AZTeC Brings Innovative Trance-Jazz to Boulder

by Anneke Toomey

Approaching the warmly lighted windows and open-air terrace of The Laughing Goat, music wafts out into the street, beguiling, like the aroma of the Fair-Trade coffee brewing inside. I’ve found my destination, my escape from the ordinary weeknight: AZTeC’s live show at this Pearl Street music hub. Not sure what to expect, I settle in at my table with a Colorado microbrew. I’m one of only a few people in the back seating area, where you have to pay a cover; the others, in their various corners, seem more engaged by the glow of their laptops and phones than the four men performing on the stage nearby. But I’m only slightly too early to be fashionably late. Now the tables on the main floor are filling up: a young pair, clearly on a first date; an older couple, the woman conservatively dressed, her partner with grey dreadlocks past his waist; a young, bald-shaven man with heavy black-framed glasses who dips and bobs in his seat to the music.

Settling into their groove, AZTeC takes command of the room. I find myself wondering about the group’s leader — Zack Teran — as he weaves a trance-like groove from his electric bass. The song clearly invokes the Middle-East: Is he himself of Arabic origin, or am I projecting because of his last name, the muezzin-like calls he’s extracting from his instrument, his dark hair, intense dark eyes, high cheekbones? Regardless, his music is a call to the crowd to surrender themselves and listen. The technophiles divorce themselves from screens and headphones; the young woman by the stage mutes her loud laughter at her date’s witticisms. Though I’m never shy about clapping for solos, soon I’m holding back: the music’s transitions are way too cool to drown out with applause.

As a unit, AZTeC sounds as though its four musicians have been improvising together for years, when in fact this is a new quartet that’s only playing its fifth gig, and has barely settled on a name. (Several of Teran’s pieces don’t have names yet either.) Teran, who’s just arrived back from a tour with the Reno-based rock band The Novelists, mentions that the group hasn’t played together since their last gig over a month before. The caliber of these four players is so high that they can just walk in with their sheet music and pull off a set-list of challenging originals in complex time signatures… and not only do they pull it off, they rip it to shreds. The only two covers are of a Joe Henderson tune, and Teran’s arrangement of the heavy metal band Tool’s “Forty-Six & 2.” Teran’s originals are jazz in a looser sense than usual, with lots of space, often built around repetitive riffs or complex heads based on ethnic scales. A number of other tunes by guitarist Tim Wendel, saxophonist Carl Schultz and drummer Alwyn Robinson come off beautifully, with the continuity of the group’s sound staying rock-solid.

The evening brings a succession of intriguing influences, textures and flavors: Schultz’s original ballad brushes against Strayhorn in melody and chord progression, Wendel’s guitar mantra evokes the ‘80s electronica of Tangerine Dream. Wait — do my ears deceive me, or am I hearing a phasing pattern (á la Steve Reich, usually done with tape loops layered at different speeds) played live, in real time?  In another virtuosic feat near the end of the show, the players intentionally pull apart the inflection point of each measure, so locked-in that they can playfully stretch open the sacrosanct downbeat and somehow make it groove even harder. Robinson brings it home on a dancing, rollicking percussion-driven tune written by Teran, “North Carolina Stomp,” dialing in a catchy Newgrass / Jam component. Teran and Wendel face off against Schultz, playing a riff displaced by one beat, recalling both the most ancient (canon) and the most recent (techno). Switching from plucked acoustic bass to the arco, or bowed bass, Teran starts one of his tunes with a hypnotic solo played mainly in the instrument’s overtones.

Sometimes a special night of music brings a type of magic to a place in space and time. Though I arrive alone, I am soon approached by an old friend for an unplanned reunion, someone I knew several years and more than a thousand miles before. I join her at her table, where we fill one another in on our respective stories as well as we can, then listen together in companionable silence. She comments, “I try to focus in on one player to really appreciate what he’s doing, but then the music washes over me and carries me away!” AZTeC seems to have that effect, I realize. Luckily, there are more chances to catch them, since they’re booked to play every first Tuesday at The Laughing Goat. See you there.

AZTeC’s next show is Tuesday, September 3rd, from 8:00 – 11:00pm, at The Laughing Goat, 1709 Pearl Street. Anneke Toomey is a keyboard player and vocalist who plays in jazz, classical, rock and country styles. She’s written and produced for independent media for over a decade.

Online: facebook.com/AZTECsounds

thelaughinggoat.com/

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