astereotypical reviews

 

Downbeat - Dec 2003
The Downtown Manhattan-based foursome Pachora favors Balkan/gypsy/world-folk influences without forsaking their savvy, modern jazz perspective.
A cooperative unit consisting of clarinetist Chris Speed, guitarist Brad Shepik, bassist Skuli Sverrisson and drummer Jim Black, Pachora benefits greatly from the many other group projects in which its members participate on a regular basis. The musicians are remarkably proficient, and their unison playing can be dazzling as they tackle the unconventional rhythms and arcane melodies that have been effectively absorbed into original compositions.
Speed in particular brings the Eastern European traditional sounds to life while Shepik's guitar straddles the space between two continents more discreetly. Shepik's work on the tamboura and electric saz can be quite rocking at times, and he leads the band into harder-edged territory with excellent results. The rhythm section of Sverrisson and Black energize this driving music with dramatic flair.
- Mitch Myers

 

All About Jazz LA
Astereotypical is Pachora's fourth album in six years, but all four of these musicians have played together over the last decade in endless variations, most notably with Dave Douglas and Tim Berne—but also in their own exciting groups, as on Chris Speed’s Yeah No and Jim Black’s Alasnoaxis. Their work with Pachora generally showcases a tasteful, flowing jazz sound, with strong Balkan, Middle-Eastern, and even African inspirations, and they don't really break from that formula here. It's a warm record, an upbeat record that mostly showcases a group sound instead of solo prowess.
The majority of the tunes are on the short side—the longest running under six minutes, which keeps everything very tight. What little solo space there is seems to be filled by Chris Speed's high, warm clarinet. Skuli Sverrisson’s bass work is also particularly resonant.
" Drifting" is a real highlight. The first minute features Brad Shepik's beautiful guitar and Sverrisson’s bass locked into a tight groove. At the one-minute mark, Black joins in with some nice hand drum work, and at two minutes Speed slides quietly into the mix, which builds exquisitely. The song is only three minutes and twelve seconds long, but that's three minutes and twelve seconds of pure heaven. I had to play it again as soon as it was over.
However, in general, too many of the songs seemed to concentrate excessively on beauty and not enough on adventure. I would have enjoyed hearing the band stretch out on a few more tracks, like they do on "Push," which has a much more experimental, electric rock-type feel and explores a heavier world than any of the other pieces here. In the end, though, it does sound a little silly to complain that the record is just a little too beautiful.
- Jeff LeVine

 

Jazz Times OCT 2003
About five or so years ago, it seemed like the new things in jazz might just be old music from Eastern Europe. Musicians from all over New York were moonlighting in Macedonian wedding bands and dedicating themselves to improvising fluidly in 12/8 time. Clarinetist Chris Speed and guitarist Brad Shepik were the most studious of the bunch. They, along with bassist Skuli Sverrisson and drummer Jim Black, formed Pachora, the modern improv and Eastern Euro folk group that leaned hardest toward the folk side of the equation. Many of the musicians who jumped off - Shepik himself has moved from heavily folked-out projects to straightahead guitar trio - but Pachora keep the light, burning, though with a bit of twist this time out.
On their latest recording, Astereotypical, most familiar Pachora elements return: there's Speed's lilting clarinet, straight man to Shepik's idiom-bending guitar and electric saz playing. There's also elongated time signatures and melodies to match. What's missing is a sense of earnestness and reserve that made earlier recordings sound contained. The band reveals a new playfulness here, an attitude shift reflected in the unreadable short fiction they've put in place of liner notes. Fortunately, the music is better than fiction. The band has brightened their melodies and allowed measures of atmospherics and chaos to slip into the music. "Bushka Lounge" could double as a spy theme; "Push" includes so much of Shepik's abrasive distortion and Black's hard-rock drumming it might fool even longtime fans. Pachora have been easy to admire in the past. Now it's possible to enjoy them as well.
- Aaron Steinberg

 

Coda Magazine Jan/Feb 2004
Pachora is a quartet of well-known members of the New York Downtown School: Chris Speed on clarinet, Jim Black on drums, percussion and pianica (evidently a form of keyboard harmonica, like a melodica), Brad Shepik on classical guitar, tambura and electric saz, and Skuli Sverrisson on acoustic bass guitar, electric bass and baritone guitar. If the instrumental arsenal suggests world and folk acoustic, it's perfectly fitting, for this is a kind of fusion that flirts with a host of regional and ethnic identities, passing rapidly, even simultaneously through Eastern Europe to the Mid- East to Mexico to Bali. The startling achievement of "Klink" melds gamelan with Northern Indian music. Elsewhere Shepik build layers of feedback and Speed touches on klezmer with his clarinet. Whether it's light or momentarily brooding, it's sustained by superior musicianship and real curiosity about what's possible within the group's special frame of reference.
- Stuart Broomer

 

The Wire
Astereotypical is their first album for Winter & Winter, and it really brings to life what was always an interesting project, marking a new level of achievement. Speed, a collaborator on New York's Downtown scene with Tim Berne, Dave Douglas and Mark Dresser and leader of Human Feel, is known for his oblique, unobvious, thick-toned tenor-playing. With Pachora, however, he plays clarinet only, and compared with his predilection for dark sonorities on tenor, there's a lighter feel here.
With Speed are Brad Shepik on lute-like tambura, electric saz and nylon-string guitar, Skúli Sverrisson on acoustic and electric bass guitar and Jim Black on percussion and something called a pianica. The band began by exploring Mediterranean and Eastern music, especially from Greece and Turkey, and groove in asymmetric time-signatures such as 5/4, 19/8 and 9/8. But they now seem to be broadening its influences, with for instance a gamelan influence on "Klink". What really stands out, though, is the greater relaxation and mastery over these tricky time-signatures. Arrangements and textures, including feedback effects, are more varied, though maybe also superior recording quality means that more details can be heard - especially Jim Black's percussion and Brad Shepik's guitar. Pieces are short, mostly around the four minute-mark, and titles are punchy. The result is an outstanding and atypical stereo release.

 

Jazz Weekly
Astereotypical shows what happens when you give three American and one Icelandic musicians license to create a sound animated by the traditional music of Eastern Europe, especially the Balkans.
While often compared to a fanciful Balkan wedding band, Pachora has more influences than that. Rock/pop arrives through the bass guitar and electric bass of Icelander Skúli Sverrisson and the electric saz of guitarist Brad Shepik, who played with the Tiny Bell Trio and Babkas. The plectrumist also adds South Asian intimations through his use of the droning tambura. Reedist Chris Speed and drummer Jim Black, both of whom were in Tim Berne's bands have strong jazz influences. Black, who creates even rockier textures in his own groups, breaks up the rhythms here by his use of cowbells, bell trees, selected and unselected cymbals and other percussion. He also adds unique pianica tones to some of the backgrounds, suggesting both the harmonica and the accordion.
Additionally, Speed, whose saxophone is featured in bands like Myra Melford's, sticks exclusively to clarinet here, likely for purported authenticity. What results however when his reed tone is mixed with the pianica and strings isn't Balkan, but sounds that are more related to joyous freylech melodies, that are to Klezmer what czardas are in Hungarian music and the jig in the music from the British Isles.
There are times, however, when this not-quite-ethnic strategy falters. Usually those tunes features overly busy drumming from Black -- some of which sounds as if his instrument of choice is the telephone book -- and when Shepik's nylon string guitar forays resemble those acoustic intermission fillers so loved by overly-loud heavy metallers.
Still, most of Pachora's tunes feature Speed's uninflected, clear-toned clarinet playing the melody, mostly in contralto, but occasionally in chalameau register, with the beat promulgated by Sverrisson's bass arsenal. With the freylech undercurrent in accordion washes, and rock interjections arriving though Hendrixian fuzz-laden guitar leads and buzzing amps, the challenge is for the musicians to not sound like the hippest ethnic wedding band in the world.
With what appears to be almost literal balalaika and dumbeck backing -- probably courtesy of the saz and baritone guitar -- "Howl" avoids this, with Black's rhythms relating more to Persian or Dervish music that anything further west. Then there's "Rider", when dual guitars and tabla sounds from Black's knurly percussion implies that raga rockers have drifted into the souk. Speed dissolves his Eastern European trills into split reed tones, Shepik tries some fancy triple-lined flat picking and Black appears to be doing the near impossible, playing a dumbeck and regular drum kit simultaneously. The "Little Theater" celebrated on the tune of that name seems to include performers who need a belly dancing melody arising from reed contralto trilling and dancers who need andante polkas and mazurkas created by buzzing triplets from the guitar players.
- Ken Waxman