musician questionnaire: toine thys

Toine Thys is a saxophonist. He leads Rackham (myspace) and Take The Duck (myspace). His latest album is Rackham's excellent Juanita K.

GIVE US AN EXAMPLE OR TWO OF AN ESPECIALLY GOOD OR INTERESTING:

1. Movie score. Midnight Cowboy
2. TV theme. Chips
3. Melody. "Greensleaves"
4. Harmonic language. Bartok
5. Rhythmic feel. Gnawa music
6. Hip-hop track. The Roots (but i can't name any)
7. Classical piece. String Quartet Shostakovitch
8. Smash hit. "A man's world" - James Brown
9. Jazz album. Chris Cheek - I wish I knew
10. Non-American folkloric group. Tarafs de Haidouks
11. Book on music The Listening book - WA Mathieu.

BONUS QUESTIONS:

A) Name an surprising album (or albums) you loved when you were
developing as a musician: something that really informs your sound but
that we would never guess in a million years:
David Bowie : Space Oddity, David Sanborn Straight to the Heart

B) Name a practitioner (or a few) who play your instrument that you
think is underrated:
Bill McHenry, John Ellis

C) Name a rock or pop album that you wish had been a smash commercial
hit (but wasn't, not really):

D) Name a favorite drummer, and an album to hear why you love that
drummer:
Paul Motian Holiday for Strings
Roy Haynes on Pat Metheny's Q & A or Coltrane's Dear Old
Stockhlom

Take The Duck - 17/02/2007@Jazz Station, Bruxelles

Toine Thys - ts
Daniel Nösig - tp
Robert Jukic - b
Karl Jannuska - d

See previous concert and Jazzques review. The setlist was fairly similar, but there were a few welcome newcomers.



"Kalkilya" was a slow, slightly sad two-horn dialogue in 7/4. It superbly demonstrated the results of Nösig's and Thys's 9-year partnership, with all the knowing repartie of an old - but still lively - couple. Afterwards, Toine announced that it was about a Palestinian town of the same name that was encircled by the Israeli wall. I thought having that instrumental dialogue to represent a situation where dialogue has been literally cut off was interesting.



Robert Jukic's "Alter Swede" was a boogaloo with a slowed-down bridge that drifted on just long enough for you to be happy when the beat returned. "Duck's Food"'s contrapuntal theme led to a lighter, low-key key mood that Thys took advantage of to introduce a new softness to his tone. Nösig then built up a more a more forceful, lilting groove that carried over into the theme reprise.



Even though it was Karl Jannuska's first tour with the band, you wouldn't have known it from his hook-ups with Robert Jukic, especially when the horns dropped out: some of the concert's most intense moments came when Jukic and Jannuska paired off for a duet, as they did during the drummer's "Third." Because each member lives in a different country, the band only gets together when one of them manages to put together a tour. Let's hope that Jannuska sticks around for the next one.

Take The Duck - 15/02/2007@Le comptoir des étoiles, Bruxelles

I guess the "Robert Jukic International Quartet" was a Charlie Chan-style contractual dodge, since Take The Duck (website | myspace) is playing at the Jazz Station today. Toine Thys (myspace) has been mostly equated with Rackham lately, but this is actually his longest-running group, a jazz-jazz band co-led with the Austrian trumpeter Daniel Noesig (myspace) since 1998. The personnel has shifted recently: it was only Paris-based Canadian drummer Karl Jannuska's second gig with the band.



They came out guns blazing with a rambunctious bounce. Right away, the difference between Jannuska and whoever it was that I had seen previously was evident: Jannuska is an excellent drummer, upfront but responsive and tight. There's something a little frantic in his body language, but not in his sound. The composition of his that ended the first set underlined that distinction, as a more-or-less unison line played over an intricately arranged, shifting rhythm part that started, stopped, raced ahead and then stuttered. During his solo, Noesig progressively loosed himself from the form, bringing a satisfying unity and forward motion to its strict cycles.

Bobby Timmons's "Dat Dere" provided a slice of classic 32-bar bluesy hard bop that the trumpeter bit into with delight. Sitting just out of arm's reach of his bell, his clean, precise playing and fat sound were a joy. On "Emergency Staircase," Jannuska was highlighted again, as his mobile, Latin-ish straight-eight was killer, and took the energy to a peak when he made this drumset sound something like timbales.



The front line plays on the classic trumpet/saxophone division of labour, the former more lyrical, the latter more muscular. "Juanita Kligopoulou" (which you can hear on its MySpace page) is a great, Calexico-like dusty Mexican border-town of a song that, among other things, relies heavily on that front-line collaboration. Song is the key word here, which makes it unsurprising that it is also a part of Rackham's repertoire. Noesig lyrically intoned the melody, while Thys obbligatoed, reinforced and dialogued, roles switching freely without ever losing the song-feel. There were no clear breaks for solos, but rather a complete song with sections of more loosely improvised melody. Another thing shared with Rackham is Thys's signature sound: a way of occasionally emphasising longer notes with an attack that's halfway between a growl and a Spanish rolled r.

Frederik Leroux/Toine Thys duo - 20/01/2007@Caravan, Brussels

Both Toine and Frederik (website) have recently released albums that draw on various forms of pop and rock as much as they do on jazz, so it was interesting to hear them play standards in an unadorned setting. Non-jazz influences were allowed to creep in, though: Frederik's scratchingly noisy comping on Monk's "Evidence" recalled some of Angular's heavy rock outbursts, while an arrangement of the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows" brought the pair closer to Rackham's melodic sensibility.

Despite the ambient noise level, they eventually managed to settle into a luxuriant, unhurried space driven as much by a song's sound as by its chords. Toine told me afterwards that he would like to model this duo on the Paul Motian Trio's rubato abstraction. Though no real attempt was made to do so in this instance, it was easy to imagine it happening.

Caravan is a café-restaurant, and confirmed my dislike for restaurant gigs, but is a good place to have a meal: it's small and unpretentious, but well-decorated, the food is good (I was told) and very affordable, the desserts are excellent (I had two, the banana and almond cake and the tiramisú). The soundtrack after the concert included Fela Kuti's "Water," a sign of good taste. The only problem is that you might be disturbed by the musicians in the corner.

Since last December, I've been hearing a lot about Le Comptoir des Etoiles, which has started holding three concerts a week (on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday) and filling Brussels's disappearing after-hours jam scene. I expected it to be a dive, but, while cramped, it's a lovely bar that's really devoted to jazz and manages to express that in a way that isn't cheesy. The grey-and-red walls are covered in polaroids, photos, framed Blue Note album covers and silver, hand-written inscriptions. Toine and I got there at maybe 1:30 AM and at 2 he generated enough enthusiasm for a round of standards and bop tunes to start up again. I was particularly taken with Frans Van Isacker (Franco Saint De Bakker myspace), an alto player I'd never heard before who had a real Cool Jazz sensibility.

Rackham - 21/12/2006@Beursschouwburg Café, Brussel

Toine Thys - ts, cl (website | MySpace)
Bart Maris - tp
Benjamin Clément - g
François Verrue - el b
Teun Verbruggen - d
+
Delphine Gardin, Sacha Toorop - voc

Not only was this Toine Thys's Rackham CD release party (Juanita K, on Teun Verbruggen and Bruno Vansina's R.A.T. Records. Four of its tracks are on the MySpace), it was also sort of his stag night, as he was to get married the next day. Judging by their surnames, they're compatible people: her's is T'Sas and the mere possibility of children named Thys-T'Sas (theestsas) is enough to make me happy.

I can't help drawing broad conclusions when talking about this band. Rackham fits snugly within the Nate Chinen-defined indie-rock/jazz fusion, which I consider to be the latest incarnation of jazz-rock. The contrast with the previous night's concerts was instructive both in regards to my tastes and the evolution of the genre.

If mid-70s Fusion welded together prog-rock, bebop, Hendrix and Brazil, today's jazz-rock has different influences and goals. Rackham's harmonic language and colour was much grungier (not necessarily in the Grunge-with-a-capital-g sense) than Bota Fogo (which Toine is also a member of) and its melodies and arrangements more song-like, employing the full range of verse, chorus, bridge, interlude, etc. If this music is successful, it's because it manages to go pop without sounding dumbed-down: Rackham's arrangements are far more elaborate than the average straight-ahead tune and Toine prides himself on employing a fairly rich harmonic palette. In a sense, complexity is shifted from individual heroics to a more collective realisation.

The fact that it's not really a soloist's band - though there are solos, they're not the focus - also brings Rackham in line with the zeitgeist: see Ratliff on Darcy and Darcy on the role of solos in his big band ("the biggest thing about the music that I write is that it's telling a story, it's going from here to here, and it needs to hit certain points. Even the soloists who are improvising need to understand the ebb and flow of the piece"). Think lower-tech Kneebody* or a friendlier (ie. less English?) Acoustic Ladyland.

Despite the up-to-the-minute references, I can't help but think that this kind of music, with its desire to put the song ahead of its chords and the feet before the brain while taking a firm knowledge of both sides for granted, goes back a long way: to early party-worthy jazzy r'n'b; Miles and Red turning "My Funny Valentine" into a dramatic experience. Only now, the pop melodic language is completely different, obviously.

Francis Davis recently made an interesting statement: "The only remaining incentive for a jazz instrumentalist to do standards—the best reason all along—is what they have to offer harmonically" (never mind that it contradicts what he says two paragraphs earlier). I don't think that's true - musicians just as often use standards as a brak from more demanding originals and in any case they'll either substitute the chords they really want on the fly or write them into their own tunes - but it does suggest that musicians aren't playing the song, aren't making it a dramatic experience, but using it as a building block. Which is fine, but I see the indie/jazz thing, at least in some of its incarnations, as a way of putting the experience of the song itself back in the spotlight. It is perhaps not strange, then, that when the two guest singers from the album came up on stage - first separately, then together - the band's dynamic didn't really change: the voices became another layer, despite the words.

And, finally, Rackham just rocks. François Verrue and Benjamin Clément are real rock musicians, providing mid-level fuzz and the requisite textures ("Juanita Kligopoulou"'s Calexico, dusty border-town feel, for example), while Teun exemplifies the kind of ease that's acquired solely with what you grew up on. While Rackham isn't nearly as free-wheeling as Othin Spake, when the rhythm section span off by itself for a rare guitar solo, it was volcanic.

The two horns often bounced off each other, but never competitively. Toine has sought to adapt his playing to the context by paring down and stressing longer notes. Bart Maris did more or less the opposite, just as winningly: his wilder exclamations tapped into the band's electric energy.


* I kind of dissed Adam Benjamin's solo album, but his playing with Kneebody is great, as is the entire band

be.mp3: rackham - olga und barnabe

Rackham is:
Toine Thys - saxophone
Laurent Blondiau - trumpet
Benjamin Clément - guitar
François Verrue - bass
Teun Verbruggen - drums

Toine Thys works in a lot of different contexts (the two-tenor Walrus quartet is a treat if you get to hear it in the right context) and is a big Paul Motian fan, but Rackham shows his contemporary jazz-rock side. If I understood correctly, Clément and Verrue are straight-up rock musicians, whereas Blondiau (leader of the excellent Maak's Spirit) and be.jazz friend Verbruggen operate in several of Belgium's most interesting jazz groups. In concert, Clément's distorted/noise solos are particularly crowd-pleasing.

From the website:

Here is just a list of truly inspiring artists who influenced Rackham's music in one way or another: Stevie Wonder, David Bowie, Radiohead, Calexico, Jim Black, Chris Speed, Brasilian Girls, Brian Blade Fellowship, Madonna, Jeff Buckley, Nic Thys, Björk, Ryan Scott, the Bloomdaddies, Nirvana, (more to come..

"Olga Und Bernabe" is taken from a 3-song demo recorded in February that Toine gave me a while ago. The song's German title is misleading, as it starts with an Indian-sounding guitar riff and its theme consists of pop/rock inspired stuff that reminds me a bit of the melody of Human Feel's "Not About You" and a lot of André Canniere. What Europe/US divide?

Rackham - "Olga Und Bernabe"

"Spine," another of the demo tracks, is in a similar vein, but less succesful. "Juanita Kligopoulou" is better, and has an acoustic guitar and a Texan trumpet that give it a Calexico-y Far West ambiance. The debut album is expected for the end of the year.

I've also been accumulating some nice e-flyers in my inbox over the last few months. Here they are.