LINE 29

new rules for noise

Gordon Grdina's Box Cutter

Gordon Grdina, guitar

Francois Houle, clarinets

Karlis Silins, bass

Kenton Loewen, drums

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What the critics are saying:

"Box Cutter is well-named: the multifaceted Gordon Grdina’s “jazz” band is a small, sharp unit, capable of intricately detailed air-carving, but just as likely to offer knife-edged excursions into abstract terrain. Here, though, the focus is primarily on concise, melodic playing, no matter what this record’s title might imply.

Two benign deities preside over New Rules for Noise, in the form of saxophonist Ornette Coleman and clarinetist Jimmy Giuffre. In fact, if guitarist Grdina has a fault, it’s that he sometimes hews too closely to their templates; at first, I mistook his original “Burning Bright” for a Coleman composition, while the waltzlike “Yellow Spot into the Sun” would be quite at home on one of Giuffre’s pioneering trio recordings from the early 1960s."

--Alexander Varty. 

Georgia Straight June 19, 2008