Made to Break

Made To Break is an innovative experimental jazz ensemble founded by renowned saxophonist and composer Ken Vandermark. Known for its bold improvisations and structured spontaneity, the band blends free jazz, funk, punk, rock, and electronic influences into a dynamic and unpredictable sound. The group featured a rotating lineup but included key collaborators like Christof Kurzmann (electronics), Jasper Stadhouders (bass/guitar), and Tim Daisy (drums).

Since its formation in the early 2010s, Made To Break has pushed the boundaries of contemporary jazz, emphasizing collective interplay and sonic exploration. Vandermark’s compositions provide a framework for intense, high-energy performances, where each musician contributes to the group’s ever-evolving textures. With multiple acclaimed albums, the band remains a vital force in modern creative music.

Trébuchet

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Made to Break

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Bill Meyer, “Dusted Magazine,” February 12, 2018

If you measure significance by longevity and productivity, Made to Break is one of Ken Vandermark’s top bands of the past ten years. The quartet, which currently comprises drummer Tim Daisy, electric bassist Jasper Stadhouders, electronic musician Christof Kurzmann and Vandermark, tours almost yearly despite having holders of three nations’ passports within its ranks. Trebuchet is their eighth release, if you count the three download-only concert recordings that he issued simultaneously on his Audiographic imprint in 2016 as separate albums.

Look it up on his website if you doubt me; Vandermark plays in a lot of bands and makes a lot of records. While it is possible to just show up to a show by any of his bands and let yourself be wowed by the stern energy of his playing on a variety of reeds (tenor and baritone saxophone, Bb and bass clarinet), and virtually all of his records reproduce real-time performances, you’ll miss a big part of what he’s about if don’t check them out as well. Each album plugs you into vast network of efforts, associations and evolutions. The extra-musical information that accompanies each disc or download invites the listener to hear not just the music, but also to consider why and how it was made and how the particular group of players who made it with him have accommodated or challenged each other in order to make it.

Vandermark studied film, takes photographs and pays close attention to other art forms. Titles and dedications tell you what’s on his mind as he makes the music, and if you’re in doubt about the reason for a reference, look for the example. “Hydroplane” is dedicated to the band Shellac, and while it doesn’t sound much like Steve Albini & company’s music, it’s worth noting that Albini has striven to keep technical quality and ethical principles central to his practice. Second point, Shellac’s bassist Bob Weston recorded and mixed this record. “Contact Sheet [edit]” is for Susan Sontag, a cultural critic whose willingness to document her evolving understanding of art, herself and the world corresponds to Vandermark’s documentation of musical and interpersonal processes with his records. And “Slipping Words against Silence” honors Kerry James Marshall, an African-American whose paintings have used informed interrogations of painting conventions to challenge the position of black people as figures to be talked about rather than first-hand speakers and analysts of their own experience. Vandermark’s not just shouting out appreciation; he’s setting himself a bar to clear. A record isn’t just a set of music, but part of a body of work that engages the world in which he operates and charts his own development as a maker, instigator and responder to creative activity.

Reckon also with this; a trebuchet is an engine of war. It’s a struggle to sustain creative relationships across national and geographic boundaries in an age when creativity, mobility and thoughtful discussion are all suspect, and all the money is being vacuumed out of the arts and concentrated in a small number of hands that are generally unencumbered by humanitarian concern. It’s a fight to keep playing hard-edged, improvisational music. It’s a constant challenge to keep growing when, like Vandermark, you’ve already been pushing for over 30 years.

So how does Trebuchet factor into all of this? The Made to Break template is, ironically enough, a very sturdy one. Take an assertive bassist who isn’t afraid to bring a bit of funk to the mix and a drummer who has been a continuous companion for about 20 years, and you’ve got a pretty perfect setting for the bar-walker grooving, Brötzman-esque barking and rippling, interval-leaping runs that constitute the more muscular side of Vandermark’s playing. But comfort isn’t part of the program here, and Vandermark isn’t satisfied with simply kicking some funky fire music ass. Made to Break is a statement of intent, not just a catchy name, and the fourth member of the band is there to make sure things don’t get too easy. Christof Kurzmann plays ppooll, a piece of open-source software that allows him to sample, generate and manipulate sounds at speed. While he isn’t averse to interjecting washes of static, fragments of speech and stuttering, overtly electronic noises, he often samples the rest of the band and confronts them with their own sounds, which he twists into shapes and timbres that they are not physically capable of playing.

Early on, the band might halt when Kurzmann started playing, but on Trebuchet he’s a fully integrated agent of productive instability. He can go toe to toe in a passage of free improvisation, such as the debate between squiggles and rumbles that he and Stadhouders use to dial “Slipping Words against Silence” down into a series of intense duo exchanges. He can also contribute quietly in the background, functioning more like an instant sound designer than a fellow player. Or he can destabilize another musician’s playing by responding to them in their own distorted voice. Over the course of three tracks you’ll hear the other musicians absorb his playing into theirs, carry on despite it, or switch course in order to push back against it.
—

Tim Daisy – Drums
Jasper Stadhouders – Electric Bass
Christof Kurzmann – ppooll / Electronics
Ken Vandermark – Reeds

Compositions written by Ken Vandermark
(Twenty First Mobile Music / ASCAP)

Recorded by Bob Weston on April 14, 2016 at Minbal, Chicago
Mixed by Bob Weston and Ken Vandermark
Mastered by Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering Service

Album design and collages by Federico Peñalva

Provoke

By Made to Break

N N N

By Made to Break

F4 Fake

By Made To Break

Made To Break

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In Ken Vandermark’s music, method matters. While the Chicago-based saxophone and clarinet player never performs like it doesn’t matter, each performance can also be understood as part of a rope braided from evolutionary threads. This is especially true with his ongoing bands, of which Made To Break is currently one of the most enduring. It has been around since 2011 with just one change of personnel (electric bass and guitar player Jasper Stadhouders took over for Nate McBride early on; drummer Tim Daisy and electronic musician Christof Kurzmann have been around since the beginning). So let’s start tugging at those threads. Vandermark usually has a band on hand where he can express his more rhythmic side; for the past decade, Made To Break has been that band. His partnership with Daisy goes back to the early aughts, when he was in the Vandermark 5. He’s also been striving for about as long to stay engaged with the possibilities of electronics. But there’s one thread unique to Made To Break, and that’s methodology. The quartet’s music is modular, which is to say that while there are fixed parts, they can be re-ordered on the fly whenever an appointed musician tells the rest that it’s time to change channels. They’ve been working on this way of working for as long as the band’s been around, and they’ve gotten pretty fluid at negotiating those changes. So while each of F4 Fake’s three tracks is fairly long and contains contrasting passages, they still hang together as lucid sonic narratives. F4 Fake’s greatest pleasures, however, are the most visceral ones. There’s palpable delight in Daisy and Stadhouders’ grooves, and the way Vandermark rides them, and also a bracing, thanks-I-needed-that smack when he or Kurzmann shove the music into freefall. So don’t steer away from this record because you think you need to have been on board for the whole trip, because the moment’s thrill is more than enough. —Bill Meyer, Magnet Magazine

Here, Made to Break sounds like a four-headed massive unit that is in a holy mission, attacking with sheer force and boundless energy the demonic, fake politics. Made to Break combines fiery free jazz with raw noises and abstract electronics, all accumulates into a possessive interplay, sensual and extreme in its own way, but one that highlights Made to Break in its best. – Eyal Hareuveni, Freejazzblog

Although F4 Fake consists of just three tracks, the album feels like it contains at least twice that number of compositions due to the way the quartet called Made to Break changes moods, often with little or no transition. Funky vamps disappear as quickly as they begin. Chaos suddenly shifts into composed passages. Trick endings act as a gateway to peaceful codas. -Mike Shanley, JazzTimes

Ken Vandermark – reeds
Christof Kurzmann – electronics [loopp]
Jasper Stadhouders – electric bass and guitar
Tim Daisy – drums

Recorded by Daniel Schatz, November 29 2017 at Primitive Studios, Vienna.
Mastering by Alex Inglizian at Experimental Sound Studio Chicago.

artwork by Federico Peñalva

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