Selected
press
"Matisyahu's guitarist Aaron Dugan describes his background as coming out of John Coltrane and Sonic Youth. Here he's playing assertive noise guitar with a backbone of granite lyricism against Jeff Arnal's hard-as-nails drumming. The music is so compacted and diligently controlled that its 45 minute duration feels longer, as improvisations flat-pack themselves down to essentials. Interstellar Space is perhaps the obvious model, Dugan and Arnal learning from Coltrane and Rashied Ali's exquisite ear for tersely disciplined structuring and note changes. Dugan's melodic language is broad enough to add naked prime melodic intervals to the expected walls of white noise. The first track begins with a flood of activity from Arnal's kit. Then a brief pause before Dugan's gnarly guitar makes its presence felt. But in a neat reversal of the standard ploy on piling more layers on top, Dugan refocuses his energy by stripping everything down to octave tremolos before rebuilding. Arnal's kit brightly tuned and his punky gestures push belligerently against the grain. Among the displays of high energy there are more sober moments. "Pisco" is assembled from pointillistic splashes that sound intriguingly non-intentioned; later spectra of guitar distortion and bowed cymbal fuse into a relaxed continuum. For the penultimate track, "Paz", Dugan gropes a melodic line noisily in the ribs. So much of Dog Day is perched between harmony and noise that this is a logical place for the album to end up." Philip Clark, the Wire, UK
"Both living in New York, Aaron Dugan and Jeff Arnal have been playing together since 2003 and Dog Day is their first recording as a duo. Many of its tracks are brief bursts, a temporary toying with an idea, then onto the next texture, imparting an episodic feel. Arnal makes great use of tuned skin tumbling, lightly flashing around his kit with varied degrees of force, one moment thoroughly abstracted, the next opening up to a rolling rhythm. Dugan's various pedal effects are also in evidence, his signature sound has a squeezed nasal ring, descending from that of Sonny Sharrock via Wayne Krantz, with elements of John McLaughlin in his wildest incarnation. Dugan's scything angularities can sometimes sound like fracture rockabilly. Arnal can also play rough, even when still using brushes. The pair held their album release party at Zebulon last month, a coterie of admirers huddled at tables down front, with a growing crowd at the bar who couldn't help but chatter through the set's quieter portions. This is why their best moments arrived at full throttle, when the drum rhythm was strong and the guitar fully cranked, cutting above the background noise. They played in front of a film that looked like they hadn't chosen themselves and this tended to make the more subdued stretches appear as soundtrack music, particularly as Dugan and Arnal sat in complete darkness. The most exciting stretch was when three guests - Amy Carrigan (voice), Reid Taylor (bass) and Seth Misterka (alto sax) - joined them for the final improv. Their presence seemed to lift the music up, swelling Dugan and Arnal with a greater confidence, Vocals and horn paralleled each other and the piece shimmered with cross-latticed energy. The disc arguably allows a greater appreciation of sonic sensitivity when compared to the duo's gig, even if said sensitivity often entails a more faithful reproduction of torn-up string distress and tonally varied skin-abuse." - Martin Longley - All About Jazz, New York
"This duo is hooked up! There is strong
balance and powerful flow of ideas back and forth. Free rock/jazz?!? No
matter what you might call it, these cats are listening and responding
quickly and tightly. It is cool to hear Jeff's drums as the lead instrument
on a few of these pieces. Jeff plays brushes on "Trickum Shoals"
and sets up the swinging sort of groove for Aaron to respond to with a
minimum of notes placed just right. Jeff does a good job of bowing or
rubbing his cymbal on "Pisco", a rather eerie piece with a minimum
of notes used. Each piece involves different structures or textures or
combinations of sounds. Some are very short, under 2 minutes, but all
seem to say something stimulating. Both Aaron and Jeff change the sound
of their instrument or their approach to playing on each piece, selectively
coming up with new ideas on each piece. They even come up with a handful
of strange, twisted melodies on a few of these pieces. Quite a successful
pairing of their talents and often an unexpected delight." - BLG, Downtown
Music Gallery, NYC
"Dog
Day," recorded in December of 2006 and released on C3R records, a
small Canadian label founded in 2002, presents yet another successful
effort to divert from the usual avant-garde approaches to jazz guitar,
which had for years, with the exception of free funk, been confined to
either the noise-improv style of Derek Bailey or the moderately "out"
sound of a John Abercrombie type player. The rise of guitarists like Nels
Cline, whose influence is strong here, and, more recently, Jeffrey Hayden
Shurdut, have signified diversions from this mold, and here, Dugan shows
some similar promise. What is refreshing here is that Dugan is not afraid
to use a classic rock/blues tone, with shades of an early metal sound,
in a cutting and poignant on this album to convey harmonically complex
ideas. However, Dugan is able to incorporate a satisfying blend of voices
into his style, not falling into one mindset throughout the entire album.
Complementing the guitar is drummer Jeff Arnal, who exhibits an unorthodox
sense of traditional rhythm in his playing, similar to the type of drumming
Gunter "Baby" Sommer liked to play with Peter Brotzmann and
company back in the 70's and 80's." - Mike Szajewski, WNUR, Chicago
"Jeff Arnal is one of the premier improvising drummer/percussionists on the globe. With this newly issued outing, he teams with Philadelphia-reared guitarist Aaron Dugan for some zealous episodes containing fun, frolic and masterful invention. They extend the probabilities of standard duo fare via highly rhythmic jaunts and counterbalancing dialogues. Moreover, Dugan’s odd-tunings and distortion laced maneuvers often complement Arnal’s pulsating rhythmic exercises as they generally expand and contract the free-form element. On “Pisco,” the artists cleverly fuse minimalist like foundations with vivacious sound-sculpting motifs. And in various regions of this disc, Dugan injects a mechanical grunge element into themes, punctuated by Arnal’s sweeping polyrhythmic attack. Then on “Magic Hour,” all hell breaks loose due to Dugan’s whacked-out guitar lines, built upon steely rock chords and Hendrix-like wailing. And the fun doesn’t stop there, evidenced by the guitarist’s echo-laden psychedelic voicings atop the drummer’s pumping beats during the piece titled “Lisbon.” In sum, the musicians breakdown a few genres while adhering to customary free-jazz approaches, all executed with clever methodology that aims to excite one’s neural senses." - Glenn Astarita, www.ejazznews.com
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