Henry Threadgill - Where's Your Cup? (1997)

Even though Henry Threadgill is often considered "difficult to listen to," most blindfolded listeners would probably find themselves identifying any randomly selected 20-second segment of Where's Your Cup as something a little more mainstream. It wouldn't be unreasonable, for example, to hear Brandon Ross on "The Flew" and ask "Might this be a snot-raunchy John McLaughlin electric guitar solo?" with a good bit of confidence. Someone else may smile smugly and say, "I don't suppose this is from the soundtrack of an especially eerie David Lynch film, perhaps Blue Velvet, or an old episode of Twin Peaks maybe?" when Threadgill's alto sax groove kicks off "100 Year Old Game." Such is the elusiveness of Threadgill's a-bit-of-everything approach to modern jazz, a style-collage sound he achieves here with a lot of help from his band, Make a Move. A majority of the tracks here are over eight minutes long, with a lot of room for soloists to stretch out. Ross can sound like two slabs of grinding sheet metal on one song, and softly strum a flamenco-tinged acoustic guitar behind Threadgill's flute on the next. Alternating between accordion and harmonium, Tony Cedras recalls everything from a Sunday hymn to your local seventh-inning stretch organ grinder. But give the credit of assembling these varied and sundry elements into a consistent product to Threadgill. Where's My Cup has its highly organized moments as well, which possess the same spaced-out mysteriousness as all the clamoring jam-out uproar. © John Uhl