Bill Wells: Pick Up Sticks
Leaf

Pick Up Sticks may be issued under Wells's name, but it's more a trio outing as all music was composed and improvised in the studio over five days by Wells (computer, sampler), Annie Whitehead (trombone, melodica), and Stefan Schneider (synthesizer, bass) with Barbara Morgenstern adding keyboards to two of its eight jazz-tinged pieces. There's an exploratory and relaxed feel to these understated vignettes and, remarkably, the musicians squeeze some impressive group interaction into a mere twenty-one minutes, especially on “A Soldier's Shoulder” where insistent martial rhythms underlay multi-tracked trombones, dulcimer-like thrumming, and glockenspiel tinkles. While Wells's colouristic electronic dust is sprinkled throughout, Whitehead's trombone, its soft timbre often resembling a French Horn, is the warm melodic nucleus the others gravitate towards.

October 2004