Álvaro Domene & Álvaro Pérez

The question asked by longtime collaborators, Álvaro Domene and Álvaro Pérez - in mashed roles of the detective, scientist and explorer - seems simple on the surface: ”Can the DNA of a musical piece - i.e. form, sections, impressions - be evident in a single fragment of time and space?” Just reading that statement out loud feels like a challenge to any number of traditionally popular conceptions of what music could, would or should mean. In testing this hypothesis across the whole of their latest offering “Standards”, Domene and Pérez do fine service to a collection of popularized jazz tunes as they were, as they are and as they might be later.

Much like quantum particles which conglomerate and organize themselves in unfathomably large numbers to give rise to more complex entities, the approach here is to make the first, middle and last sounds on each of the seven pieces here showcase the “-ness” of a given tune with equally uncanny authority and character. Much like the invisible barriers between the laws of nature and physics breaking down once reaching the world of the infinitely small, the rules of performance and composition seem to warp, twist and evaporate when crossing into the quantum scale. Stale linearity has no place on this album. In a sense, this formidable duo frees these pieces from themselves by forging this path.

For example, “All The Things You Are” has been performed countless times by countless artists over the past century and retained its basic harmonic and rhythmic shape on just about all of them. The way this version comes to life is something else entirely and illustrates the group's united intentions and ideas very clearly. While the melody and arc as it has been commonly performed never appears here, the environment of that content feels present in ways which have not yet been discussed. Domene and Pérez keep some of the information from the introduction and outro popularized by Charlie Parker, but I felt a sense of the piece without even that much to lean on. The drum programming is busy and emphatic and the swarming gestures of Domene's guitar and Pérez's alto saxophone in this version feel entwined and inseparable much in the same way I imagine it would have been to witness Parker or many others of that time play the piece in person. There is a vast amount of tangible reality in such an experience that is impossible to translate to a recording. And if one tries to repeat it - as so many young jazz cadets and institutions are wont to do - the results fail miserably. This approach is maybe one of the only true alternatives which considers the sad fact that we can never hit pause on the present.

The depth and care that the duo takes in presenting such venerated music is astonishing. It’s a pure perspective, not merely a presentation or a museum piece. When we talk about some music having that “special something”, this is what this album is getting at. Even without the familiar arc and vocabulary, these pieces remain uniquely identifiable when atomized. Their version of the John Coltrane piece “Equinox” is another great example of this. At first listen to the original version, there’s much more going on beneath the notes and the key which make the piece exist on its own. They never directly quote a figure from the original here - or anywhere else - but instead channel the spirit of the piece at its most elemental. It’s a blues without being mired in bluesy vocabulary.

Domene and Pérez's approach is a reevaluation of the special worlds offered by musical happenings that is critical of the process of “standardizing” music for a specific socioeconomic agenda or applying any other grafted intellectual or academic around something real that never asked for or needed such confinement. The “standards” here occur in an organic and modern style which feels more honestly suited to the present culture in music. This is not about virtuosic gamesmanship or the embalmment of a bygone era that attempts to preserve the past with rose-colored glasses. It’s not about maintaining a nationalist edge flying some banner of authenticity for the sake of appearances on the world stage. Never an imitation, this music allows for old seeds to begin sprouting again and speaks greatly of both the original source material and the visionary interpretation and skill of these two wonderful sonic comrades. Treasure hiding in plain sight. - Max Kutner for Iluso Records.

Álvaro Pérez: alto saxophone
Álvaro Domene: seven string electric guitar and drum computer-sampler. alvarodomene.com

Recorded May 2023. Mixed and Mastered by Domene at Singularity Studio, Kingston, New York.

Ed Keller: cover art aum.aumstudio.org

Max Kutner: liner notes maxkutner.bandcamp.com