Bassist-composer Daren Burns has always been a musical shapeshifter, but on Fragmentation, he seems to gather all his histories, straight-ahead jazz, rock, avant-garde, and electric edges, into one wild, double-quartet fever dream. With fretless bass at the core and an eight-piece band of Southern California improvisers orbiting around him, this album plays like a dense, witty, and unpredictable series of short films, always in motion.
It all starts with “Tips For Musicians When Performing In Bars,” which is every bit as atmospheric as its title is cheeky. Thick, rowdy bass clarinet vibrates and quivers at the center while the bass broods down low, drums and cymbals sizzle and rustle, and woodwinds roll out deceptively simple lines. You can almost smell the stale beer and neon hum under all that tension.
From there, Burns keeps pulling the rug. “Bald With A Beard” snaps into surprising funk, Vinny Golia tearing through dazzling tenor runs, while “Quiet Chaos” opens up into freer space, letting the double rhythm team and percussionist Randy Gloss splash, collide, and recombine. “Phone Zombies” feels darkly cinematic, its title alone doing half the visual work as the band scores our screen-addled doom.
Midway through, “Sacred Dilettante” is a showstopper. Brian Walsh’s bass clarinet wails, writhes, and bends over trickling keyboard figures, then the percussion jitters and shakes as the whole ensemble tightens like a coiled spring. Elsewhere, “Neither Orangutan nor Robot” leans into eerie, sci-fi humour, and Woody Aplanalp’s guitar turns feral and passionate on “Slipshod Demigod.”
The title track, “Fragmentation,” is the album’s mission statement, with its gritty, glitchy guitars, bustling drums, sparkling cymbals, bass clarinet swirling and swishing until everything suddenly downshifts into a moody, slow-burn drift—only to surge back up in a cinematic blow-out of grinding guitar and full-band blaze.
By the time the joyfully crowded “Sheep Miscellaneous Soup,” the introspective “Thoughts And Prayers,” and the hypnotic “Hurt” close the record, Fragmentation has done exactly what its name promises: it has broken things apart only to reassemble them into one of the most colorful, alive jazz journeys you’re likely to stumble into. Check out Daren Burns Double Quartet’s release on Spotify.
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Review by: Naomi Joan