Matana Roberts - Coin Coin Chapter One: Gens De Couleur Libres

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4...according to our Mike on Thu 19 May, 2011.

I seem to be getting a lot of reviews of apparently legendary people I've never encountered before. The latest of these is Matana Roberts's new offering on Constellation. It's hard to know where to start describing this, it's pretty all over the place, but the focus seems to be on Roberts's alto sax and vocals, with the album being an edited 60-minute suite from a 90-minute live performance with 14 accompanying musicians at Montreal's legendary Hotel2Tango. As far as I can tell it fluctuates between composed and improvised music, and in places it seems to be very politically/historically themed, although I fear if I try to focus on that aspect in this review all I'll do is demonstrate my own ignorance regarding its subject matter. The album opens with a shrill and uncompromising saxophone solo with incoherent and repetitive vocals over the top, but the moods swing wildly throughout. There's a couple of simple folky type compositions, a trad-jazz type part...even a drawn-out a capella spiritual in the middle; but there's also moments of disembodied screeching over skittish free jazz, and some great groovy psychedelic jazz moments too. The closing track, 'How Much Would You Cost', is a delightfully gentle and rhythmic song accompanied by pizzicato double bass that really pushes my buttons. Even when this record isn't my thing it's hard not to admire how cohesive the whole mess sounds in spite of the cultural and stylistic diversity it represents. I like how the accompanists come and go throughout the piece, too - it's obviously been carefully planned beforehand or the improvised parts would soon descend into one-dimensional chaos with an ensemble this size. Roberts is clearly a unique talent, and this album is very engaging and thought-provoking.

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* Matana Roberts (pronounced mah-tah-nah) is one of the leading lights of contemporary African-American experimental music, combining her widely recognized gifts as an alto saxophone player and improviser with an intensely engaged re-definition of American Jazz traditions.

* Matana's COIN COIN project is the centrepiece of this engagement and re-definition: a multi-chapter work that combines conceptual scoring (graphic notation, 'chance' strategies), storytelling and historical narrative, performative theatre (personae, costume, multi-media), and a deeply considered channelling of personal ancestry and the 'universal' experience of Africans in America.

* Roberts began spending significant amounts of time in Montreal during the second half of the 2000s and has been an on-and-off resident of the city since 2008. While she was familiar to Constellation as early as 2001 (through her work with Sticks And Stones and her guest performance on Godspeed You! Black Emperor's Yanqui U.X.O. album), it was through the evolution of her mesmerizing COIN COIN project that they fully fell under her spell – as did the dozen or more Montreal musicians who began working with her on the music and in performance.

*COIN COIN Chapter One: Gens de Couleur Libres is the first official recording of this ambitious and powerful project. Constellation invited Matana to assemble her Montreal group for a live in-studio performance at the Hotel2Tango facility, before a small but capacity audience of about 30 friends and supporters. The band spend the entire day running things through while recording engineer Radwan Moumneh set microphones and levels. The evening performance was stunning, literally bringing audience members to tears, and went to tape beautifully. The full 90-minute performance was edited down to around 60 minutes, comprising four quarter-hour suites spread across four sides of 10" vinyl.

* Says Matana: “COIN COIN is a compositional sound language, that I have been developing since 2006. My initial interest in creating this work came from my childhood fascination with ghosts, spirits, spooks, and the faint traces of what they leave behind. I have a deep interest in old, antique objects of human existence, mostly because of the variety of story that can be created, factual or not, from the possibility of their being. This project is a combination of those interests as well as my delight in musical communication , ritual adornment, and the genealogical 20th century history of Africans in America. In some instances I am using information that I have gleaned from research into my own ancestral history, as inspiration and area of creative consideration. The musical root of much of this work also stems from my continued attraction/repulsion to certain aspects of the American Jazz tradition(s) which I am deeply
involved with as an alto saxophonist.”

* COIN COIN represents some of the most honest and compelling work – musically and thematically – that Constellation have had the privilege to be associated with. It rallies adventurous improv, experimental voice and narrative, a wide array of black folkways, and Matana's impassioned lead playing to tremendous emotional and conceptual effect.

* CD comes in a custom gatefold jacket printed on reverse paperboard in full colour. Double 10" comes in a wide-spine double-scored jacket printed in full colour on 24pt reverse board. First pressing of LP also includes a CD copy of the album and a limited edition art print poster reproducing one of Matana's graphic scores for Coin Coin.