released February 11, 2024

Dennis Rea (guitar), Wally Shoup (alto saxophone), Geoff Harper (upright bass), Gregg Keplinger (drums)

Produced by Dennis Rea; associate producer Doug Haire
Recorded April 1998 and May 1999 at Jack Straw Cultural Center, Seattle
Engineered by Doug Haire; mixed by Doug Haire and Dennis Rea
Mastered by Mark Guenther at Seattle Disc Mastering

All tracks are extracts from real-time free improvisations
Tracks 2-8 recorded for the Sonarchy live radio hour / KEXP
Track 1 recorded for the 1999 Seattle Center artsEdge Festival
Cover art by Anne Joiner

Album liner notes by Peter Monaghan:

Since 1998, in a handful of ear-opening performances in Seattle, this juggernaut, Stackpole, has distilled and advanced the last 40 years' expansions in jazz, non-idiomatic improvised music, and related forms.

The quartet came into being after guitarist Dennis Rea heard it in his mind's ear, and brought its members together. He heard well. His own squalling melodiousness, which draws on the woolliest jazz and rock and much else, locks in with the unfettered playing of altoist Wally Shoup, a veteran free improviser. Similarly attuned are two key figures in Seattle jazz: the daunting drummer Gregg Keplinger, who excels in post-Sun Ship consonant crashing and cascading, and artfully muscular bassist Geoff Harper, the engine of varied Northwest jazz bands.

Together the four master a completely assured amalgam of idioms in a pulsing nonce-music, a free-improv supercharged free jazz that roars, keens, and soars, and yet can just as convincingly dissolve into moody quiescence.

Rea's oblique track titles ideally metaphorize the sonic terrains that he and his fellow expeditionaries project and explore. "Ignis Fatuus" (decomposition-fueled light over marshland that retreats when approached) suggests elusive pursuit. Similarly, "The Crocker Land Expedition" alludes to a futile search for a polar land mass that proved to be an Arctic mirage. Elsewhere on this disc, Stackpole pursues its quest in "Polynya" (open water surrounded by sea ice), "Krummholz" (stunted timberline forest), and "Spindrift" (wind-borne seawater, snow, or sand).

Within this geography, the selections from real-time Stackpole improvisations heard on this disc descend, then slip or duck away, then reemerge. Whether Stackpole storms or lulls, its music is startling and distinctive.

- Peter Monaghan, host, "Outside Jazz," KBCS-FM