The Bureau of Atomic Tourism

It's hard finding an appropriate genre label for Teun Verbruggen’s Bureau Of Atomic Tourism. While the sextet delves headfirst into abstract free improvisation that abandons all conventional takes on musical notions such as melody, harmony and rhythm at one point, you witness them raging like a well-oiled outfit with years of experience the next. The front section of Andrew d’Angelo (alto saxophone, bass clarinet) and Nate Wooley (trumpet) covers the entire stylistic range from muscular solos to extended techniques, and is often joined by guitarist Marc Ducret, who makes his instrument sing mysteriously, places poignant accents or rages with an equal eagerness. Initially the unpredictable improv may sound like an abstract sound poem, but this switches quickly to first dazzling freak-outs in the New York avant-garde tradition or even throbbing fusion with a nod to Miles Davis’ electric era, before ultimately arriving at muscular jazzrock in the vein of The Lounge Lizards and Belgium’s X-Legged Sally, with ultra-tight themes, subtly introduced electronics and turbulent dynamics. And what to think of the unstoppable groove of the Dunn/Verbruggen rhythm section and the musical action painting of Jozef Dumoulin on Fender Rhodes? ----------------------------------------- TEUN VERBRUGGEN - drums TREVOR DUNN / JASPER STADHOUDERS / TIM DAHL- bass JOZEF DUMOULIN - Fender Rhodes NATE WOOLEY - trumpet ANDREW D'ANGELO - sax, bass clarinet MARC DUCRET / HILMAR JENSSON - guitar Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.