Fields, Scott / Samuel
Album: Samuel   Collection:Jazz
Artist:Fields, Scott   Added:Aug 2009
Label:New World Records  

A-File Activity
Add Date: 2009-10-11 Pull Date: 2009-12-13 Charts: Jazz
Week Ending: Dec 13 Dec 6 Nov 22 Nov 15 Oct 25
Airplays: 1 1 1 1 1

Recent Airplay
1. Dec 08, 2009: Memory Select
Ghost Trio
4. Nov 14, 2009: Music Casserole
Ghost Trio
2. Dec 01, 2009: Memory Select
Ghost Trio [excerpt]
5. Oct 20, 2009: Memory Select
Eh Joe [cont'd], Eh Joe
3. Nov 17, 2009: Memory Select
Not I

Album Review
Fo
Reviewed 2009-10-10
SCOTT FIELDS ENSEMBLE: Samuel
New World, 2009

AVANT-GARDE – OK, this is just amazing. In this mad-sounding quartet disc, guitarist Scott Fields takes the text of three plays by Samuel Beckett (spoken lines and stage directions alike) and transforms it all into a complex musical code, which the band renders instrumentally. The result sounds wholly spontaneous and yet clearly isn’t, reflects human speech cadences yet is unpredictably scattered, and is at once totally melodic and utterly bizarre. Fields has actually been working in this idiom for a while, so it also sounds quite polished.

Scott Fields - electric guitar
John Hollenbeck - percussion
Scott Roller - cello
Matthias Schubert - tenor sax

* * * * | Fo’s Picks: 1, 2

1. 24:16 – quick-paced, percussive and scribbly, like an extended argument. Doesn’t vary much, but the second half has a bit more space.
2. 19:35 – slow and atmospheric, surprisingly melodic: creeps quietly on a sort of walking bass line, falls into many open, abstract spaces.
3. 20:52 – broadly scattered and quiet with otherworldly harmonies, wide expanses; ever so gradually coheres into loud, coordinated motion

[ Fo ] 10/10/09

Track Listing
1. Not I   2. Ghost Trio
  3. Eh Joe