ENG One Final Note USA, David Dupont (dec.2005)

Cuong Vu’s It’s Mostly Residual comes across as a kind of ambient music. He presents spacey soundscapes that seem to invite passive submersion as much as in-depth listening. I’d warn anyone inclined to simply bathe in this electronic wash to beware. Vu’s pieces have a way of subverting what may seem like their own pastoral intentions.
The session opens with the title tune, a lilting country ballad that’s reminiscent of the early work of guest Bill Frisell. But as the song drifts across the prairie it gets caught in a stiffer breeze. Vu’s haunting lament grows in determination with drummer Ted Poor slipping from brushes to sticks to stiffen the groove. “Patchwork” opens with an uplifting melody fitting its title. But somewhere along the line Frisell lets his arpeggios drift outside the tonality, and then he decides to stay there, pirouetting lopsidedly through space.
None of these tracks, save the lilting closer, ends up where they start, or even where the opening strains seem to be directing them. The music pools up in odd eddies, reveling in its own sense of unrest. The freest piece, “Expressions of a Neurotic Impulse”, opens with an antic figure backed by Poor’s rampaging drums that never quite loses its footing. While a wall of distortion dominates the foreground, bassist Stumo Takeishi nails the beat in the background. The ensemble briefly coalesces around Takeishi before devolving into a twittering morass and finally reasserting the theme.
Vu serves more as catalyst on the session, leaving lead duties to Frisell. “Brittle, Like Twigs” features the leader’s strangled tone, run through some kind of processor. About three minutes in he locks in with Takeishi’s supple counter-melodies and initiates a chromatic foray that builds to a climax leading to a brief ringing guitar solo. But It’s Mostly Residual isn’t about bouts of individual showboating; it’s about collective expression, an ensemble stirring up soundscapes that invite the listener in. It’s music that can be intriguing and disturbing, like a folk song heard on the radio during a favorite nightmare.