Initially inspired by avant-garde saxophonists Anthony Braxton and Evan Parker, Andy Haas will probably forever be best known as the guy who played the alto sax solo on the Toronto new wave band Martha and the Muffins’ 1980 hit “Echo Beach.” Since leaving that band and moving to New York four decades ago, however, those formative experimental influences have reasserted themselves, ensuring that Haas is unlikely to hit the pop charts again. For the Time Being, on which he plays sax and “manipulated LPs,” could be considered sound art rather than music qua music: ten fairly compact sonic objects seemingly carved out of dense, static-permeated air. Whatever LPs Haas is manipulating are transmuted beyond recognition, somehow accounting for the throbbing, often low-frequency noises that dominate the album as they bounce randomly to and fro across the stereo field, sounding at times like rumbling thunder, or a motor boat heard from several metres beneath the water’s surface, or one of those whirring gadgets that dentists use to polish your teeth. On the longest track, “Protention,” Haas improvises on soprano sax with almost reassuring serenity against an air-raid-like din, and here and there on other tracks melodic outcroppings of saxophone appear, but for the most part the sounds produced by that instrument are hard to distinguish from the whole. It’s daunting stuff, perhaps, but never forbidding, and the sheer unpredictability of it all ensures that the going never gets dull. Anyone seeking a more accessible Haas experience should check out Accidentals, from 2023, a compelling half-hour of improvised duets with his longtime musical ally Don Fiorino on fretless electric bass and guitar.
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