released October 1, 2018

MONOLITH COCKTAIL (monolithcocktail.com)

Don Fiorino and Andy Haas ‘American Nocturne’ (Resonantmusic) 16th September 2018

Amorphous unsettling augers and outright nightmares permeate the evocations of the American Nocturne visionaries Don Fiorino and Andy Haas on their latest album together. Alluded, as the title suggests, by the nocturne definition ‘a musical composition inspired by the night’, the darkest hour(s) in this case can’t help but build a plaintive warning about the political divisive administration of Trump’s America: Nicola Plana’s sepia adumbrated depiction of Liberty on the album’s cover pretty much reinforces the grimness and casting shadows of fear.

Musically strung-out, feeding off each other’s worries, protestations and confusion, Fiorino and Haas construct a lamentable cry and tumult of anger from their improvised synthesis of multi-layered abstractions.

Providence wise, Haas, who actually sent me this album after seeing my review of a U.S. Girls gig from earlier in the year (he was kind enough to note my brief mention of his Plastic Ono Band meets exile-in-America period Bowie saxophone playing on the tour; Haas being a member of Meg Remy’s touring band after playing on her recent LP, In A Poem Unlimited), once more stirs up a suitably pining, troubled saxophone led atmosphere; cast somewhere between Jon Hassell and Eno’s Possible Musics traverses, serialism jazz and the avant-garde. The Toronto native, originally during the 70s and early 80s a band member of the successful Canadian New wave export Martha And The Muffins, is an experimental journeyman. Having moved to New York for a period in the mid 80s to collaborate with a string of diverse underground artists (John Zorn, Marc Ribot, Thurston Moore and God Is My Co-Pilot) he’s made excursions back across the border; in recent times joining up with the Toronto supergroup, which features a lion’s share of the city’s most interesting artists and of course much of the backing group that now supports Meg Remy’s U.S. Girls, the Cosmic Range (who’s debut LP New Latitudes made our albums of the year feature in 2016). He’s also been working with that collective’s founder, Matt ‘Doc’ Dunn, on a new duo project named KIM (the fruits of which will be released later this year). But not only a collaborator, Haas has also recorded a stack of albums for the Resonantmusic imprint over the years (15 in total), the first of which, from 2005, included his American Nocturne foil, Fiorino. An artist with a penchant for stringed instruments (guitar, glissenter, lap steel, banjo, lotar, mandolin), Fiorino is equally as experimental; the painter musician imbued by blues, rock, psychedelic, country, jazz, Indian and Middle Eastern music has also played in and with a myriad of suitably eclectic musicians and projects (Radio I Ching, Hanuman Sextet, Adventures In Bluesland and Ronnie Wheeler’s Blues).

Recorded live with no overdubs, the adroit duo is brought together in a union of discordant opprobrious and visceral suffrage. Haas’ signature pained hoots, snozzled snuffles and more suffused saxophone lines drift at their most lamentable and blow hard at their most venerable and despondent over and around the spindly bended, quivery warbled and weird guitar phrases of Fiorino. Setting both esoteric and mysterious atmospheres, Haas is also in charge of the manic, often reversed or inverted, and usually erratic drum machine and bit-crushing warped electronic effects. Any hint of rhythm or a lull in proceedings, and it’s snuffed out by an often primal and distressed breakdown of some kind.

Skulking through some interesting soundscapes and fusions, tracks such as the opening ‘Waning Empire Blues’ conjures up a Southern American States gloom (where the Mason-Dixon line meets the dark ambient interior of New York) via a submerged vision of India. It also sounds, in part, like an imaginary partnership between Hassell and Ry Cooder. ‘Days Of The Jackals’ has a sort of Spanish Texas merges with Byzantium illusion and ‘New Orphans’ transduces the Aphex Twin into a shapeless, spiraling cacophony of pain.

With hints of the industrial, tubular metallic, blues, country, electro and Far East to be found, American Nocturne is essentially a deconstructive jazz album. Further out than most, even for a genre used to such heavy abstract experimentation, this cry from the bleeding heart of Trumpism opposition is as musically traumatic as it is complex and creatively descriptive. Fiorino and Haas envision a harrowing soundtrack fit for the looming miasma of our times.


THE ANSWER IS IN THE BEAT (theanswerisinthebeat.net)

Don Fiorino/Andy Haas: American Nocturne (Resonantmusic, 2018)
November 23, 2018

This album captures live, overdub-free improvisations between guitarist Don Fiorino and Andy Haas, who plays sax, electronics, and drum machines. Fiorino plays lap steel and “glissentar”, so there’s a slippery, fluid, weeping tone to much of his playing, and Haas often sounds like he’s playing digital tablas or scratching turntables, in addition to layering blankets of sax on the title track. There’s never a locked-in rhythm here, it all sounds fuzzy, gelatinous, and malleable. Lots of pitch-bending and flipping and stretching, yet it doesn’t sound as blasted or druggy as, say, Black Dice/Eric Copeland. Fiorino’s playing still has an earthy quality to it, sometimes veering towards country while floating closer to desert blues on the epic “Days of Jackals”. Other times, it’s more of a detached downtown skronk. The sounds contrast, but they never really feel like they’re clashing, even if they rarely seem like they’re trying to interact with each other. It’s somewhat challenging to listen to, but instead of seeming confrontational, it invites you to join in somehow, and following the individual sounds becomes an adventure.


DOWNTOWN MUSIC GALLERY (downtownmusicgallery.com)
Newsletter for Friday, August 31st, 2018
DON FIORINO / ANDY HAAS - American Nocturne (Resonant Music 016; USA)

The title of this disc, ‘American Nocturne’, seems appropriate since nocturne refers to “an instrumental composition of a pensive, dreamy mood”, the fate of America is precarious at best. “Waning Empire Blues” opens the is disc with a soft, hypnotic tabla/drum sample groove and some rather moody lap steel. The title track features a haunting, cerebral vibe with droning sax, eerie electric guitar a slow, sad, ghostlike rhythm in the distance. Often, when I see “drum machine” listed in the credits, I wince since they are so overused in more commercial music. For many years, Mr. Haas has been working with rhythm samples, which are not consistently steady and seem to move in unexpected ways, dropping in and out of the mix, in very selective ways. I love the way Mr. Fiorino creates these unsettling, moody vibes with his guitars, bending notes with a slide or lap steel which seems to drift around us while creates layers of suspense with his sax and/or odd samples. Each piece creates a different mood or vibe, with the guitar often setting the pace and the sampler weaving select fragments in and out of the mix. The cover of this disc has what looks like a silhouette of the Statue of Liberty at dusk perhaps. There is something softly dark about the vibe of this picture which does capture what many of us currently feeling. The found within also captures the vibe just right. - Bruce Lee Gallanter,


KZSU STANFORD RADIO (zookeeper.stanford.edu)

Your Imaginary Friend
Reviewed 2018-11-20
Experimental saxophonist Haas teams up with guitarist Don Fiorino for a decidedly trippy dreamy worldy experience. Dissonant use of the instruments in an ethereal manner, very similar to the works of John Hassel, Eno, Derek Baily. Lovely stuff from Toronto artist who goes back the 80’s non-sensation new wave punk band Martha and the Muffins.