''Shadow Man'' is an album by American composer and saxophonist

Tim Berne Tim Berne (born October 16, 1954) is an American avant-garde jazz saxophonist and record label owner. His primary instruments are the alto and baritone saxophones. Biography Berne was born in Syracuse, New York, United States. He has said tha ...

's band Snakeoil, recorded in January 2013 and released on

ECM ECM may refer to the following: Economics and commerce * Engineering change management * Equity capital markets * Error correction model, an econometric model * European Common Market Mathematics * Lenstra's Elliptic curve method for factor ...

in October later that year.ECM Catalogue
accessed December 13, 2013

Reception

The

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Mus ...

review by Thom Jurek awarded the album 4 stars and stated "''Shadow Mans experiment, in trying to capture Snakeoil's live performance in detail and dynamic, is not only successful, it reveals this band at a peak of instinctive, intuitive creativity and imagination."Jurek, T.

Allmusic Review AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the data ...

accessed December 13, 2013 Writing in

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

, John Fordham commented "mingling wide-interval melodies that sometimes sound like contemporary classical music and sometimes trampling funk, quiet solos or intimate duets, tonal contrasts (warm clarinet lyricism, glimmering vibraphones, free-jazz sax wailing), dynamic percussion and unrelenting eventfulness. It's edgy, pattern spinning contemporary music, but austere it certainly is not."Fordham, J
The Guardian Review
October 4, 2013 The

All About Jazz ''All About Jazz'' is a website established by Michael Ricci in 1995. A volunteer staff publishes news, album reviews, articles, videos, and listings of concerts and other events having to do with jazz. Ricci maintains a related site, ''Jazz Near ...

review by John Kelman said that "Shadow Man is an even more impressive outing from a quartet that, in a career highlighted by strong associations, may well be Berne's most impressively cohesive group yet" while Troy Collins stated "Emboldened by the sterling contributions of Berne's youthful sidemen, ''Shadow Man'' surpasses the refined austerity of Snakeoil's debut, providing a far more archetypal example of the protean ensemble's abilities." The ''

JazzTimes ''JazzTimes'' was an American print magazine devoted to jazz. Published 10 times a year, it was founded in Washington, D.C., in 1970 by Ira Sabin as the newsletter ''Radio Free Jazz'' to complement his record store. Coverage After a decade ...

'' review by Thomas Conrad enthused "This band’s eponymous ECM debut last year was one of the most acclaimed jazz recordings of 2012. ''Shadow Man'' is stronger. It is wilder and deeper, an oceanic extravagance of strange sonic shapes and colors. Yet it coheres according to proprietary logic."Conrad, T
Tim Berne's Snakeoil: Shadow Man
''

'', November 24, 2013

Track listing

''All compositions by Tim Berne except as indicated'' # "Son of Not So Sure" - 6:41 # "Static" (Marc Ducret, Tim Berne) - 8:01 # "Psalm" (Paul Motian) - 4:14 # "OC/DC" - 22:55 # "Socket" - 18:52 # "Cornered (Duck)" - 16:15

Personnel

–

alto saxophone The alto saxophone is a member of the saxophone family of woodwind instruments. Saxophones were invented by Belgians, Belgian instrument designer Adolphe Sax in the 1840s and patented in 1846. The alto saxophone is pitched in the key of E♭ ( ...

*Oscar Noriega –

clarinet The clarinet is a Single-reed instrument, single-reed musical instrument in the woodwind family, with a nearly cylindrical bore (wind instruments), bore and a flared bell. Clarinets comprise a Family (musical instruments), family of instrume ...

bass clarinet The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common Soprano clarinet, soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B (meaning it is a transposing instrument on which a written C sounds as B), but it plays no ...

* Matt Mitchell –

piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

Tack piano A tack piano (also known as a harpsipiano, jangle piano, and junk piano) is an altered version of an ordinary piano, in which objects such as thumbtacks or nails are placed on the felt-padded hammers of the instrument at the point where the ha ...

Wurlitzer electric piano The Wurlitzer electronic piano is an electric piano manufactured and marketed by Wurlitzer from 1954 to 1983. Sound is generated by striking a metal reed with a hammer, which induces an electric current in a pickup. It is conceptually similar to ...

Ches Smith Ches Smith is an American musician, whose primary instruments are drums, percussion, and vibraphone. He recorded and performed an album of his own solo percussion pieces entitled ''Congs for Brums'' (2006). In 2010 he released ''Noise to Men''. ...

–

drums The drum is a member of the percussion instrument, percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel–Sachs classification system, it is a membranophones, membranophone. Drums consist of at least one Acoustic membrane, membrane, c ...

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a percussion mallet, beater including attached or enclosed beaters or Rattle (percussion beater), rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or ...

vibraphone The vibraphone (also called the vibraharp) is a percussion instrument in the metallophone family. It consists of tuned metal bars and is typically played by using Percussion mallet, mallets to strike the bars. A person who plays the vibraphone ...

References

{{Authority control ECM Records albums Tim Berne albums 2013 albums Albums produced by David Torn