Pitchfork

I say, "John Corbett" and what do you think of? Let me try to guess. That tall drink of water who played KBHR radio DJ Chris Stevens on "Northern Exposure." Your thoughts turn invariably to shoulder- length hair and vaguely Kierkegaardian witticisms spewn between sips of steamy chicory and a Buffy St. Marie record. Man, did you know that guy is doing truck commercials now? In any case, this isn't him.

John Corbett is something of a Chicago scenester, journalist, critic, liner notes man, friend to the heavy and the post- alike. Perhaps you know him from his liner notes. He penned notes for the vertiginous Marilyn Crispell, Peter Bröntzman, Hamid Drake jazz set Hyperion, as well as for Jim O'Rourke's Third Straight Day Made Public. Corbett even contributed some guitarwork to Tony Conrad's latter- day minimalist manifesto, Slapping Pythagoras, alongside other Second City luminaries like O'Rourke and David Grubbs. Corbett also hosts "Radio Dada," a strangely addictive Tuesday night radio show on University of Chicago radio wherein Sun Ra is mixed with Binary System and stewed in random gamelan music. And amazingly, the whole show ensues without a single reference to Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance."

Not content with the many Chicagoland fruit- filled pies that he currently has his fingers in, Corbett has recruited a gaggle of Heavy Friends and recorded I'm Sick About My Hat. Grubbs appears on the album, along with stray members of the Vandermark 5, Swedish avant- sax player Mats Gustafsson, stellar percusionist Hamid Drake among others. Heavy friends, indeed.

The transition from Dada art- music DJ to composer was apparently not a dramatic one. Corbett plays guitar and oversees all the mixage, montage and odd juxtaposing that lend the album form. The sound of the album is an altogether different affair. I would nominally class it with the avant- jazz of players like Drake and Gustafsson, but elements of Grubbs' Gastr del Sol- style production and arrangements are also apparent. On the whole, I'm Sick About My Hat is a strange, poetic opus of squawking horns, speedy sound montage, junkpile vocal samples and elegant guitars. The album is as tight and economical as it is disturbing and difficult: a clipped, twitchy encyclopedia of the Chicago music scene.

Your appreciation of this album will vary with your capacity to suffer art gladly. At times, you will doubtless wonder whether or not you could be making the same kinds of noise by fast forwarding an Ornette Coleman album, and having your friends say random things on cue; invite an ex to contribute hacky bitter poetry for authenticity! Actually, Clark Coolidge's trim poem, "A Note on 'The Mess'" is actually presented tastefully over very Grubbsian guitar plucks, and its elegant musings on the olden days of jazz actually add some thematic clarity to the project.

License for the occasional passages of excess on I'm Sick About My Hat is purchased by the more frequent moments of compelling noise. The overall staccato honk of Corbett's album is an impressive record of jazz in the information age, inflected throughout by the sensibilities of electronic music. This should certainly be a candidate for your requisite arthouse albumt his year. Perhaps it's like something Nietzsche might have said once.