Track from Self-Immolation
2) Bike Lanes (Coming)
214 bpm
11) Bike Lanes (Going)
190 pbm
Bike Lanes is like a mass of wheels that never stop turning, even at traffic control signals. So look out! Raw, punctuated and deceptive, it captures the cadence of a blues and never lets go. Warning: serious earworm material.
Influences
[ Sonny Rollins, McCoy Tyner ]
[ Pharoah Sanders, Sun Ra, Gil Scott Heron ]
While not focused on serious things like ending war, fighting oppression or for civil rights, Bike Lanes is nonetheless a political anthem, for sustainable transportation. The lyrics are a stripped-down version of a postcard produced by the SF Bicycle Coalition, intened to be sent to City Supervisors whose support was needed for approving bike lanes. I instinctively went into vocational technical writer mode and ruthlessly edited it to remove all the “please considers” and other niceties, transforming it from a polite request to a terse demand, “Bike lanes all the way down Howard St. to Fremont St.”
Form
Compositionally, Bike Lanes embodies the cyclical nature of wheels, as a blues cadence that never stops. In the same manner that cyclists play fast and loose with lane changes and traffic control sinage in the name of efficiency, the Bike Lanes melody stays inside the key while being oddly orthogonal to the chord changes, and follows its own logic as it weaves towards its resolution. In both the melody presentation and solos, the horns interweave as a mass and get risky with chromatic neighbors.
Jazz musicians have embraced modal songs for the great freedom they provide soloists but, frankly, as compositions most of them fail to sound any different from “So What”, or its faster cousin, “Impressions”. One noteable exception is Sonny Rollins’ “East Broadway Run Down”, which is singularly angular, aggressive and dissonant yet hard-swinging. “East Broadway” It is more like abstract punctuation over a canvas of pedal point than a traditional mode, but it’s effect is more modal than free. While Bike Lanes approaches from a different tack, its four-bar cadence is so short and ever-present that it also yeilds a modal quality, while providing harmonic lines within which soloists can stay, or veer at their discretion.
Credits
- composed by David Elaine Alt and published by Aural Imaging
- David Elaine Alt, Tenor Saxophone
- Henry Hung, Trumpet
- Alica Bell, Voice
- Andrew Ryan, Drums
- Grant Levin, Piano
- Kenny Annis, Bass
- David Elaine Alt, Recording Engineer
- Mixed by David Elaine Alt at Flaming Hakama
Mastered by Myles Boisen at Headless Buddha and David Elaine Alt at Flaming Hakama