Cheap Threads (Music) (David S Ware) Price

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Customer Reviews of Threads

What to make of this record?
First of all, I have to cordially disagree with my good friend and fellow Amazon jazz reviewer, Nate Dorward, for whom I have nothing but the highest regard. Unlike him, I'm thoroughly taken by this disc's marvelous, mysterious, menacing soundscape. A brooding, ominous Presence hangs over everything, strikingly unveiled in the very first notes of the first cut and carried throughout the entire record. This could almost be the soundtrack to some Post-Modern techno interpretation of Wuthering Heights. The combination of wild string voicings, dire bass rumblings, Matthew Shipp's crazed synth stylings, and Guillermo Brown's frenetic drumming creates a wild, primitive vibe that just knocks me out. Deep, portentous, even threatening sonorities characterize this music.

Really, this it: Maniacal string sawing, great crashing cymbals, dangerous-sounding bass voicings from the inimitable William Parker. I don't even care if Ware doesn't play on half the cuts. His conceptual spoor is all over this disc. Matt Maneri, a violist I've had a hard time warming up to, has found his ideal recording context. Teamed with Daniel Bernard Rouman on violin, they hammerlock the listener into submission with inspired string washes of the grimmest timbres.

"Threads," 13 minutes of sheer sonic melancholy, is the shibboleth here. If you can get on board with its dour vibe, you're more than halfway home. To me, this is like some kind of irretrievably downer Barber Adagio, glorious, like the Barber, in its singularity of concept and plodding execution. I can see how this music would seem disastrous to some ears. But I just don't agree.

"Carousel of Lightness," sadly ironic in its melancholic stateliness, is the high point for me. Featuring gloriously severe playing from Maneri on viola buttressed by Shipp's near-ambient Korg snyth stylings and inspired percussive fills from Brown, it evokes profound feelings of Sehnsuct, of secret longing, of the sad condition of human contingency and decay.

"Weave, Pt 2," a Ware-Brown duet, closes things out magnificently. Ware here seems the inheritor of the Pharoah Sanders tonal championships. Such richness! Such depth! Such saxophonic history lightly summed up!

To me, this is music imbued with the highest order of feeling, marvelously conceived and brilliantly pulled off.

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Ware hooks it up
This isn't my favorite David S Ware record by any stretch of the imagination. This record is a total departure from his previous quartet dates, but what it does is continues to outline David S Ware's superior harmonic sensibility. Many will be turned off because he doesn't play on every track. But when he does play, his overwhelming sense of melody and harmony is showcased. Don't expect the fire from his previous records. Instead you get a taste of what makes music great in the first place.

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Ouch.....!
This one has been touted by Thom Jurek of the All Music Guide as one of the first great albums of the 21st century, & deserving of a Grammy nomination (at the least) for Ware. Hm, so what's he smoking? Anyone else I've talked to who's heard it has thought one of two things: (1) it's pretty lousy; (2) it's one of the worst discs of the year. I'm in the latter camp, myself. Anyway, here's the deal: this is David S Ware's "Strings" album, which expands the basic Shipp/Parker/Brown rhythm section with the inclusion of Mat Maneri on viola & Daniel Bernard Roumain on violin. Shipp is, furthermore, playing treacly synthesized strings for much of the album (for the rest it's synthesized organ). Ware contributes off-stage tenor on the lead-off track, & tosses in two brief tenor/drums improvs with Brown, & otherwise doesn't play at all. So the focus is mostly on his composing. Which is--let's not mince words--darned feeble. "Threads" itself is an unbelievably long & dreary string quartet piece which rocks slowly back & forth between chords. There's a really crass groove-based track, "Sufic Passages" (with some of Brown's most broomhandled drumming), and a mildly pleasant but directionless mood-music piece, "Carousal of Lightness"--each is 9 minutes long & would be a chore to sit through at half that length. I've now touched on the entirety of the album: believe it or not, there's 6 pieces, 45 minutes, of which barely anything is of any consequence. Unless they give Grammys out for Worst Jazz Disc of the Year, I'm afraid Jurek's going to be a disappointed man when awards time comes around.