DESCRIPTION:
Jim Sauter has described Borbetomagus succinctly and simply as a “post-Coltrane jazz combo” and if you’re listening primarily to Ascension from Trane’s oeuvre then that can just about make sense, his and Pharaoh Sanders’ ecstatic overblowing taken to apocalyptic lengths.

Sauter and Don Dietrich’s saxes and Donald Miller’s scathing guitar first erupted as Borbetomagus in 1979 New York, rapidly eschewing pre-composition for thunderous and extended sonic streams of consciousness that heavily influenced nascent Japanese noise communities and joined the dots between the more voluble end of free jazz and the more musically liberated enclaves of the East coast avant garde.

Now 35 years into their campaign, the Borbetomagus approach may on the surface seem pure gleeful bombast and of course that is a big part of the pleasure but, as Phil Freeman comments on the sleevenotes to Live In Allentown, “I began to memorize the subtle, almost intuitive shifts in what had initially seemed like an unceasing, undifferentiated roar. The interplay between group members revealed itself. And this repeated close listening began to alter the way I heard other music. I sought out harsher and more punishing sounds in general, yes, but I also started to pick apart all the music I heard, trying to understand what each player was contributing to the whole.” And as you’ll see first-hand at TUSK, a Borbetomagus performance is like an avalanche of sonic detail.