“Lacerba” is the first vynil album ever released by Clean Feed. After 10 years of digital editions, this is a debut for the Portuguese label, and certainly the first of many. After all, the music contained inside was recorded during a festival in Lisbon organized to celebrate that decade of life which changed the jazz scene in Portugal and in the world. It was there that Ken Vandermark presented the new and very special project Made to Break, shared with Christoff Kurzmann, Dave Hoff and Tim Daisy. The three days of concerts resulted in this LP and also the CD “Provoke”, both with different pieces. Different, but created with the same compositional modules, because the principle followed is the one Vandermark calls “modular organization”.

Several existing sub-structures are differently combined in order to continuously renew each mixing in every performance. There’s three main approaches associated: one groovy oriented, coming from Vandermark’s appreciation of post-punk, funk and reggae, another abstract and aligned with the European free improvisation procedures, and a third one with an ambient, electronic and minimalist quality. The purpose is to find alternatives to the typical jazz writing for improvisers: «I’m trying to move further outside of “jazz resources and aesthetics” and to utilize different sources of rhythmic/melodic ideas, in order to find new ways to organize compositional material», says the Chicagoan saxophonist and clarinetist.

The implications are wide: Made to Break is developing a new set of languages for improvisation, either more restricted or more open, and certainly more confrontational, more deconstructed and more antagonistic. Let’s hear what happens…