Dynamic Maximum Tension (Nonesuch)
Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society
Released September 8, 2023
Grammy Nominee for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album 2024
Slate Best Jazz Albums of 2023
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_k_RaFyjRlzjJF39Z-eLE5SZRClW4H9pS0
Spotify:
About:
Composer and bandleader Darcy James Argue and his Secret Society ensemble made their Nonesuch Records debut with Dynamic Maximum Tension on September 8, 2023. The album pays homage to some of Argue’s key influences with original songs dedicated to R. Buckminster Fuller, Alan Turing, and Mae West. Fellow Nonesuch artist Cécile McLorin Salvant, with whom Argue collaborated on her long-form musical fable Ogresse, joins the ensemble for “Mae West: Advice.” Dynamic Maximum Tension’s eleven tracks, on two CDs, also include a response to Duke Ellington’s “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue,” titled “Tensile Curves,” among other original songs.
The album track “Dymaxion”—a portmanteau of “dynamic maximum tension”—takes its name from the term coined by architect and inventor Fuller to describe his concept of using technology and resources to maximum advantage. “Dymaxion” is available today, June 29, along with this video from the song’s recording session.
Argue says of his inspiration for the music: “It feels like our culture today is headed in a profoundly dystopian direction. By engaging with figures like Buckminster Fuller, Alan Turing, and Mae West, I was trying to connect to a more optimistic time, trying to reclaim a sense of agency, trying to rekindle my faith in our ability to grab the future and shape it ourselves.”
Darcy James Argue, “one of the top big band composers of our time” (Stereophile), is best known for Secret Society, an eighteen-piece group “renowned in the jazz world” (New York Times). Argue brings an outwardly anachronistic ensemble into the 21st century through his “ability to combine his love of jazz’s past with more contemporary sonics” and is celebrated as “a syncretic creator who avoids obvious imitation” (Pitchfork).
Acclaimed as an “innovative composer, arranger, and big band leader” by the New Yorker, Argue’s accolades include multiple Grammy nominations and a Latin Grammy Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Doris Duke Artist Award, and countless commissions and fellowships. His prescient 2016 Real Enemies, an album-length exploration of the politics of paranoia, was named one of the twenty best jazz albums of the decade by Stereogum. Like Real Enemies, Argue’s previous recordings—his debut Infernal Machines and his follow-up, Brooklyn Babylon—were nominated for both Grammy and Juno awards.
Track Listing:
1. Dymaxion 7:03
2. All In 7:37
3. Ebonite 6:33
4. Last Waltz for Levon 6:54
5. Wingèd Beasts 13:42
6. Your Enemies Are Asleep 8:17
7. Codebreaker 5:38
8. Ferromagnetic 9:16
9. Single-Cell Jitterbug 5:25
10. Tensile Curves 34:44
11. Mae West: Advice (feat. Cécile McLorin Salvant) 6:20
Personnel:
Darcy James Argue: composer, conductor, ringleader
Dave Pietro: piccolo, flute, alto flute, soprano sax, alto sax
Rob Wilkerson: flute, clarinet, soprano sax, alto sax
Sam Sadigursky: clarinet, tenor sax
John Ellis: clarinet, bass clarinet, tenor sax
Carl Maraghi: clarinet, bass clarinet, baritone sax
Seneca Black: trumpet, flugelhorn
Liesl Whitaker: trumpet, flugelhorn
Matt Holman: trumpet, flugelhorn
Nadje Noordhuis: trumpet, flugelhorn
Mike Fahie: trombone
Ryan Keberle: trombone
Jacob Garchik: trombone
Jennifer Wharton: bass trombone, tuba
Sebastian Noelle: acoustic, electric guitar
Adam Birnbaum: acoustic, electric piano
Matt Clohesy: contrabass, electric bass
Jon Wikan: drum set, cajón
Ingrid Jensen: trumpet (1, 3-6, 8, 9, 11), flugelhorn (1, 3-6, 8, 9, 11)
Brandon Lee: trumpet (2, 7, 10), flugelhorn (2, 7, 10)
Sara Caswell: violin (10), hardanger d’amore (10)
Cécile McLorin Salvant: vocals (11)
Recorded August 29th – September 2nd, 2022, at Power Station at Berklee NYC Studio C, New York, NY
Produced by Alan Ferber, Brian Montgomery, and Darcy James Argue
Session Producer: Alan Ferber
Production Assistants: Eliana Fishbeyn and Martina Liviero
Recorded and Mixed by Brian Montgomery
Assistant Engineers: Ben Miller and Michael Hickey
Mastered by Randy Merrill
Design and Illustration by Lawrence Azerrad
Review:
Darcy James Argue has evolved into one of the era’s top big-band composers, second only to Maria Schneider, and this, his fourth album, is his best to date: a work of stunning eclecticism and complexity, but thoroughly accessible, elastic with swing. He’s especially adept at weaving rhythmic cycles into melodies and moods. Each piece in this two-CD collection is dedicated to some positive influence in his life, including Buckminster Fuller (whose structures he joins with Cab Calloway riffs in “Single-Cell Jitterbug”), Duke Ellington (a half-hour piece, “Tensile Curves,” is a variation on “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue”), and Levon Helm (“Last Waltz for Levon” is a lovely tribute to the Band’s drummer, wistful but unsentimental).
Fred Kaplan (Slate)
