Available Jelly

1989 release ** An early Available Jelly Quartet; the instrumentation scaled down to two horns, bass/tuba, and percussion. Original compositions and covers of Brian Wilson and Misha Mengelberg. "The 1989 album from Available Jelly, In Full Flail narrowed down the band's physical lineup while extending its musical reach. Down to a quartet, the band included Michael Moore on saxophones and piano, Gregg Moore on tuba, trombone, electric bass, and mandolin, Michael Vatcher as master drummer, and the new addition of Eric Boeren on trumpet and cornet. The music here was composed by Moore and Boeren, respectively, their different compositional styles all ironing out in the arrangement stages of tunes such as Boeren's dreamy, song-like "Stars Fell On Zaandam," which becomes a swinging, slow grooving blues number in grand Jack Teagarden cum Euro vanguard cum funky street-style. Moore's own "Beauty," that figures the sweet squawk of the free improviser's gait against the simmering, slow stroll of the frontline in a parade before it mutates into a simmering little groover graced by a murky and funky marimba, before changing again -- to cop a phrase from Robert Fripp and King Crimson's "Larks Tongues in Aspic, Part 1." Elsewhere there's a cover of Brian Wilson's "Catch a Wave," done without poking fun at the tune while having a ball with the arrangement. There is also a delightful cover of Misha Mengelberg's "Kneebus" that lasts under three minutes! Once again, Available Jelly combine the absurd with the sublime, and bring to bear all of the facets of jazz and various popular musics from the Middle East, Europe, and America, to posit their own take on the present and future of jazz."