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On the line
Karate’s indie jazz
BY FRANKLIN BRUNO

It’s a refrain as worn as one of Johnny Ramone’s pickguards: musical knowledge — technique, subtlety, chops — is the antithesis of creative freedom. In the eyes of punk purists, knowing a whole lot more about your instrument than how to plug it in and turn it up squashes self-expression and stamps out the fires of impetuous youth. But it never seemed that way to Geoff Farina. "When I was first getting into music, growing up in Pennsylvania, there wasn’t a lot of information about punk rock. So someone would have a Dave Brubeck record from a thrift store, or some band like Gong. We were interested in anything that was different."

Unlike most bands who choose to stay the underground course (they’ve stuck with the London-and-Chicago-based indie Southern Records for five albums), the members of Karate, who headline the Middle East this Friday and Saturday, are all formally trained players. Farina and drummer Gavin McCarthy are Berklee grads; bassist Jeff Godard left the school to work with more or less everyone in Boston, from Moving Targets to Mary Timony. "I think he plays on an old Slapshot single," Farina jokes.

More important, they know how to use what they’ve learned. Some Boots, their latest full-length, delves deeper into the territory they explored on 1999’s jazz-tinged Unsolved and the two-song, 26-minute CD single "Cancel/Send" that followed — it delivers intricate, tightly controlled trio interplay, jazz-derived harmonic sophistication, and generous solo space. Although Farina’s agile fretwork on "Baby Teeth" and the blues-based "Ice or Ground?" is more Metheny than Albini, the songs skirt fusion’s outright excesses. And that’s due largely to their underlying structures and the band’s stripped-down approach in the studio. "It’s a very dry documentation," Farina explains. "Because of the kind of band we’ve evolved into, our primary focus is on the performance, and interaction. We always have ideas before about doing more vocal tracks or overdubs, but by the time we get takes of the songs we’re satisfied with, we’re exhausted."

They weren’t always as sure of their direction as they are now, Farina admits. "At first we thought of the way we did things as a detriment, not a virtue. There were really specific bands and records that affected us, like Codeine or [Come’s] 11:11. But when we tried to sound like that, it was never as dark or as heavy — we didn’t sound like what we thought we wanted to sound like."

It’s a fair assessment. In the light of what they’ve done since, early efforts like 1997’s In Place of Real Insight (their only release as a four-piece) sound one-dimensional and derivative. But on Some Boots, Karate integrate a broad range of influences without apology. "In Hundreds" opens with Gang of Four–ish sheets of atonal guitar before McCarthy and Godard settle into the sort of rhythmic pattern (in 7/4) many musicians wouldn’t be able to follow, much less execute smoothly. "There’s a track on a Hamid Drake/William Parker record that’s almost the same idea, and there’s also something of John McLaughlin’s," Farina reveals. "We were experimenting with that kind of feel, and I went back and wrote a song inspired by it."

Farina’s recent solo release, Blobosophere (Kimchee), is a more direct outgrowth of the guitarist’s jazz background. "There’s a fairly famous book by Nicholas Slominsky called Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns that John Coltrane did a lot of work with. It’s a compendium of the mathematical possibilities you can get out of various combinations of scales. It’s really just raw material — I was using it to broaden my playing." Having been inspired in part by French writer Georges Perec’s combinatorial experiment with the materials of language, Farina describes the disc’s 16 brief improvisations (culled from more than 100 home-recorded pieces) as "lists of details rather than narratives," though most manage to display some internal musical logic.

Intriguing (and surprisingly listenable) as these explorations are, the real payoff comes when Farina joins forces with his equally adept bandmates. What with their technical polish and his offhand delivery of the songs’ closely worded, worldly-wise lyrics ("About your recent investment plan/It smells like $50 stuffed into a Ziploc bag"), Karate at times resemble a less studio-bound Steely Dan. (To be fair, Karate’s lyrics are far less cynical, and they have a questioning political edge that’s well in line with their punk-rock leanings.) As for Farina, he’s clearly in touch with his inner Larry Carlton, but the comparison still makes him uneasy. "I just saw the Becker and Fagen installment of VH1’s Storytellers, and it made me rethink my relationship to their music. Half of it was great, and the people they play with are always excellent musicians, but the kinds of drum sounds and guitar sounds they use are pretty hard to take. I mean, if Karate’s just on the line, they’re way over it."

Karate headline upstairs at the Middle East this Friday and Saturday, November 22 and 23. Call (617) 864-EAST.

Issue Date: November 21 - 28, 2002
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