Rissi, Mazzola & Geisser - Herakleitos

Grego Edwards, gapplegatemusicreview

ower through an exciting set
Mathias Rissi, alto and tenor sax, Guerino Mazzola, piano, and Heinz Geisser, drums, set up in a studio in Milan in 2006 to set down some free improvisations. That inspired session resulted in the album Herakleitos, which is available as an Ayler Download Release.

What grabs one is the course of the hour-long performance is both the energy and the resourcefulness of the improvisers. Mazzola has a Cecil-Taylor-like motor insistency but his own sort of cover-the-earth vocabulary. Geisser thrashes and bashes in ways that put the trio quickly into orbit. Rissi plays a potent blend of tumultuous phrases that establishes a singular voice in the free/outside mode. He has excellent control over his horns and expresses his musical mind with great variations in tone, a fertile imagination and no reservations whatsoever.

This is another winner in the Ayler catalog and yet another example of the vitality of the European free-avant scene.