''Stumble'' is the second album by the AALY Trio +

Ken Vandermark Ken Vandermark (born September 22, 1964) is an American composer, saxophonist, and clarinetist. A fixture on the Chicago-area music scene since the 1990s, Vandermark has earned wide critical praise for his playing and his multilayered composit ...

, which was recorded live at

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

Unity Temple Unity Temple is a Unitarian Universalist church building that houses the Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation at 875 Lake Street in Oak Park, Illinois, United States. The structure, designed by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright in ...

in 1998 and released on Wobbly Rail, a short-lived imprint started by

Merge Records Merge Records is an independent record label based in Durham, North Carolina. It was founded in 1989 by Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan. It began as an outlet for music from their band Superchunk and music created by friends, and has expand ...

Superchunk Superchunk is an American indie rock band from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, consisting of singer-guitarist Mac McCaughan, guitarist Jim Wilbur, bassist Laura Ballance, and drummer Laura King. Formed in 1989, they were one of the bands that hel ...

principal

Mac McCaughan Ralph Lee "Mac" McCaughan (; born July 12, 1967) is an American musician and record label owner, based in North Carolina. His main musical projects have been Superchunk since 1989 and Portastatic since the early 1990s. In 1989 he founded the ind ...

. AALY Trio is a Swedish

free jazz Free jazz, or free form in the early to mid-1970s, is a style of avant-garde jazz or an experimental approach to jazz improvisation that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when musicians attempted to change or break down jazz conventi ...

band led by saxophonist

Mats Gustafsson Mats Olof Gustafsson (born 29 October 1964) is a Swedish free jazz saxophone player. Career Gustafsson came to the attention of lovers of improvised music as part of a duo with Christian Munthe (started in 1986), as member of Gunter Chris ...

. Originally just a guest, Vandermark became a full member of the group.

Reception

In her review for

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 ...

, Joslyn Layne states "These numbers are firmly entrenched in blues roots, carrying on a wailing, at times plaintive, blues spirit with conviction." ''

The Penguin Guide to Jazz ''The Penguin Guide to Jazz'' is a reference work containing an encyclopedic directory of jazz recordings on CD which were (at the time of publication) currently available in Europe or the United States. The first nine editions were compiled b ...

'' notes that "Vandermark and Gustafsson are formidably like-minded, at least in the way they want the band to make its impression, and the sound of the quartet in full flight has a harsh, narcotic edge to it." 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 Bill Shoemaker states "While there is plenty of wide-open blowing space for the two saxophonists (Vandermark also plays a good amount of pungent clarinets), and the flexible, fluent Janson and Nordeson, there is an overarching ensemble cohesion that holds this album together."Shoemaker, Bill
''Stumble'' review
at ''

Track listing

# "Stumble" (Ken Vandermark) – 11:52 # "Umeå" (Peter Janson) – 11:28 # "Hommage à Lillen" (Mats Gustafsson / Kjell Nordeson) – 6:24 # "Song For Che" (

Charlie Haden Charles Edward Haden (August 6, 1937 – July 11, 2014) was an American jazz double bass player, bandleader, composer and educator whose career spanned more than fifty years. Haden helped to revolutionize the harmonic concept of bass playin ...

) – 14:29 # "Why I Don't Go Back" (Ken Vandermark) – 13:40

Personnel

tenor sax The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor and the alto are the two most commonly used saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B (while ...

, fluteophone,

flute The flute is a member of a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, producing sound with a vibrating column of air. Flutes produce sound when the player's air flows across an opening. In th ...

* Peter Janson -

bass Bass or Basses may refer to: Fish * Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species Wood * Bass or basswood, the wood of the tilia americana tree Music * Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in th ...

* Kjell Nordeson -

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 ...

- tenor sax,

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 ...

References

{{authority control 1998 live albums Mats Gustafsson live albums Ken Vandermark live albums