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Jazziz Magazine, reprinted in Grammy Magazine Web surfers and Boston-area
listeners can turn to WZBC-FM, "Free Association" lives
up to its name, as Carpenter segues handily from turntablism
and free jazz to techno and avant garde, blurring the distinctions along the way. Carpenter
maintains there's a method to his musical madness: "I have a clear
strategy, a way of building a bridge from something generally accessible to
something relatively inaccessible." Carpenter describes one set that
began with a '70s soul singer and eventually settled into a piece by a
renowned improvisational artist: "One caller asked me, 'What is this
music? You were playing Al Green and all of a sudden I'm listening to music
I've never heard before. I don't remember how we got here but I like this.' I
was playing Albert Ayler. This listener would normally never listen to free
music. If I had played Ayler right after Al Green, he would have shut off the
radio." Slightly more than a year old, the
program has already made a name for itself among members of Composer and saxophonist Ken Field,
who has appeared on "Free Association," agrees that the program
makes a significant contribution to avant-garde and other fringe music.
"A lot of jazz stations around the country have a tendency to stick with
tried-and-true artists," says Field, who's also a member of the ensemble
Birdsongs of the Mesozoic. "It's important to have a show like Brian's
that really pushes the stylistic edges and presents things that don't have
the opportunity to be heard on mainstream shows." Carpenter sees to it that the
program's style of presentation is as much an experiment as the music he
plays. About a quarter of the show features what Carpenter calls his
"thematic layering approach." Over a bed
of electronica that's familiar to his audience —
e.g. To Rococo Rot or Spring Heel Jack — he'll add a less familiar track.
"I once had Sun Ra's Cosmic Rays singing doo-wop over Dr. Octagon's
'Blue Flowers,'" Carpenter remembers. "Oh my God, that was
beautiful." Once he feels he's hooked his audience, he'll drop out the electronica underneath and let Sun Ra, Ornette, etc. stand on their own. And what would "Free
Association" be without a few free associating listeners? One of
Carpenter's fans is a caller who goes by the moniker, "The Naked
Baboon." "He'll give me very terse and pointed assignments,"
Carpenter says. "He'll say something like, 'Just play me a beat, man.'
Or, 'Take me out to space, man.' And then he'll hang up. I do my best." Listen to "Free
Association" online at www.zbconline.com © 2002 Jazziz.
via ProQuest Information
and Learning Company; Reprinted by permission. |