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Unwaxed

by Floss

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  • Limited Edition Compact Disc
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    Bopcore trio Floss (Izaak Mills, John Seman, Mark Ostrowski) recorded in the studio by Zachary Watkins. This professionally pressed but personally assembled 2003 CD release is a numbered, hand-letterpressed limited edition of 1000 with photography by Gabriel Herbertson and artwork by Treisa Vendramini.

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1.
Blatch 00:11
2.
3.
4.
Floss 13:18
5.
Bruxism 12:53
6.
7.
8.
9.
AD FINEM 14:34

about

Wildman saxophonist Izaak Mills leads the formidable bopcore trio Floss featuring MCMC founders John Seman and Mark Ostrowski on bass and drums. Unwaxed draws its sound from the hardcore records of the eighties, but its soul belongs to the free improvisation scene of the late sixties and seventies.

Captured live in the studio by Zachary Watkins.

credits

released July 4, 2004

Izaak Mills – woodwinds
John Seman – double bass
Mark Ostrowski – percussion

All compositions by Floss unless otherwise noted.
Recorded December 16, 2002 by Zachary Watkins and Mark Burno at Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle, WA. Mastered by Mell Dettmer.

Floss/Unwaxed

Monktail Records

by John Kelman, All About Jazz



For an artist who never achieved the widespread acclaim of, say, John Coltrane or Ornette Coleman, saxophonist Albert Ayler has had a surprisingly long-lasting effect o­n modern free jazz. Coming up as he did not through the bebop ranks, but from R&B, also lends credibility to more contemporary free artists coming to the genre through other forms of music, most notably punk, which clearly shares certain denominators with the more expressionist free playing of artists including Cleveland's Jeff Platz, whose Skull Session title, Rise Above, was also reviewed recently. Add to that group a relatively new Seattle collective called Floss, whose début CD, Unwaxed, has all the earmarks of Ayler, with a little John Zorn, William Parker, Archie Shepp and, surprisingly, Led Zeppelin thrown into the mix. Floss has actually been together since '02, formed when Berklee-trained drummer Mark Ostrowski and Oberlin Conservatory of Music graduate John Semen o­n bass, both o­n the cusp of thirty years of age, met up with a twenty-four year-old woodwind player, Izaak Mills, a player with an apparently smug lack of regard for the conventional. Ostrowski cites Max Roach and John Bonham as main influences, and that's not as odd as it may sound; o­n Mills' track, “Floss,” Ostrowski shifts between a solid rock groove and a completely free approach that still manages some of Roach's lighter cymbal work.

Seman o­nly went to bass when, upon meeting Ostrowski, it became apparent that a bassist was needed. With a background that included piano, trumpet and tuba as well as percussion, adding another instrument to the arsenal wasn't a stretch. But while he majored in such lofty pursuits as composition o­n tuba and ethnomusicology, as well as a minor in composition and jazz bass, he was equally at home transcribing metal riffs o­n an old Casio keyboard. Mills, o­n the other hand, lists influences including Ayler and Black Sabbath. The seeming paradoxes inherent in Floss' varied influences o­nly make what they do more curious.

The five free improvisations that make up the bulk of the set range from pure chaos (”Blatch” and “Whitey o­n Mars,” where Mills, in particular, plays with complete and outrageous abandon) to the more serene but equally extravagant “Bruxism,” where Mills draws extended sounds out of the flute, and Ostrowski, in particular, contributes more ethereal percussion work. The four composed pieces, two by Semen and o­ne each by Mills and Ostrowski, are typical free exchanges where simple themes provide the barest of reference points.

While anarchy is a part of what Floss does, a strange sense of beauty sometimes pervades, as o­n Ostrowski's closer, “AD FINEM.” The dichotomy of the group o­nly makes them more interesting, and it provides a necessary contrast to make the entire programme flow. Unwaxed is an intriguing and, for the most part, successful combination of abandon and restraint, chaos and organization, that will appeal to listeners prepared to be at o­nce shocked and appeased.

~ John Kelman

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=14409

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Monktail Creative Music Concern Seattle

The Monktail Creative Music Concern is a collective of composers, musicians and artists based in Seattle, WA who thrive o­n the atypical and exigent; the real weirdo stuff.

[ca 2000-2015]

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