RADIO I-CHING

The problem with some music in the avant garde realm is one of source material. Much like jam bands that only listen to the Grateful Dead or Phish become pale replicas ? their improvisations a xerox of a xerox so to speak ? groups without external stimuli other than other improvised music become tired clich?s. Radio I-Ching demonstrates what an avant garde mindset can do when coupled with an eclectic set of nfluences. The influences come from an equally eclectic trio of musicians.

Drummer Dee Pop is dually known as a member of the ?80s rock band Bush Tetras and the curator of the now-defunct Freestyle Creative Music Series in New York. Andy Haas, who plays sax, piri and live electronics on this, the group's second disc, previously released a politically motivated solo record for shofar and raita. And string-player (guitar, lap steel, banjo, glissentar and mandolin) Don Fiorino's commitment to historic preservation goes past music with a career working to preserve Ellis Island. When these three come together, the aesthetic is Downtown; it is just not clear in what city?New York? Cairo? Memphis? 12 tracks run the gamut from group originals to works by noted Egyptian musicians Mohammed Abdel Wahab and Hamza El Din, Jamaican drummer Count Ossie, film composer Alfred Newman, folkie Jimmy Driftwood, Captain Beefheart and more ?traditional? jazz composers like Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Sonny Simmons/Prince Lasha and Thelonious Monk. With the players, what they play and what they play it on, The Fire Keeps Burning sounds like a stew on paper. But remarkably, the trio has created a new aesthetic equal parts jazz, rock and world music that is both sincere and appealing. Each piece is a flavor in the aforementioned stew but none of the nuance is lost. The group is summed up by a variation on the old maxim: musicians should play 10% of what they know