Farahser by John Kameel Farah & Nick Fraser

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In recent years, Toronto-based drummer Nick Fraser has a become an increasingly important figure within the international improvised music community. In 2019, Downbeat's J.D. Considine called him “a longtime staple of the Toronto jazz scene—and for good reason. Not only is he a tremendously creative player, equally at home with free-form improvisation and standard bop-style jazz, he’s also a remarkably attentive listener." The Juno- Award winner has recorded and performed with noted fgures as Lina Allemano, Tony Malaby, Ingrid Laubrock, Matt Brubeck, Brodie West, Kris Davis, Joe Lovano, Joe McPhee, Marilyn Crispell, Anthony Braxton, and William Parker as well as left field song-based artists such as Owen Pallett, Eric Chenaux, Jeremy Dutcher, and Sandro Perri.

Fraser was the one that instigated this vibrant new duo album project, Farahser, citing his interest to collaborate with players that thrive in spontaneous settings, but whose main artistic focus lies beyond improvised music as a codified genre. "I thought that this might create an interesting tension between the musical worlds at play," says the drummer/ composer.

The development of John Kameel Farah's career has paralleled that of Fraser, albeit largely in a musical idiom entirely of his own creation. Farah palpably maintains his improvisational prowess, while investing much of his creative energies into shaping his own deeply idiosyncratic soundworld, a singular amalgam drawing from various strains of contemporary music, exploratory jazz, Baroque and renaissance music, as well as the heft and harmonies of the late romantic era, the abstract pulses and sound design of curious-eared electronica, and Arabic music—an homage to his Palestinian heritage.

“I first met Nick in my early twenties as I was just beginning to improvise publicly on the experimental and free jazz scene in Toronto," remembers Farah. "His lifelong, almost religious dedication to improvisation, and his
willingness to go in any direction no matter how strange, made him a magnet for many creative players, so he was a formative part of my growth and experience as an improviser. Reconnecting with him musically after two decades was not only exciting to come full circle, but also to see, after some twenty years, what comes next?”

Farahser's underlying creative process began with Farah and Fraser congregating in the studio to lay down a foundation of 26 impromptu duets. As such, piano and drum kit often occupy the foreground of the record. Following these sessions, the pair extracted their favourites with the idea that Farah would continue to work with the audio, superimposing addition elements and applying various treatments with guidance from Fraser.

The result, both in terms of sound and approach, defies categorization, and yet manages to embody everything that makes improvised exchanges so vital, especially between two artists that know each other well. Both players remain dynamic, responsive and powerfully invested throughout, discovering unexpected convergences, cultivating mutual textures, and veering together into other unforeseen spaces.

The album opens with the ghostly, chromatic, and ambient-infected "Flatland," but soon the pair proceed to unfurl a web of woven, cascading pulses on the dizzying "Twigs." The nimble-fingered "Insect Mountain" begins with Fraser and Farah engaging in a fdgety pointillist counterpoint but soon expands into larger figures whose contour is traced by brass synth tones. "Waltz", the album's briefest track, is built on a recurring piano figure that dissolves into glitchy fragmentation, with crackling freeform drums derived Fraser's playing but digitally smeared beyond recognition. Though much of the eerie "Dirge" maintains a slinky rhythmic foundation, it erupts temporarily into a blizzard of abstracted instrumentation, led by some of Fraser's most urgent drumming on the record, and electronically mangled piano glissandi. In spite of its title and initial textural orientation, "Baby Birds" ends up quite explosive with strident synths and thunderous acoustic playing from both parties. "The Churn" is a ghostly offering that almost evokes a futuristic dub of Paul Bley with its deep resonances and lyrical chromaticism. "Elevator" closes the record and features Fraser inhabits a decidedly ethereal space while Farah offers warm gliding synths, and waves of tumbling piano that fold in upon on themselves.

Farahser not only documents two of Canada's most distinctive and important talents creating together outside of stylistic conventions, it also furnishes fresh responses to two pertinent questions Fraser asked himself at the outset of this endeavour: "What can be done to/with improvisation to alter it?" and "where does improvisation end and composition start?"

John Kameel Farah is a Canadian composer, pianist and visual artist whose work embraces aspects of baroque and early music, experimental, contemporary classical, improvisation, middle-eastern music and forms of electronic music.
He is based between Berlin and Toronto.
www.johnfarah.com

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