If awards were given for album titles, this one would be in the running. Without saying anything about how the record sounds, it tells you a lot about how it feels. If you saw tenor and baritone saxophonist James McKain, double bassist Damon Smith and drummer Weasel Walter onstage, you’d think you were looking at a free-jazz band. You wouldn’t be wrong. But when you play …Seeing The Way The Mole Tunnels…., you get the vibe of earth being moved and connections being made.
Individually, each of these guys has earned a reputation for playing intense music. But when they’re together, disparate musical concepts converge in ways that maximize that effect. Walter’s explosive drumming contains events that combine the placement concept and density of metal blast-beats with a mastery of detail and discrete articulation most often found in European free improvisation. One moment, Smith wrenches huge, shuddering basses of vibration from his big box of wood; the next, his bow makes it sing in classical fashion. But it’s McKain who justifies the LP’s title. He distills the classic stance of early ESP-era free-jazz saxophone playing into a lexicon of high, emphatic shrieks and low growls that sound like they could liquify earth.
While the trio’s depth of knowledge and bracing attack are impressive, what clinches this performance is the collective intelligence that they apply to organizing these elements. The music is in constant flux, shifting from triple-decker slamming to sandstorm diffusion with an irrefutable logic that massages the mind at the same time that it punches the gut. When music can hit like this, why settle for less? [Balance Point Acoustics/International School Of Evidence]
—Bill Meyer
