By Greggory Moore
For five of the last seven years, San Diego-based jazz quartet Cosmologic has been able to remain a cohesive unit, playing live and putting out three albums, even though one of its members has been living on the East Coast. However, this fall he returned to Southern California, which should give the band a chance to gig out more regularly. That is a very good thing, because, if their Sunday-night performance at {open} is any indication, this is an outfit that should be heard by any and all jazz enthusiasts.
Cosmologic is Jason Robinson on saxophone(s), Michael Dessen on trombone, Scott Walton on stand-up bass, and Nathan Hubbard on drums/percussion. Their straight-ahead jazz capitalizes on improvization, yet it’s about as structured as jazz can get without getting locked into the strictures of (e.g.) “big band” compositions. All four members regularly attend to their sheet music, even as they let fly with a perfect freedom that somehow coexists with each keeping good track of his bandmates’ musical maneuverings.
On this evening, the group moved through seven brand-new compositions, which they’re scheduled to take into the studio in a couple of weeks. One can only hope that they will be able to reproduce there what they played at {open}, because they were dead on, leaving no hint in the execution that this is not music that’s been with them for years.
*”Rompus Room” featured a funky, non-traditional rhythm over which Robinson cooked up a Coltrane-like scramble.
*”Face in the Crowd” developed from a sleepy layering of instruments that Gil Evans and Miles Davis would have been happy to have arranged, into a tricky, solo-like 6/8 time signature trippingly executed by Hubbard, within which the other three joined together to pull off smooth yet complicated figures. This gave way to a sort of delightful “scurrying,” which eventually dissolved into a gently moving coda of mallets and hushed tones.
*”Eyes in the Back of My Head” was a sort of intentionally disjointed military walk that broke into the bass and drums comping together behind a sax line that let off squeaks reminiscent of well-played record-scratching.
*”Dreams of an Alternate Future (Remember the Past)” opened with Walton by himself, bowing and scratching at his bass in a way that made it sound like there were true effects rather than just the slight amplification he used. Eventually he was joined by the steady, united front of Robinson and Dessen that developed on top of Hubbard’s mallet work into a modality along the lines of Part 4 of A Love Supreme.
*”Cold View” (or “Code View”—I didn’t catch it clearly) employed lots of very controlled note-bending (even on the drums) and bowed cymbal work (I’ve caught Hubbard in another group, and I can’t say I’ve seen a percussionist quite like him), which eventually gave way to a sax/drums scurrying in front of a bass/trombone figure ground.
*”We Kiss in a Shadow on the Other Side of This” began with Hubbard’s unique scurrying married to Dessen’s plunged and muted, talky brass work that allowed you to forget you were hearing drums and trombone. Robinson and Walton cut figures on top of this, then seamlessly partners were switched, Dessen joining Walton while Robinson slipped out for a bit of soloing before coming back into the fold.
*The last, as-yet-untitled piece was the band’s only foray into bebop—and it was an exceptional foray. This “genre” of jazz can easily founder into random abrasiveness, but Cosmologic pulled it off with the same kind of control they exhibited in all of their pieces, firing on all cylinders with an energy that I’d called unbridled if there weren’t such obvious mastery of the engine driving it.
Cosmologic’s new album promises to be everything the jazz purist could want: a straight-ahead sound that hearkens back to the glory days in a voice that is uniquely this unit’s. Their new album promises to be that; their live show is that. To find out for yourself, visit www.cosmologic.org. To keep up with the venue that lets you experience acts like this in a setting only slightly less intimate than said acts’ practice spaces, go to www.accessopen.com.