*** William Hooker

THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US

(Knitting Factory)

Versatility is the hobgoblin of postmodernism. Instead of mingling with mutual suspicion, various aesthetic strands, once at war to wear the mantle of the new faith, now lie next to one another in peaceful co-existence. One sometimes misses the barricades. And people who set out to forge new alliances sometimes end up delivering samplers -- a little of this, a little of that -- with nothing really meeting.

Fortunately the samples on drummer William Hooker's new CD are pretty good. The centerpiece is the nearly half-hour long "Sensor Suite," which with its front line of two saxes and trumpet over a piano-bass-drum rhythm section is a fine piece of good old-fashioned avant-garde jazz, from the moody out-of-tempo unison lines to the herniated sax solos to pianist Mark Hennen's Cecil Taylor-ish strategy of comping emphatically amid the firestorm to (most impressively) trumpeter Lewis Barnes's rummaging lyricism. This is bracketed by two versions of Sonic Youth's "Because (Of You)" with a different line-up -- three guitars now -- giving us the rock version of no-bar-line mysticism. For good measure there's a ballad that turns ugly ("Pure Imagination") and a totally charming drum feature ("The Gate"). But my guess would be that Hooker's heart is most firmly rooted in the free-jazz blowout of the suite -- there, at any rate, the blood and drama and little spinning wheels sound most unforced.

-- Richard C. Walls