Ok, I admit I never would have heard this disk if I didn’t have a familial connection to one of the players. And it’s basically not my favorite kind of music, being a free jazz/improv sort of thing (that label doesn’t quite do it justice, but it’s a good place to start). But I’ve really come to like it. It’s an unusual combination of instruments—electric guitar, clarinet, bass, and drums. The guitar sound is more rock than jazz, and gives the music a feeling of having one foot in that style, too. There are many moments that have almost a jam-band or avant-rock feel, notably the first track, “Swampled,” which opens with a riff that reminds me of Captain Beefheart and thus cries out, to my ears at least, for a vocal. There are moments that recall free-jazz greats like Ornette Coleman, such as the clarinet solo in “Grace.”
Pure improvised music often just sounds chaotic and random, but there’s structure here as well. A number of the tracks, e.g. the aforementioned “Swampled,” have a jazz-like structure: a composed theme, improv, reprise of theme (I think jazz people call the theme the “head.”) The composed parts will tell you, if you had any doubt, that somebody here can really write, and that the group can play very tightly and skillfully. These tracks are longer (6-10 minutes) and are my favorites; the shorter tracks seem like interludes between them. The more improvisational parts range widely in atmosphere: mysterious, whimsical, humorous, spacey, jazzy, ambient, aggressive.
With very few lapses, Look What I Found is unfailingly interesting. Much of it sounds like it could have been an ECM release, except perhaps that there’s more humor here, and that’s a real compliment. You can hear somewhat lengthy samples, and read a little more (and buy a copy!), here.
Tom Baker sums up the music as “Jimi Hendrix meets John Coltrane meets John Cage” in this YouTube clip; that’s a pretty good capsule description.
Pre-TypePad
Light On Dark Water 
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