Little Women, an innovative noise jazz ensemble which was rounded out by the burly alto of Darius Jones. Since then the increasingly ubiquitous Nazary has played as one half of Anteloper with the trumpeter Jaimie Branch and as part of the raucous supergroup SSWAN between sessions with the likes Saint Abdullah, Helado Negro and Amirtha Kidambi, while Laplante founded the acclaimed tenor saxophone quartet Battle Trance and Smiley has duetted with Kate Gentile while forming part of Will Mason’s doubled-up noise rock ensemble Happy Place.
The trio have kept in touch with Nazary and Smiley playing together in the bands Empyrean Atlas and Bloor while the drummer and Laplante collaborated as a duo for the 2021 album Tunnel To Light. Now the three musicians together with Nathaniel Morgan on the alto saxophone make up Sun & Rain, the steady fulfilment of a project which commenced in 2014 when the quartet began to gather at Laplante’s residence in Vermont for semi-annual retreats and what is described as a ‘painstaking’ and ‘slow-moving’ compositional process.
Morgan for his part leads several groups and has served primarily as a mixing engineer for the likes of Anna Webber, Kenny Warren, Booker Stardrum, Michael Formanek and Joanna Mattrey, with his work for Amirtha Kidambi and Helado Negro plus his mixing and mastering of the Kate Gentile and Andrew Smiley tandem Flagrances providing a few common threads. He is far from an add-on to Sun & Rain as across the sweep and tumble of Waterfall his alto saxophone often takes the lead, while fitting right in as a voice on a record which takes the natural world from rustling winds and still ponds to forest fires and tsunamis as its theme.
Still on the opening track of Waterfall the winding and somewhat queasy textures of the ensemble blur the line between the natural and the synthetic, as Smiley’s soft strums and harmonics weave their way between the short saxophone spurts of Morgan’s alto and the more melodic runs of Laplante’s tenor, which begin to blur into a heady mass or dense thicket. Nazary enters just before the three-minute mark yet he stays out in the sticks with only some light cymbal work for moisture or kindling, until the alto plays trilling birdcalls amid the rumbling and lurching of the tenor and the drums as the composition takes on the aspect of a rollercoaster ride with water features, aided by the limpid plunks of Smiley’s electric guitar.
The second piece is more gentle and plaintive as the alto saxophone leads us out with the tenor in close proximity, for a wandering melody which is compelled by more plosive and regular percussive hits. The guitar joins in to add a bit of shape and angularity to this pleasantly meandering course, and eventually the alto soars to quasi-spiritual heights, while the opening of the third track inhabits a reedy tranquility which feels like the first breath of the morning.
As the quartet wearily and groggily attempt to rouse themselves and embrace the thrum of the day through some tumbling drums, a bright smattering of guitar flits through the background of the composition but everything generally sounds muted and uncertain. Then in comic fashion they get stuck in a rut, circling and flailing as the saxophones fall into hapless cycles while Smiley’s guitar offers slack strums and tremolos with an abiding sense of concern. Some big foghorn blasts from Laplante hope to dispel the murk, and the ensemble recite a few Ayleresque martial motifs which the guitar spins through like a fledgling tornado, once again taking on the character of organ keys as for all of that we are just halfway through the piece.
As that tornado becomes more of a torrent or maelstrom, the guitar strives to settle things down courtesy of some post-rock or slowcore atmospherics. The saxophones bawl out of control but careen to a halt and for a moment the quartet come together to elaborate more post-rock or math rock textures, but the day must be drawing to a close as they lose much of their vigour shortly after the twelve-minute mark as a forlorn note on the saxophone smears and peters out. Nazary briefly shapes a few West African figures from behind the drum kit and the quartet steadily rebuild in terms of volume and tempo for a buzzsaw climax.
The chemistry of the foursome is never in doubt and while their tempo shifts and staggered gestures, with calculated pauses and smudged moments, often sound deliberate the effect is never studied but elemental just as they intended, mirroring all of nature from its winding bends and sudden descents to its pitter-patter and gushing spouts.
A low tone with squiggling overtones opens the fourth composition then takes a brief pause, with the piece emerging as a duet for the saxophones of Morgan and Laplante who shift between fuller and richer tones or more brittle and wispy timbres. And the closing track on Waterfall continues in the same vein but with some winsome accompaniment from Smiley’s guitar as Nazary begins to shuffle around his drum kit. Taking several turns the saxophones play these hovering, arcing drones while making space for the rest of the ensemble, as through loose currents and eddies Nazary starts to give shape to the composition.
As the saxophones partake of a mellifluous tone the quartet find a shared sense of purpose, straddling the sun of their name in bucolic and then buccaneering fashion before an inevitable comedown through fixed ropes, gliders and other more slipshod paraphernalia, crashing back to earth and tumbling headlong down ravines before floundering over the edge of that titular precipice, their heads bobbing up and gasping for air between the froth and spume or else just as suddenly plunging back under. Finally the rapids slow and the quartet find some nook or branch which might serve to provide a resting place, taking in a few sputtering or vaguely pastoral sounds as WaterfallĀ draws to a close through a wiry outro.
