The Hippodrome

Action Trap Download
The South Pole Download

If you call Va Va China a “free jazz” band, you’re only proving their point. “I honestly think that using the word ‘jazz’ is the biggest problem. In Europe they call it ‘free improvisation,’ which freed them up a bit,” says VVC drummer John Thomas Robinette III, known futuristically as JTR3. “I reluctantly use the term ‘free jazz’ as a reference only because I think it will be recognized by potential listeners.”

Despite the crossover potential of experimental noisey spazz-jazzers like Talibam! (who interestingly booked VVC’s first two shows), free jazz, or whatever you’d like to call it, seems like a genre in perpetual vagrancy. VVC is immersed in this beautiful crisis, creating a dense resonance of spontaneous form and reactive improvisation for ears to feast on.

Robinette formed VVC after a long stint with the usual rock permutations, including shows with Volcano, I’m Still Excited!! and some dude you’ve probably never heard of named Sufjan Stevens. Swapping in and out players to fit the sound Robinette was hoping for, the final lineup was solidified with David Cloyd on Bass and effects, Dan Mintz (who Robinette hooked up with on Craigslist) on electronics, Patrick Wolff on tenor sax, Matthew Brown on Trumpet, Richard Miller on alto sax, and Robinette on drums. “I wanted this Ornette Coleman-style of improvised counterpoint but with electronically generated sounds to fill in where chords went before. This combination of horns turned out to be extremely effective,” Robinette says.

While VVC certainly wasn’t the first one to throw some electronics into a jazzy mix, they may be the first band that begins to acknowledge where this style fits in today. “I feel like we could share a bill with an avant-rock group like Gang Gang Dance as much as play with noise or new music musicians,” he says.

From either side of the equation, it’s hard to ignore what boundaries VVC is breaking. If you peg them as closer to an experimental rock band, then they are lifting the moratorium on complete “jamming,” something still taboo on the scene today. From the more obvious jazz perspective, VVC utilizes a form of sonic experimentation found rarely in the genre and much more in experimental music. Robinette recalls one show where he made “a kalimba-type instrument out of the spokes on my bike. When you cranked the wheel a piece of metal was raked across the spokes created a cool out of tune sound.”

Even more so then the sonic experimentation, parts of VVC’s work call to mind a Radioheadish “Life In A Glass House” type of form, as horns build in density over a loosely defined structure. This is particularly noticeable on the second of The Hippodrome’s tracks available for downloads, “The South Pole,” which reaches a screeching climax over stunning, improvised harmony. While Wolf, Brown, and Miller’s horns are flexing half-valves and tritone patterns, the rest of the band provides a warm bed of low end for the sound to evolve in.

With all this creative energy at the band’s fingertips, it’s no wonder that VVC is recording as if their lives depended on it. None of these recordings, however, were or ever will be in a studio setting. On the band’s unusual process, Robinette explains that “we record as many shows as we can and earmark the best full shows as potential releases. These are all lo-fi recordings. The point is the performances are exemplary and this is the only record of them. Plus, we cannot afford studio time. We are the new guard of independent music by default. We will release it digitally and then make limited edition hard copies to be sold at shows.”

A pragmatic approach, no doubt, but after hearing these tunes, you may be still wondering why VVC has not been picked up by a label. I asked Robinette why this is so. “Who needs labels?” he asked me instead. “I don’t want money to be driving this band. Seeking it will lead to its demise. We can record for next to nothing. We can put out a record for cheap and get it out to the world for almost nothing.”

“The only thing we lack is the name to get people to recognize it.” Well then, enter The Hippodrome and your audio-hungry brain.

This entry was posted by Ben Bernstein on Saturday, October 6th, 2007 at 2:39 pm and is filed under Features, Written By Ben Bernstein. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.