The Singularity of Matthew Shipp on RogueArt

Me reflecting on this book is a massive conflict of interest from several angles.

I run the venerable ESP-Disk’ label, a competitor of the RogueArt label. Matthew Shipp, the subject of the book, is on 15 released ESP albums (most recently a September 15th reissue of his 1990 recording Circular Temple, now on vinyl for the first time, end of plug) plus another four that are “in the can.”

Clifford Allen, the author of the book, is a critic who has also written liner notes for ESP albums. All the subjects but one (Michel Dorbon, owner of RogueArt) of interview chapters in this book either have albums on ESP (William Parker, Whit Dickey, Joe Morris) or might (Rob Brown) or otherwise have done work for ESP (engineer Jim Clouse, artist Yuko Otomo).

The flipside of that conflict of interest, though, is that I am deeply familiar with all the subjects of this book, especially Shipp himself. So here goes.

Pianist Matthew Shipp (b. 1960) recorded his first album in 1987-88: Sonic Explorations (Cadence Jazz), a duo with alto saxophonist Rob Brown. He didn’t record for RogueArt until 2004. Allen wisely starts the story well before 2004, and doesn’t confine it to RogueArt or even to Shipp himself. Yes, in the first chapter we get a one-paragraph summary of his life from birth to arrival on the New York scene, and a few more paragraphs about his tenure in the magnificent David S. Ware Quartet. But the second chapter, “Deep in the Neighborhood,” situates Shipp in the very particular milieu of the 1980s Lower East Side of Manhattan, teeming with great jazz artists: alto saxophonist Jemeel Moondoc and his Ensemble Muntu are focused on, with Muntu bassist William Parker, soon to play a larger role, further introduced. There is thus an element of sociology introduced into this look at the development of influence, with the musical approaches of Moondoc and pianist Cecil Taylor proving seminal. 

Then come interviews with musicians especially crucial to Shipp’s development: Parker, Brown, drummer Whit Dickey, and guitarist/bassist Joe Morris. Their insights into Shipp’s music, and their comments regarding other musicians on the scene relevant to Shipp’s career, branch out into further artists involved in Shipp’s evolution. Parker among other things highlights the uniqueness of Shipp’s style while astutely explaining and dismissing the tendency of critics to compare Shipp to Cecil Taylor. Brown was there at the beginning of Shipp’s recording career, and before that when they were playing together in Boston in the early 1980s, and has continued playing with him, so he’s able to offer insights into Shipp’s evolution as well. Drummer Whit Dickey, in Shipp’s first recorded trio, is up next and, like Brown, offers commentary on both early days and further developments. (Were this a straightforward biography, some of the obscure participants from those formative days, drummer Frank Bambara and tenor saxophonist Gary Joynes, might get more ink—I wish they had, since my curiosity’s piqued, but this isn’t that kind of book). Finally Joe Morris, not only a great player but also a brilliant theorist of improvisation, is heard from, bringing into the conversation Joe and Mat Maneri (saxophonist and violist, father and son), pianist Lowell Davidson (with a seminal album on ESP, end of plug), and longtime Taylor saxophonist Jimmy Lyons, before explaining some of the theoretical explanation of what Shipp does.

No examination of Shipp’s work would be complete without a look at his profound fascination with language, and the first chapter in the next section of Singularity Codex, “Linguistic Exchange.” Allen is able to draw on interviews he conducted with Shipp long before this book was thought of, and already in 2013 he was quizzing Shipp about the relationship of language and music, eliciting this crucial quote: “The universe consists of pulsations and energy patterns, and these energy patterns then cohere into something we call a brain, which then intercepts energy patterns and makes them into patterns on an instrument. So the whole idea of playing music, to me, is a kind of metaphysics of how the brain generates rhythm and language, and that’s my whole thing.” This chapter also points out how deliberately Shipp has focused on not repeating himself. This was something that confused me for a while. I started listening to Shipp in 1991, loved what I heard, but after about a decade I had a little trouble keeping up with his development because he’d evolved so far past what I’d liked in the beginning that I needed a couple years of dealing with the changes before I could come to terms with them and understand what he was doing. This is most definitely not what most musicians do; they establish a sound and stick with it for decades. The exceptions are legendary: Igor Stravinsky, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Bob Dylan come to mind—and all of them lost fans who couldn’t keep following them, or weren’t willing to expand their listening to appreciate their new styles. (That said, there are still through lines; there are themes in Shipp’s ’90s recordings that he still plays nowadays.) This chapter is also noteworthy for introducing poet and Shipp collaborator Steve Dalachinsky into the mix, along with their RogueArt book Logos and Language: A Post-Jazz Metaphorical Dialogue. We also learn that when the 19-year-old Shipp read Jean Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers, it had a huge influence on his thinking—which decades later bore fruit in two RogueArt albums.

The other chapter in this section of Singularity Codex is an interview with Yuko Otomo, an artist and poet who was also Dalachinsky’s wife. Shipp used a drawing of hers for the cover of his album Points (Silkheart, 1991)—he said, “this is so much like the inside of my brain.” She has continued to occasionally provide cover art for his albums (I’ve made a point of doing that, as it happens), and sometimes liner notes.

The next section features the interview with RogueArt founder Michel Dorbon, who had first recorded Shipp for previous label Bleu Regard. It’s of course interesting to get the backstory on how he became involved with Shipp, what led to RogueArt, etc. and also, for me, to note differences in approach. Notably, Dorbon says, “…there’s no second takes. … I think what is done is done and it doesn’t matter—if you do a second take it will be different, not better or worse.” That is a valid way of dealing with jazz especially, but I feel there are occasionally exceptions, and I have asked for second takes and gotten them. Sometimes I asked because, even though as a musician myself I am nowhere near the level of Shipp or his bandmates, I can still, from my knowledge and decades of listening to jazz in general and Shipp in particular, sense that a specific aspect of a performance might be improved; other times I may feel it will gel better with another take even if I can’t put my finger on a specific aspect (or I don’t want to call out a specific player for a lapse). It is rarer with Shipp than with other artists—he plans out his sessions in advance and always comes prepared with a map of how the album should sound—but it has happened, so I found Dorbon’s approach interesting. And given that one of ESP-Disk’s mottos is “The Artists Alone Decide…” and I am thus hands-off 99% of the time, I was surprised to learn that Michel surpasses me in that!

The other interview in this section is with engineer Jim Clouse, who operates Park West Studios out of the basement of his home in Brooklyn. Matthew likes the Kawai 6’ 3” grand piano there, and nowadays does the vast majority of his recordings there, so of course I’ve ended up there for all the Shipp sessions I’ve produced. When Clouse is pressed by Allen to cite “standout sessions,” I’m happy to note that of the four albums he cites, two—the trio album Signature and the solo Zer0—are ESP-Disk’ releases. Thanks Jim!

AUDIO: Matthew Shipp – Evan Parker “Leonine Aspects”

And then comes Allen’s tour de force, multi-page reviews of all 25 of the RogueArt albums that Shipp is on (some still unreleased). As someone who spent years as an album reviewer, and who’s reviewed plenty of Shipp albums, I know exactly how difficult it is to not be repetitive, to find new ways to describe a musician’s sound and style. These reviews transcend that problem so far that I can do nothing but bow down to Allen as a genius of the form. He has clearly listened carefully and profoundly to every single one of these albums, and the result is a masterclass in critical writing. There are also B&W photos of many sessions, with Jim Clouse’s backyard heavily featured.

One last thing: the book opens with a Steve Dalachinsky poem about a 2010 Shipp solo concert, and closes with Dalachinsky’s 2016 liner notes to RogueArt album The Reward. This recognition of the long collaboration of Dalachinsky with Shipp’s music, and of the deep love of Shipp, Dalachinsky and Otomo for one another (the first photo in the book is of the three of them) is entirely appropriate and touching, and I salute Allen for this gesture.

Obviously Singularity Codex is aimed at Shipp fans. Nonetheless, somebody who’s never heard a note Shipp played would still find it both entertaining and informative about how an artist approaches creativity, about how a jazz scene coalesces, about how to listen to music.

AUDIO: Paul Dunmall / Matthew Shipp / Joe Morris / Gerald Cleaver “The Bright Awakening”

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Steve Holtje

Steve Holtje is a composer (classical and soundtrack) and improviser (keyboardist in the Caterpillar Quartet and This Humidity). His classical compositions have recently been performed by pianist Tania Stavreva and the Cheah-Chan Duo; one of his soundtracks can be found on Bandcamp.

His day job since 2013 has been running ESP-Disk, first under founder Bernard Stollman and, since Mr. Stollman's passing, doing his best to perpetuate and publicize the indiest indie label's unique legacy. He has produced albums by Matthew Shipp, Amina Baraka & The Red Microphone, Fay Victor, etc. Previously he worked at Black Saint Records, where he was present at the last studio session of Sun Ra. Other jobs have included editorial positions at Creem, The Big Takeover, and The New York Review of Records; inevitably, he also worked at a record store in Williamsburg (Sound Fix), where one night after closing, while drinking across the street at Mugs Ale House, he preached to some tourists about the greatness of jazz bagpiper Rufus Harley, which led to him reopening the store and selling them a copy of Harley's Re-Creation of the Gods. This is widely considered the most Holtje-esque occurrence ever.

(Photo by Dale Mincey)

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