Thom Golub
Edmonton, AB, CA      Jazz / improvisation/composition / new music
Thom Golub
    • Songs
    • A Brief History In Time (for St...
    • Words Apart
    • Dyani
    • Scanners
    • Tilted
    • auspicious beginnings
    • High Speed Rail
    • May for Saxophone and Chamber Or...
    • embrace
    • aspect
    • mbuthoglo (Devil's Child)
    • SurvivOr
    • DADGE
    • Spider
    • eXistenZ
    • eXistenZ 2
    • eXistenZ 3
    • eXistenZ 4
    • eXistenZ Shimmering Little Morphs
    • Sigfreid
    • 06/06/06 the number
    • Plate 4
    • Europa/Lament for Roland
    • Boyle Street Rag
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...

Artist Info

Members: Thom Golub - solo bass, Chamber Graffiti, Hidden Fortress, the Parkers
You can also find us at: Facebook_16x16 Bebo_16x16
Label: Arrival Records, houseleekaudio, mbuthoglo radiance records

Join the Mailing List

Join the Street Team
Privacy Policy

Bio

Thom Golub lives and plays in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He started playing string bass professionally over a decade ago and has never looked back. As years went on he became very interested in writing classical or ’New Music.’ For the last decade he has pursued this avenue and received performances and recordings by local, national and international artists. He has a love of free improvisation in music and has played with many organized as well as ad hoc ensembles to this end. He is a founding member of The Improvised Network (TIN), formed in 2001 with Lane Arndt, David Hoyle and Eric Weiden. He attended the Vancouver Creative Music Institute workshop in 2006 under the musical direction of Marilyn Crispell and Mark Helias.

About

 Review by Eugene Chadbourne

There are listeners who would prefer listening to the sounds made by a tree for several hours to a solo bass recital and they should by all means stay out of the shade of Thom Golub's The Dove in the Belly.  One of a series of 2004 releases on the Arrival label, administered by Edmonton percussion maestro Ron de Jong, the CD has details in common with other titles in the catalog.  Packaging is an envelope within an envelope, the outer casing presenting a faux-mail look that is quite distinctive.  More than half of the pieces are titled after lines from Kenneth Rexroth poems, a device also used on the Very Strange Crisp CD combining tenor saxophonist Darren Williams with de Jong's main group, the Vertrek Ensemble.  Rexroth is thus a bond with the Golub recital but not one that has any obvious musical implications other than the spectre of relentless creativity.  Very Strange Crisp presented trio interplay, in which everything is a reaction to something else, no matter how tentative.  It is a world apart from a solo performance, which no matter how designed or engineered has the capability to come across like some kind of abstract oration.  From that perspective the solo bassist must be a master actor with a bag of disguises hidden behind his back.  The instrument may sound like it is actually wounded at some points; indeed, there are few pain-inducing possibilities in music like the arco, or bowed, bass.  The instrument also has a  capacity for great dignity, however, an aspect of its role as the underpinning of so many grooves.  Listeners who are only slightly prejudiced and have not gone out to sit under a tree yet would prefer the sympathetic thump of a plucked note, especially down in the lower register where convention expects a bassist to pitch his tent.  Golub plays with these perceptions early on, pulling the strings with resonating conviction following s quick yet measured stroll through a patch of feeble fragility.  By then adding some kind of acoustic distortion to the patterns, he in turn suggests the sounds of African instruments such as the thumb piano, creating a dichotomy between large and small sounds that come up later in works such as "In Memory of Ray Condo."  The performances were recorded over a two month period, the resulting close to 50 minutes of music obviously and wisely trimmed down to Golub's most concentrated performances.  "And Angels Where Only Bird Song Wakes" is a nice starting place, lengthy enough to avoid any sense of insufficiency, relaxed in its sense of rhythmic movement and devoted to the instruments most natural and vivid sound.  Golub is also wise to leave such impressions resonating as the CD comes to its conclusion on a performance with a clearly Canadian title, "Take the Train, Eh?" 


Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
 

 
Advertisement728
 
 
 

Recommended

by Thom Golub
 
 

Contests/Events

ReverbNationQuantcast
ReverbNationQuantcast
ReverbNationQuantcast
ReverbNationQuantcast