muzycy:
Tim Berne, Composer, Alto Sax
Tom Rainey, Drums
Craig Taborn, Electronics, Keyboards, Piano

Jules Ryan, Engineer
Splattercell, Mastering
Artwork, Steve Byram
Photography, Robert Lewis

pitchfork.com 7.8:
Avant-garde leader of the extreme experimental free-jazz bands Bloodcount and Paraphrase issues this raw live document that, despite its beautiful packaging, plays like a bootleg.
With its raw sound and straightforward title, Electric and Acoustic Hard Cell Live feels like a bootleg. If you ignore Steve Byram's fantastic cover art, it's easy to imagine this as a cassette labeled in handwritten scrawl: "these are the good parts." Many of Berne's releases on the Screwgun label have looked like bootlegs-- live sets with his bands Bloodcount and Paraphrase came in cardboard sleeves-- but this recording of the Hard Cell trio feels and sounds rough. Two of the four tracks were captured by "an ordinary person in an orderly manner" (code for a guy up front with a mp3 recorder?) and Berne is basically advertising this disc as a chance to hear his bandmates blow the roof off.
Berne has been generous with live releases of his projects, especially those from bands that never made it into the studio (again, Bloodcount and Paraphrase), and in the half-dozen live discs that he's issued on his own, he has yet to ship a dud. On the free improvisations of Paraphrase's Please Advise, the trio roamed like kids in a haunted house, slamming open new doors every few minutes. Ornery People, Berne's live duet with Michael Formanek, had the knotty diplomacy of two brothers arguing over a check. Almost none of Berne's compositions runs less than 10 minutes, and the players can race across the map a different way every time, banging through the structures with a spontaneity that merits alternate takes.
Berne also has a knack for picking combustible performers. In addition to the bandleader himself, the Hard Cell trio includes keyboardist Craig Taborn and drummer Tom Rainey, each of whom played on Berne's 2001 recording The Shell Game. When you add guitarist Marc Ducret, you have the band that released Berne's most recently acclaimed studio disc, 2.......
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