Review: Henry Threadgill Zooid’s ‘Poof’

As some artists approach their late careers they become ruthless self-editors, paring down their style to remove everything that is unnecessary or extraneous. Because the unnecessary is seldom granted admission to Henry Threadgill’s compositional world, Poof (Pi Recordings, 2021), the sixth recording from his Zooid band, and the first since 2015, is about something different. 

By now, Jose Davila, Liberty Ellman, Christopher Hoffman, and Elliot Humberto Kavee articulate Threadgill’s serial intervallic language with a fluency that allows the music’s swarming polyphony to emerge with unprecedented focus.  So, let’s call Poof a refinement of a singular and immediately recognizable style.

Threadgill’s dazzling originality as a composer and conceptualist always takes center stage, but Poof reminds us that he’s still a great player too.  The title composition, a solemn and grave feature for Threadgill’s raw-toned alto and Hoffmann’s mournful cello, could be a funeral oration or a love song. It could also be both, which would make a characteristically Threadgillian move. Here, as everywhere on the recording, transparent textures clear room for every member of the band to take turns in the solo spotlight. 

That’s how the album starts on “Come and Go,” which begins as if the needle dropped in the middle of Hoffman’s cello solo.  It’s Davila’s turn on “Beneath The Bottom” where he hands the bassline off to Hoffman, swapping the tuba to deliver an eloquent trombone solo. After beginning mysteriously with the composer’s bass flute stalked by eerie whistles (cello harmonics?), the spare, almost stark “Happenstance” dissolves into unaccompanied features for Ellman’s lightly amplified guitar and a whispery percussion feature in a Don Moye-ish vein from Kavee. The floating rhythm and motion-offense polyphony of “Now and Then,” returns the ensemble sound to recent practice, but with moderate dynamics and chamber-like transparency. Refinement. 

A word about the length of the release: at 38 minutes, some listeners might feel shortchanged.  That’s nonsense. There’s enough music here to keep us busy until the next Zooid release. But please let’s not have to wait six years for it.

Poof will be available on Pi Recordings on September 24, 2021.

Tracklist: 1. Come and Go; 2. Poof; 3. Beneath The Bottom; 4. Happenstance; 5. Now and Then 

Personnel: Henry Threadgill (alto saxophone, flute, bass flute), Jose Davila (tuba, trombone), Liberty Ellman (guitar), Christopher Hoffman (cello), Elliot Humberto Kavee (drums).