Protean Reality - Protean Reality (2016)

Here is one more – and particularly notable – example of the most blasting jazz made today. Protean Reality is a trio using the conventional instrumentation born with hard bop and free jazz: sax, bass and drums. But there’s nothing conventional in Chris Pitsiokos, Noah Punkt, and Philips Scholz’s approach. With a clear reference to the New York no wave scene of the Seventies, here jazz meets noise meets contemporary classical music. Mix Ornette Coleman, Sex Pistols and Iannis Xenakis in your mind and you’ll be close to what’s inside the package. Intensity, immediacy and forward propulsion are key words to describe this music, but there’s also lots of lyricism and abstract detail to deal with in the three long pieces of this CD. And if this band may be a novelty to you, the three musicians have a past. Pitsiokos has worked with the likes of Joe Morris, Peter Evans, Tyshawn Sorey, Nate Wooley, Paul Lytton, and Weasel Walter. We almost forgot: also with Lydia Lunch. Punkt has played with Tim Daisy, Peter van Huffel and Tobias Pfister. Scholz has had Rudi Mahall, Claudio Puntin and Pablo Held as partners. They’re no strangers to the business, but highly convincing representatives of a new generation of improvisers who celebrate the death of fusion jazz with joy, rage, inventiveness and zero taboos.