CD ECM Records Tim Berne's Snakeoil: You've Been Watching Me

2015

Tim Berne's Snakeoil:
Tim Berne - saxofon alto
Oscar Noriega - clarinet, bas clarinet
Ryan Ferreira - chitara acustica si electrica
Matt Mitchell - pian, electronice
Ches Smith - tobe, percutie, vibrafon, timpane

Tim Berne’s third ECM album, You’ve Been Watching Me, sees the saxophonist-composer again leading his dynamic New York band Snakeoil, but with the quartet now a quintet with the arrival of guitarist Ryan Ferreira, whose sound adds textural allure. The group’s 2013 release, Shadow Man, garnered Berne some of the highest praise of his career as a composer and bandleader. DownBeat said: “This music rocks and thinks, explores, deconstructs, and swings, in its own identifiably angular, Berne-ian way.” If Berne has hit a new peak with his writing on You’ve Been Watching Me, his band has reached a heightened state of collective interaction.. Snakeoil can still be bracingly kinetic. But there is new space in these compositions and more lyrical focus to the improvisations, leading to a dramatic, even cinematic experience in such tracks as “Embraceable Me.” Berne’s music has never been richer or more arresting.



Intensely theatrical yet deliberate, New York-based alto saxophonist Tim Berne’s third ECM album runs quite the emotional and compositional gamut. It spans the clang and sweep of ‘Embraceable Me’, the oddly groove-rich ‘Small World In A Small Town’ and the querulous ‘Semi-Self Detached’, and it’s largely a testament – an excellent one – to the long form.[…] This is a quintet of huge ambition and power that punches way above its weight.
Carlo Wolff, DownBeat

His current band, Snakeoil, is, without question, one of his best in what is now a long performing life. After two previous discs on ECM – the eponymous group debut called ‘Snakeoil’ and ‘Shadow Man’ - this is alternately startling, challenging, gorgeous and thrilling by equal measure. […] The atonality and dissonance of modern classical music are pervasive here (don’t expect the Great American Songbook). But the variety of responses elicited by this music is truly immense, from tender regard for some of the music’s sweetness and innocence to something like terror at its juggernautic power.
Jeff Simon, Buffalo News

Alto saxophonist Berne expands the group to a quintet and introduces electric elements to the mix, expanding the textures and possibilities of this already virtuosic group. Electronics are introduced by way of pianist Matt Mitchell, whose new sounds can be heard as the album begins, and by Ryan Ferreira, who comes to Snakeoil with electric guitar and a bag of effects. His distorted textural guitar playing underscores the group work on 'Lost in Reading' and helps take the tune from the slow build to its climax. None of this takes away from the acoustic sounds of Berne's keening alto and Oscar Noriega's bass clarinet as they traverse the intricate arrangements. Percussionist Ches Smith plays a pivotal role as well, and on a track like 'Small World in a Small Town' the absence of his drums is counterbalanced by his judicious use of the vibraphone. Compared to earlier output, You've Been Watching Me is an evolution in the group's sound […]It’s tempting to think that Berne has reached his peak with Snakeoil, but then again work from his previous groups like Big Satan and Bloodcount (just to randomly pick two others) were also career highlights, which suggests You've Been Watching Me is most likely just a new high.
Paul Acquaro, Free Jazz Blog

Tim Berne and his ensemble Snakeoil are entering a phase of full-flower. That is on the new album ‘You've Been Watching Me’. The ensemble engages in a musical direction that's been implied and partly realized in their very worthy previous albums. But it seems that the implications have moved forward to a fruition that places them in a stylistic zone very characteristic of Tim Berne's musical tendencies but now squarely situated in very much their own space. The band consists of Tim Berne, alto saxophone, Oscar Noriega, bass and b-flat clarinets, Ryan Ferreira, electric and acoustic guitars, Matt Mitchell, piano and electronics, and Ches Smith, drums, vibraphone, percussion, timpani. Each group member has a specific set of roles to play in the very integrated compositional-improvisational event horizons. […] All the artists contribute their very personal sound signatures in the best ways while doing something always within the original world of Berne's Snakeoil. That is a group-concept accomplishment worthy of the highest praise and of course not often the rule in the jazz world except when the melding of artist and group reach a symbiotic stage - Duke's bands, Miles, Trane all come to mind as the most enduringly successful music mind melds. Snakeoil has reached something of that stage. Now of course we will look forward to how that can proceed, continue, develop even further. But all that is secondary to the sheer mental-emotional pleasure one feels once one has gotten inside this music. It's pretty seminal!
Grego Applegate Edwards, Gapplegate Music Review