Since Misha Mengelberg (born 1935) helped found Dutch improvised music in the 1960s, at least one Hollander from each subsequent generation has carried on his legacy of smart, playful, subversive pianism, some kind of way. First came the more rigorously whimsical Guus Janssen, born 1951 (who took over Misha’s chair in the ICP Orchestra), then Cor Fuhler (1964, who’d subbed for Mengelberg in ICP after the master’s 1997 heart attack) – not forgetting Cor’s worthy contemporaries Michiel Braam and Michiel Scheen. The fourth generation’s loose cannon of the keys is Oscar Jan Hoogland, born 1983, in some ways the most anarchic of the bunch. He and Han Bennink have an occasional duo (in that long line of Han’s piano-drums duels, roping in all of the above), finally heard on record with Goede Reis! – Dutch for ‘have a nice trip.’ That, the duo do. It’s an excellent introduction to the junior partner.
The album self-consciously places Hoogland in the lineage just laid out, including as it does tunes by Mengelberg and Fuhler. (The disc is dedicated to Cor, who died in Australia a month before Goede Reis! was recorded in an empty Bimhuis in August 2020.) The “De Bokkenrijder’s Race” kicks off with and makes pivotal use of Guus’s signature syncopated “hi-hat” lick, played on the piano’s fast-decaying almost pitchless top keys. The nattering sound overlaid on that piece – the Bimhuis-TV skim of the album-release concert reveals – comes from multiple portable record players spinning “Bokkenrijder” ( = goat rider) from the late altoist Paul Termos’s LP Solo 84–85 at right and wrong speeds. (Some enterprising label should get to work reissuing the Claxon catalog.) There’s also a tune or three by Mengelberg heroes Ellington and Monk. “Hornin’ In,” coupled with Misha’s oft-revived ‘60s ballad “Peer’s Counting Song” could almost be the Mengelberg-Bennink duo – quick piano scrambles and turnabouts, bonked-out clotted chords, fff to ppp dynamics in short order – save perhaps that Han never tries to drown the pianist out. A Blindfold Testee might only sense a trap when Oscar Jan voices the melody in the bass; he’s got a strong left hand.
Hoogland has more tells than that. Here as elsewhere, he deploys a bevy of noisemakers, including crackle box, electric clavichord, those portable record players (also spinning what sound like a few global-music records), cassette players loaded with who-knows-what, and battery-powered megaphones. Ellington’s “Fleurette Africaine,” with its own twinkling repetitions, is played straight and gently fragmented, and overlayed with (recorded, and ghostly sounding) shakuhachi or hotchiku. Bamboo flute makes no conceptual sense, save perhaps that the tune dates from the same era as Far East Suite, but it works somehow; Oscar Jan explicitly ties the layers together when piano and Japanese flute’s pitch-ranges converge halfway through. Bennink is mostly under wraps, although when piano misbehaves a little toward the end, drums back its play. At 79 when Goede Reis! was recorded, Han may give the impression he’s mellowing a bit, but his reaction time hasn’t slowed, and he minds those shifting dynamics. Better to say he’s intent on drawing his partner out – and hardly for the first time, when working with pianists he likes.
The drummer’s firm pulse enlivens the sound-collagey “Propeller,” boasting solo and call-and-response chants (West African?), crackle-box glissandi, looped (Afropop?) guitar and plenty of Hoogland’s electric clavichord, with its key-pressure–sensitive pitch bends (sometimes sounding oddly like bass guitar), and enough space to let Han poke through in the closing minutes. That clav sets Hoogland apart. There’s more collage-ing – and OJ furiously attacking the clavichord – on “Musique Automatique Typographique.”
Brevity works in the program’s favor; 39 minutes seems just right. (Misha played a few short sets himself – and thought high-energy free jazz would make good singles music, because a little goes a long way.) The longest all-over-the-place jam, at eight minutes, settles down before the back half into a long thin/thick drone, eventually giving way to Cor Fuhler’s lovely “Rhythm Three,” a ballad built around simple materials: falling minor-thirds and similar intervals, falling like snow. It serves as a fitting memorial to that much-beloved improviser, composer, bandleader, and inventor – of the keyboard-violin hybrid, the keyolin – whose chaotic last years in Australia threw his many friends back home for a loop. (Fuhler liked comic collagey stuff himself, in his guise as DJ Cor Blimey.)
Like his forebears Hoogland has studied the particulars of Monk’s piano sonority and clustery voicings, catching same on a romping “Epistrophy” (adding a few subterranean bass arpeggios – Han drawing an exact bead on the melody’s rhythms right with him) and a surprisingly tender slow-to-medium “Ugly Beauty,” played almost totally straight, save for a distended (and, second/last time through, unresolved) ending. Han’s engaged but keeps a low profile, selflessly giving OJ the spotlight. It’s his time now. –Kevin Whitehead