Back for Blood

Tim Berne and his jazz superheroes reunite.

by Shaun Brady

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Published: Feb 5, 2008

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JAZZ

It's been less than a decade since Tim Berne's Bloodcount last took the stage together, but for my money, this is a reunion far more exciting than any of the recent re-emergences from rock's distant past. You can keep Page and Plant, chuck Diamond Dave and various assorted Van Halens; Berne, Black, Speed and Formanek are back.

Granted, those acts fulfill a completely different need, an escapist desire for nostalgia in which I've gleefully indulged on occasion. What makes the pulse quicken in consideration of Bloodcount reconvening is the fact that all four members have continued to make some of jazz's most scintillating and inventive music in sundry other configurations. So the anticipatory thrill lies not in hearing the music they made in the '90s all over again, but in how the ensuing years may have transformed their already-expansive palette.

Bloodcount is a big band. Not in personnel, the way the term is usually used; just four guys, five when you consider the original incarnation with French guitarist Marc Ducret. But they create music on a huge, sprawling canvas, compositions that travel and evolve, gathering momentum and scale like a snowball in an avalanche.

Perhaps it would be more fitting to refer to them as an epic band. If Bloodcount were a movie, it would have to be shot in Cinemascope, boasting a cast of thousands and DeMille-style crowd scenes, with battles and orgies alike shot with a glowering Technicolor exuberance.

Tim Berne's blistering alto is something to contend with, a beefy R&B honk born of Texas juke joints (via his mentor, Fort Worth-born saxophonist Julius Hemphill) and numberless Stax sides, mutated to city-stomping size. It's a superhuman sound in need of a Marvel comics origin story. With Bloodcount, he gathered his own Fantastic Four with complementary powers of their own: bassist Michael Formanek's robust backbone grooves and textured bowing; tenor saxist/clarinetist Chris Speed's lithe lines adding sinew to Berne's muscle; and drummer Jim Black, a poster boy for Ritalin, explosive outbursts suddenly settling into contained rock beats, then fracturing into jagged shards of color.

At the time that Bloodcount formed in 1994, Black and Speed had garnered some attention with their quartet Human Feel — another group that recently reunited to explore lapsed connections with invigorated knowledge. Formanek had been gigging for years with everyone from Freddie Hubbard to Stan Getz to Greg Osby, including a 13-year run with the Mingus Big Band. But its inception truly marked a turning point for its leader's development.

Prior to forming Bloodcount, Berne had been allied with New York's Downtown scene. To some extent, his writing for the new quartet was a break from that, with more elaborate constructions and less rock attitude. Tracks rarely clocked in at less than 15 minutes, often running into the 30- or 40-minute range. But even at those extreme lengths, there's a constant sense that the confines can barely contain the creation within, as the seams threaten to burst from the pressure of the onrushing invention.

It remains to be seen how the quartet will have changed in nine years, or whether this reunion will continue, though Berne is said to be bringing new charts for the tour. All have projects that have advanced their own conceptions and promise to enjoy continued progress. But Bloodcount was possessed of not just chemistry but alchemy, and it's hard to imagine anything other than pure gold resulting.

(s_brady@citypaper.net)

Bloodcount plays Sun., Feb. 10, 8 p.m., $12, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-387-5125, arsnovaworkshop.com.

 

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