Liner notes:
BILL HARRIS - DRUMS
GERRIT HATCHER - TENOR SAXOPHONE
ELI NAMAY - BASS
RECORDED BY BILL HARRIS LIVE AT THE WHISTLER ON JUNE 9TH, 2019
MIXED AND MASTERED BY BILL HARRIS
ARTWORK BY GERRIT HATCHER
ALL MUSIC BY BILL HARRIS, GERRIT HATCHER AND ELI NAMAY
TOTAL TIME - 36:54
KTHL004
I wrote the liner notes to this compilation, which was put together as a fundraiser for the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2020. I’m not sure I still agree exactly with what I said, but either way its a reflection of a real feeling, from a particular time and place.
I appear with Devouring the Guilt on Track 2
Liner Notes:
100% of the sales of this record will go towards Bernie Sanders' campaign. Give what you can while checking out some important Chicago documentation; over three hours of music! Every little bit counts!
Words by Eli Namay:
As both a creative musician and activist I've sometimes struggled to articulate the connection between these two worlds. At times I’ve felt as if all my musical work must have political meaning through either adequately deconstructed aesthetics or on-the-nose messaging. Looking back at this period, I see that both my music and my political action suffered. Music cannot have political weight in this way. While aesthetics can help bring people together, transform us emotionally and spiritually, or help carry a political message for organizing (like the old Industrial Workers of the World songs did), political action that actually moves toward changing power relations cannot happen in the aesthetic realm.
Yet, there is something political about the creative music world in Chicago and elsewhere. The work of my musical comrades points beyond the limitations of capital. Limitations capitalism creates both in terms of aesthetic possibility and access to physical space for creative activity. Capitalism has no doubt been a liberating force historically, creating new artistic possibilities through building wealth and breaking down old static social relations. Marx points out as much in the Communist Manifesto. For instance, the creative music world in Chicago wouldn't be what it is at all if it were not for northern industrialization and the post-war fordist economic boom. In his book A Power Stronger Than Itself, George Lewis traces the birth of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) to the Great Northward Migration (Black folks moving north around the turn of the last century to both look for industrial jobs and escape institutionalized racist violence in the south). Ironically, the same dynamics that helped grow Black wealth and culture on the Southside of Chicago turned against those same communities in the neoliberal era. Deindustrialization leaves human beings without access to resources as capital carelessly leaves in search of greater profits elsewhere. Regardless of circumstances, beautiful culture exists wherever humans exist. Cultural development is certainly not solely contingent on capital, but under our current economic system people's access to basic material resources unfortunately is.
Capitalism brings with it an all too obvious destructive tendency. As capitalists seek to gain more and more wealth, all areas of life tend to become privatized and commodified. As spaces for care work and artistic activity become commodified, the profit motive trumps the needs and desires of human beings. The same dynamic that limits access to health care by placing a price tag on it limits and shapes the growth of creative activity precisely because of the contradiction of the commodity form. It is the contradiction between the material experiential or use value of a commodity (what it means as used by a human), and an abstract exchange value (price) imposed by the needs of capital. Under capitalism, exchange value always ultimately trumps the needs of human beings. If you can’t afford it, you can’t use it!
Creative, experimental, and DIY musicians push against and sometimes blow past these limits. As capital demands repetition and strict reproduction aesthetically, we create noise and difference. As capital limits the physical space for artistic expression, creative artists organize and create their own spaces. This way of playing and relating recognizes that the insidious boot-straps narrative about the individual musical genius is only a destructive ideology that does not reflect the reality of our interdependence materially and emotionally.
I agree with George Lewis when he says “Noise and noisers routinely overflow the banks of propriety, resisting and unleashing. People hear the sound and say ‘no one told me it could be like that; I wonder what else they haven’t told me… once they start down that road, thoughts inevitably turn to what else might need to be different.” And, of course this alone is not enough. We will be working on borrowed time until we deal with our problems at the root. Our self organization and aesthetic convictions alone cannot get to it. We must take up explicitly political activity aimed at changing the exploitative power relations inherent under capitalism. Working through a democratic socialist lens, the movement around Bernie Sanders gets at the root of the contradictions of capitalism by addressing the contradiction between use value and exchange value in the commodity form. A Bernie Presidency and the movement it would empower would not only mean the arts truly flourishing in our country, but would end much of the domination caused by capitalism through erasing student debt, providing access to affordable housing, and making healthcare a human right. This compilation Amalgam is putting out to fundraise for Bernie’s historic democratic socialist presidential campaign - a historic movement that belongs to all of us - is an offering in that direction. While we volunteer our own time and money in this fight, we want this compilation to be an explicit recognition that our cultural activity as creative musicians is part of what compels us to undertake political action to help build a democratic socialist world. One with greater democracy everywhere, greater access to the basic needs for a dignified life (including access to education and cultural spaces), and where there is freedom from all forms of state violence based on race, religion, gender expression, or otherwise. The time is now. berniesanders.com/volunteer
released March 10, 2020
Love In Outerspace by the Paul Giallorenzo Trio
Paul Giallorenzo - Piano
Josh Abrams - Bass
Mikel Avery - Drums
Recorded at the Hungry Brain on 5/13/17 by Bill Harris
Mixed/mastered by Bill Harris
"Love In Outerspace" written by Sun Ra (Sun Ra/Enterplanetary Koncepts, BMI)
Devouring the Guilt at Jamdek, 1/20/18
Gerrit Hatcher - Tenor saxophone
Eli Namay - Bass
Bill Harris - Drums
Recorded at Jamdek on 1/20/18 by Doug Malone
Mixed by Doug Malone
Mastered by Bill Harris
JayVe Montgomery at Slate Arts, 3/27/19
Recorded at Slate Arts on 3/27/19 by Bill Harris
Mixed/mastered by Bill Harris
Clausen/Heinemann/Hunton at Elastic Arts, 11/26/18
Sarah Clausen - Alto saxophone
Jakob Heinemann - Bass
Emerson Hunton - Drums
Recorded at Elastic Arts 11/26/18 by Bill Harris
Mixed/mastered by Bill Harris
Clinkman/Young/Kirshner at Cafe Mustache, 1/10/18
Andrew Clinkman - Guitar
Andrew Scott Young - Bass
Julian Kirshner - Drums
Recorded at Cafe Mustache on 1/10/18 by Bill Harris
Mixed/mastered by Bill Harris
Keefe Jackson & Didier Petit at Agitator Gallery, 11/19/18
Keefe Jackson - Tenor saxophone and bass clarinet
Didier Petit - Cello and voice
Recorded at Agitator Gallery on 11/19/18 by Bill Harris
Mixed/mastered by Bill Harris
Berman/Badenhorst/Baker/Lopez/Harris at Hungry Brain, 1/29/20
Josh Berman - Cornet
Joachim Badenhorst - Clarinet
Jim Baker - Piano
Brandon Lopez - Bass
Bill Harris - Drums
Recorded at Hungry Brain on 1/29/20 by Dave Zuchowski
Mixed/mastered by Bill Harris
Recorded live at the Empty Bottle, Chicago, on April 8, 2017.
Gerrit Hatcher - Tenor saxophone
Eli Namay - Upright and electric bass
Bill Harris - Drums
Recorded, mixed, and mastered by Bill Harris.
Ice cream photographs by Julia Dratel.
www.amalgamusic.org
Much of the new energy injected into Chicago's bustling free-jazz and improvised-music scenes over the past year or two has come from a small group of players associated with Amalgam Music, a modest local label run by drummer Bill Harris. His efforts have introduced me to the music of pianist Matt Piet and saxophonist Gerrit Hatcher, among others, and members of the circle to which they belong have made themselves ubiquitous at local spots such as Elastic, Slate Arts, and Constellation. Amalgam also serves a documentary function, preserving these performers' work and allowing for its wider dissemination—some of the music on the label is free improvisation, which is almost always most meaningful in a live setting, but certain performances are worth returning.
On Friday the label will issue just such a recording by local free-improvising trio Devouring the Guilt, aka Hatcher, Harris, and bassist Eli Namay. They recorded the self-titled two-track album live at the Empty Bottle in April, infusing its scrappy, seat-of-the-pants feel and muscular attack with a biting energy that's hard to resist. Hatcher brings plenty of power to his tenor blowing, but the band engages in refined interaction at every turn. When I wrote about a solo tape that Hatcher released earlier this year, I mentioned his engagement with New York free jazz from the late 60s and early 70s—he dedicated pieces to Frank Lowe and Frank Wright—but in Devouring the Guilt he feels rooted less in that sound and more in a visceral, abstract, gesture-based style that's redolent of European improvised music. His improvisations suggest an awareness of Evan Parker's extended techniques and Peter Brötzmann's titanic force, but he does more than assimilate influences: he plays with a clear narrative flow, punctuated by nifty interludes where he toys with a phrase like a cat with a mouse.
As a rhythm section, Namay and Harris are knotty, surging, and explosive, propelling and prodding the saxophonist with an unstinting barrage of motion and sound. Below you can check out the shorter of the album's two pieces, "Pineapple Sorbet." The trio celebrate the release of Devouring the Guilt on Wednesday night Elastic, where the program also includes sets by the Angel Bat Dawid Trio, a duo of guitarist Andrew Clinkmann and vocalist Carol Genetti, and DJ Makamena.
- Peter Margasak, Post No Bills @ The Chicago Reader
www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2017/11/14/devouring-the-guilt-injects-new-energy-into-chicagos-free-jazz-scene
Devouring the Guilt (Amalgam Music 012; USA) Featuring Gerrit Hatcher on tenor sax, Eli Namay on upright & electric bass and Bill Harris on drums. This session was recorded live at the Empty Bottle in Chicago in April of 2017. As the Chicago underground jazz scene continues to expand, a number of new names have been popping up. In the nineties and after, saxists like Ken Vandermark, Dave Rempis, Mars Williams, David Boykins and Keefe Jackson, have paved the way for the next generation of free/jazz interpreters. Tenor saxist Gerrit Hatcher is a prime contender for the next batch. Although I don’t recognize the names of any of the members of his current trio, I am quite impressed. This disc contains two long pieces, each filled with fire, invention and creative spirits. Although it begins with Ayleresque, fire-spitting intensity, the trio quickly slows down to a thoughtful, contemplative pace, all three players swirling tightly together. More than half century later (1964, actually), the shadow of Albert Ayler’s ‘Spiritual Unity’ still looms over a trio like this. There are moments of somber, solo, unaccompanied tenor which balance the the more explosive sections just right. After listening to a dozen great recent discs from Clean Feed several times, as well as Mars Williams’ ‘Ayler/Christmas’ CD, I must admit that this disc is as impressive at capturing that powerful free/jazz spirit/force as anything released in the past year. We just got five copies for now so don’t miss out on this most modest, under-recognized treasure.
- Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery
www.downtownmusicgallery.com/newsletter_detail.php?newsID=632
A brilliant set of improvisational jazz from Chicago scene – recorded live at the Empty Bottle in the spring of 2017! Devouring The Guilt is a trio featuring Gerrit Hatcher on tenor sax, Eli Namay on both upright and electric bass, and Bill Harris on drums – showing impressive depth and range on the nearly hour long (and compelling the whole way) "Fresh Hour Scrod" and the shorter, equally compelling "Pineapple Sorbet". The former comes roaring right out of the gate, with the group showing an agile mix of ferocious energy and limber interplay throughout. The latter starts out slower and sweeter, as you might gather from its title, and builds to a heavier end in its 8+ minutes.
Featured at Dusty Groove Records, Chicago
www.dustygroove.com/item/880945?sf=devouring+the+guilt&incl_oos=1&incl_cs=1&kwfilter=devouring+the+guilt&sort_order=artist
released November 15, 2017