(Avant-Garde Jazz, Free Improvisation, Tzadik) [WEB] Larry Ochs (w/ Nate Wooley, Harris Eisenstadt, Ken Filiano, Pascal Niggenkemper) - The Fictive Five - 2015, FLAC (tracks), lossless

All compositions by Larry Ochs
Recorded December 5, 2014 by Marc Urselli at East Side Sound, NYC. Mixed in 2015 by Myles Boisen at Headless Buddha Lab, Oakland, CA.
Founding member of the Rova Sax Quartet, Larry Ochs has worked with many of the greatest musicians in Creative Music—Steve Lacy, Fred Frith, Wadada Leo Smith, Terry Riley, Marilyn Crispell, John Zorn, Nels Cline, Anthony Braxton and countless others. His newest ensemble is an update on the classic New York Contemporary Five and features Larry’s Shepp-tinged tenor sax along with some of the best young players out of New York’s Downtown scene. Ochs is particularly excited by both the ensemble sound and the music here, a set of pieces he considers to be among his strongest and most successful blendings of composition and improvisation. Fabulous and soulful, The Fictive Five is a tremendous achievement by this West Coast master of surprise!
I couldn't agree more with Larry Ochs' statement that "if you're looking to understand music, one is approaching it the wrong way", because it is the experience that counts, the total impact of the sound on your own biochemistry, including such bodily reactions as emotion, spiritual delight or goose bumps.
On this phenomenal album, the saxophonist assembled a New York band consisting of Ken Filiano and Pascal Niggenkemper on bass, Nate Wooley on trumpet and Harris Eisenstadt on drums, at the occasion of Ochs' curatorship at The Stone in New York, and these musicians, under Ochs' leadership create that unique experience that escapes rational disection and analysis.
The approach taken here is to create musical imagery, scenic moments that are partly composed, and mostly improvised, as if you can see the music in your mind's eye, and these are mostly abstract landscapes with changing and shifting horizons and colors, with a strong horizontal feeling of flux as the unpredictable sounds move the listener forward on this journey.
The album consists of four tracks, three of which are dedicated to visual artists - Wim Wenders, William Kentridge, Kelly Reichardt - in the same tradition as Steve Lacy, and it are the movies or visual installations by these artists that act as inspiration for the music, even if it is not made to accompany these movies.
One of the most striking features of the sound are the two basses, which lay a great sonic foundation for the music, not rhythmically, but in terms of the overall color of the pieces, acting in concert, or alternately, challenging each other or reinforcing the sound. Yet the entire band is stellar, five musicians who live in their most natural habitat of free flowing sounds, joining the short themes that pop up once in a while, then take off again on different paths but in the same direction.
It's the way I like music, beautifully free, sensitive and deep. - Stef, freejazzblog.org

Nate Wooley, Trumpet
Larry Ochs, Tenor and Sopranino Saxophones
Pascal Niggenkemper, Bass + Prepared Bass
Ken Filiano, Bass + Effects
Harris Eisenstadt, Drums