Human Feel press

Time Out NY
March 2007
Album review Human Feel Galore

Jazz is name-brand music, literally. Whereas rock bands typically choose creative monikers, jazz ensembles are frequently titled after who’s in charge. In the local quartet Human Feel, no one’s in charge—or rather, everyone is. Reedists Andrew D’Angelo and Chris Speed, guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel and drummer Jim Black share compositional duties, and since the band last recorded in 1996, each has established himself as a bandleader and progressive-jazz luminary. Burgeoning solo careers certainly had something to do with Human Feel’s hiatus, but a collective is rarely easy to keep together. No clear-cut leader means that nobody can assume the just-show-up-and-play mentality of a sideman.
Like the quartet’s back catalog, Galore is slack-free, yet not always rigorous. If the instrumentation screams jazz, the music represents a boundless contemporary aesthetic, encompassing airy melody, breakbeat-inspired groove, fluttering minimalism and prog-rock stomp without resorting to simplistic allusion. The ballad “Allegiance” features the kind of wistful trudge that any indie-rock fan would recognize immediately; pieces like this and the sleek, headlong “Fuss” deftly refute the self-conscious artiness normally ascribed to songs without vocals. At the same time, tunes such as “Improve” deliver plenty of the avant-garde skronk so integral to Human Feel’s early work. Given the band’s brilliant past, the collective alchemy of Galore isn’t exactly a surprise, but it is a treat to hear these four functioning at full strength after a decade’s silence. — Hank Shteamert

 

Cadence Magazine
June 2007
Human Feel Galore
Reed players Chris Speed and Andrew D’Angelo, guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, and drummer Jim Black have all become well-known names in the New York axis, playing in their own groups as well as those led by musicians like Tim Berne, Ellery Eskelin, Dave Douglas, and Paul Motian. The four got their start when they were music students in Boston in the late ’80s. There, they put together the group Human Feel and then left for New York where they were buoyed by the burgeoning Downtown improv scene. The quartet put out four releases (4/93, p.88; 1/95, p.104; 1/97, p.119) but, before this release had not recorded in this context in over a decade. Ten years on, and their strategies fall into well charted territory. Paired reeds skirl over skronking guitar and rollicking drums; odd time signatures careen with a propulsive rockinflected momentum; interludes add electronics and processed sound into the mix. These four were weaned on this stuff and still play it with a brash energy. There is a sense of joyous camaraderie that comes through. Of course any ensemble with Jim Black at the helm can be counted on to caterwaul along with an elastic vigor. But he has increasingly proven his ability to temper his energy which he draws on during sections of collective freedom. Speed’s muscular tenor and D’Angelo’s more acidic alto goad each other along, whether playing in touch-tag free counterpoint or heading off for boisterous solos. Rosenwinkel shows up more often in mainstream settings these days, so it is particularly engaging to hear him stretch himself in the more raucous sections. The session moves between energetic romps and more open-form pieces and they nail both with a collective aplomb. This is indeed a “Triumphant Return” (as noted in the opening title). Maybe this is more than a onetime reunion.
-Michael Rosensteiname

 

All About Jazz
March 07
Human Feel Galore
Reunion records, now de rigueur in the rock and pop world, are rarer in the jazz realm. That fact makes Galore, the first album in a decade from the formerly defunct Human Feel, all the more important.
Human Feel was founded in Boston in 1987 by drummer Jim Black and saxophonists Andrew D'Angelo and Chris Speed. Guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel joined in 1990 before the group headed to New York. By 1996, the band was absorbed into the Downtown scene; Tim Berne, Ellery Eskelin, Dave Douglas, Paul Motian, Uri Caine and John Zorn all employed members of the quartet. Human Feel released its fourth and final album, Speak To It (Songlines, 1997), before its members disbanded to pursue solo careers.
Chris Speed and Jim Black have since collaborated in Pachora and each other's groups (Yeah No and AlasNoAxis, respectively) while D'Angelo has made waves with drummer Matt Wilson as well as Tyft (with Jim Black and guitarist Hilmar Jensson). Rosenwinkel's signing with Verve in 2000 led to a fruitful career in the mainstream jazz world, including collaborations with Mark Turner and Joshua Redman.
The musical landscape has changed in the ensuing decade, but their intense communicative bond has remained. Black thrashes with the same pulverizing joy and nuanced exoticism, while Speed and D'Angelo weave jagged lines into dense sonic tapestries. Rosenwinkel's stint at Verve was tastefully restrained, but here he revisits some of the old drama, dropping crunchy power chords and overdriven, angular lines like crackling, snapped high tension lines.
Picking up where they left off, Galore builds on their legacy, while slightly updating it. “After The Fact” and “Apch Ro Ha” blend angular, metallic funk rhythms with dissonant cadenzas and intricate group interplay. “Improve” slows down the tempo, but not the volume, for some Black Sabbath-styled slow-core thrash, a sound they helped pioneer in the improvising community almost two decades ago.
“ Fuck The Development Of You” is the album's lengthy centerpiece. The episodic excursion opens with ghostly pointillism that modulates into a series of riff-heavy diatribes, pulverizing grooves and caterwauling saxophones, embodying all the fervency its title suggests.
Conversely, “Cat Heaven” and the aptly titled “Serene” build on tender lyricism and a gentle atmosphere for the session's most mellifluous passages. “Cat Heaven” in particular is a marvel. Simmering with rippling energy, Speed and D'Angelo spin swirling, trilling clarinet lines into a knotty, uplifting mosaic; Black subtly accents the pulse as Rosenwinkel chimes in with shimmering bell-like tones for harmonic support. Busy but not hectic, the piece follows its own unique organic development. “Allegiance” closes the album on a bittersweet note, exploring variations on a melancholy, heart-rending melody over a lilting rock beat.
Demonstrating their knack for blending pop song tunefulness with free improvisation, the quartet's intense rapport elevates even simple themes into complex harmonies and heady rhythmic structures, making for the finest album of their career. It's good to have them back.
- Troy Collins

 

All Music Guide
Human Feel Galore
After about a decade-long hiatus, Human Feel are back with a vengeance and arguably their best album yet. Members Chris Speed, Andrew d'Angelo, Kurt Rosenwinkel, and Jim Black have not remained idle during that time and the experience they have garnered undoubtedly helped improve this communal project. They perform rhythmically and melodically varied material penned by each of the musicians as well as a piece by guitarist Hilmar Jensson, whose aesthetic fits the band like a glove. At first, what grabs the attention as well as provide the adrenaline rush are their sonic assaults. Saxophones roar and squeal over angular guitar riffs and thrashing drums. The foursome, however, is most impressive when it tones down the volume. The magnificent and swirling "Cat Heaven" is a truly innovative piece, while the delicate "Serenade" or the rock ballad "Allegiance" efficiently complement the playful and raucous compositions. Finally, an epic centerpiece works as a suite that summarizes the group's intentions and captures the various moods that inhabit the session. This influential and turbulent quartet has spawned a number of bands that weld the complexity of jazz with the raw energy of rock, but none has been as successful and fully realized as this one.
- Alain Drouot
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Night After Night Feb 2006
Conspicuous consumption of music, live and otherwise, in New York City.
As I stood tonight in Fat Cat, a seedy West Village jazz club that might be described as a Dazed and Confused den of slack with postmillennial Village Vanguard aspirations, I wondered if, 13 years ago, I might have been one of those 20-somethings who sprawled on couches and lounge chairs, feeling vaguely contemptuous toward the nearly-40s who more clearly felt discomfort at the vaguely stifling setting. Probably, I surmised, that was just a romanticized view of my younger years; it likely would have chafed just as much back then.
Still, it was worth spending an hour and change in a cavern that made the old Knitting Factory on Houston Street seem posh by comparison in order to catch tonight's opening set by the reunited Human Feel, a quartet that made some remarkable music during the first half of the '90s before dispersing in mostly different directions.
My preview in last week's issue of TONY provides a concise background for this group, which over the course of four albums rose from a handful of gifted and promising upstarts to a quartet of original thinkers with distinctive voices. To hear reedists Andrew D'Angelo and Chris Speed, guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel and drummer Jim Black play together again seemed unlikely at best, so far apart had their visions seemed to have grown by the band's dissolution in 1996. Speed and Black, whose then-concurrent tenure in saxophonist Tim Berne's epochal Bloodcount expired around the same time, continued to work in one another's bands as well as the Balkan-improv quartet Pachora. Rosenwinkel emerged as a post-bop bandleader with nascent hip-hop proclivities; D'Angelo swung with drummer Matt Wilson's quartet while experimenting elsewhere, and guested on Rosenwinkel's Heartcore, a 2003 release that presented a startlingly individual take on jazztronica.
But Human Feel had always been a band that thrived on musical clashes even at its peak, so there was no reason to suspect that the quartet's return would be anything but assured -- and perhaps even more colorful for all the territory the players had mapped since their premature farewell. And indeed, tonight's first set recaptured the livid sputter of the band's peak. Midway through the five-tune set, D'Angelo stated that Human Feel was playing a mix of old and new material; without a score card to double-check my reflexes, I can only suggest that the first and last pieces in the set could have been catalog items -- or at least spoke the same language -- while the middle trilogy marked new territory.
The signal addition to the mix, evident from the beginning, was Black's manipulation of electronics. As Speed's clarinet and D'Angelo's bass clarinet sang long tones over Rosenwinkel's fluttering strings (often doubled by his wordless vocalizing), Black filled an even lower depth of the band's sonic range with an organlike rumble that might well have been D'Angelo's own horn sampled live. Exploding into one of his trademark dry, frenetic avant-funk beats, Black drove D'Angelo's searing alto sax while Speed drilled holes in the floor. A heavy-metal plod led to a sudden release.
Black has fruitfully explored laptop electronics with his own band, Alas No Axis, and brought that more recently acquired facility to the second composition in tonight's set, which opened with Speed's clarinet plaintively navigating an aural hall of mirrors. A queasy melody shimmered and dispersed like a patch of oil spreading across the surface of a pond; when D'Angelo and Rosenwinkel locked into a raging duo passage, Black filled the remaining space with electronic swishes and slurps like Eno in early Roxy Music or Allen Ravenstine in Pere Ubu. Abruptly, the horns snapped into a surging line paced by Black's elusive pulse and Rosenwinkel's unperturbable cool.
The third selection, a D'Angelo tune, opened with a knotted head characteristic of this band, followed by a darting, squalling alto solo over Black's action-painted tumult. A collectively improvised passage that followed might best be described by the title of an earlier Speed composition, "Scribble Bliss," until Black's ponderous beat threatened an eruption of full-blown pomp; eventually, the whorl of furious activity passed like a hurricane petering out over land.
The solo guitar lines that opened Rosenwinkel's "Serenade" presented the evening's closest approximation of a standard jazz chord sequence, albeit an oblique one. It was hard to tell whether whiny sine-wave intrusions were contributed by Black or merely feedback in the sound system; less ambiguous were electronic samples that might well have been captured from Rosenwinkel on the fly, deployed behind and then replacing a stately theme on bass clarinet and tenor saxophone.
Closing the set was another tune built on angular unison lines; Rosenwinkel initially sat out as D'Angelo and Speed raced over a drum line so abtrusely animated as to suggests James Brown's funky drummer Clyde Stubblefield somehow possessed by Bill Bruford's passionate will to disrupt. I can think of no other drummer who can maintain so solid a pocket while running completely roughshod over barlines, nor one with a more sophisticated command of timbre using the basic resources of a standard drum kit. An airy, ungrounded collective blow on tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, pealing guitar and bowed cymbals maintained a dreamlike state of bliss for what felt like endless moments, only to be sundered by D'Angelo's most elephantine blowing. Thick, reverberent guitar lines tangled with Black's unhinged beat... and just like that, the set was over.
In the aftermath, my desire to hear more wrestled with my equally potent wish to escape the uncomfortable setting; in the end, the clock was the deciding factor. (Even officially sanctioned night owls have to maintain office hours.) Part of me wished that I'd changed course on Sunday night and heard Human Feel's earlier show at Tonic.

NEW YORK TIMES FEB 2006
HUMAN FEEL
During the first half of the 1990's, the ensemble known as Human Feel was several things at once: a workshop for unruly improvisational tactics, a self-styled alternative to neo-conservatism, and a delivery system for some of the era's most unclassifiable new talent. Its founding core consisted of the multireedists Chris Speed and Andrew D'Angelo and the drummer Jim Black, a trio of Seattle natives transplanted via music school to Boston, where they shared an apartment as well as an aesthetic. Various others floated in and out of the group before the arrival of the guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, which proved definitive. As a bass-less quartet, Human Feel strained toward the ragged-edge postmodernism established by a previous generation of downtown avatars like John Zorn and Tim Berne, but with an emotional directness more closely derived from underground rock. It was energy music, plugged into the spirit of the age. Arriving in New York, the band's members were quickly absorbed into one scene or another: Mr. Speed and Mr. Black became one half of Mr. Berne's raucous Bloodcount, Mr. D'Angelo dug in with the drummer Matt Wilson, and Mr. Rosenwinkel became a mainstay at Smalls. The musicians have hardly been strangers since, but the last proper Human Feel album, "Speak to It" (Songlines), was released in 1996. This reunion — the first in years — comes amid reports of a new recording. And it offers a good measure of the ways in which the musicians, separately and in collaboration, have exceeded their early promise. (Sunday at 8 p.m., Tonic, 107 Norfolk Street, near Delancey Street, Lower East Side, (212) 358-7501; cover, $10. Monday at 10 p.m., Fat Cat, 75 Christopher Street, at Seventh Avenue, West Village, (212) 675-7369; cover, $15.) -Nate Chinen

 

TimeOut NY Feb 2006
Top live show
Now that we’ve seen the likes of Cream and the Pixies prowling the stage anew, maybe no reunion will ever be shocking again. Still, the possibility of Human Feel getting back together for live dates and a new album seemed distant at best. Among the defining downtown-jazz bands of the early ’90s, the quartet of Andrew D’Angelo and Chris Speed on reeds, guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel and drummer Jim Black burned bright for nearly a decade, then dissolved without warning.
Formed in 1987 by Black, D’Angelo and Speed – Boston music students whose shared roots went back to a high-school band in Seattle – Human Feel offered tremendous potential on it’s self-titled 1989 debut. Rosenwinkel joined them in time for 1992’s Scatter. When the then quintet decided to not replace a departing bassist, it found its voice, as triumphantly proclaimed on 1994’s Welcome To Malpesta. D’Angelo’s sparky alto sparred with Speed’s slow burn tenor in animated gnarls. Rosenwinkel’s thick chords and throaty lines added warmth and density; Black’s timbrally sophisticated, explosive funk provided elasticity.
By the time the band issued its most accomplished record, 1996’s Speak To It, members were veering along divergent paths, and cashing checks from more-bankable leaders. “Personality conflicts, clashing interests and other commitments contributed to the decade long hiatus,” Speed explains on his website. Perhaps the first and last factors have been addressed to everyone’s satisfaction, but the creative friction of four individual voices was always one of Human Feel’s signal strengths.
- Steve Smith