Paul r. Harding - “They Tried To Kill Me Yesterday” :: ESP Disk - 10.27.23
Explosive narratives whose critical body function shape shifts into poetic drag and incubated prose, both quick and flourishing. Full flavor delivery into madhouse rage, while the audience spits loose change into the marble grotto of dead dreams that remain silent just below. A curious vapor disappears across the sky as it heads towards a more familiar part of the riddle subconscious. Limiting any form of documentation as it scars the atmosphere in one final push towards the event horizon someplace over Alphabet City, the spirits clears and repossess its eager earnings.
Who is Paul r. Harding? A poetic genius with holy stride wielding a heavy, inherited cloak through the damp darkness of time and space. Who is Paul r. Harding? A fierce force of free form energy spiraling into the depths of the human condition. Who is Paul r. Harding? A poet born and raised in New York, who attended college in Buffalo to study creative writing. It was there he met and befriended legendary saxophonists Archie Shepp and Charles Gayle, who would go on to tutor Harding before his eventual departure to the west coast in the mid ‘80s. Connecting with long time friend, bandmate and collaborator Michael Bisio, the duo have been working together for nearly 4 decades and have released works such as the collaborative effort entitled“Remembrance” and most recently on ESP-Disk, “They Tried To Kill Me Yesterday”.
Harding’s work is in close proximity to the greats such as Ginsberg, Kerouac and Burroughs, but he carries a rawness that is entirely his own. An explicit tongue that is razor sharp like that of the mighty hiphop as it transcends into an ethereal prose. Harding clashes the titans aluminum skulls with effortless ability, while his hands wave in the air expressing symbols and signals of peace, love and acrobatic passion for language. Back in 2022, the legendary ESP Disk released Harding’s groundbreaking album entitled “They Tried To Kill Me Yesterday” and his audience hasn’t been the same since. Joined by bassist and longtime friend Michael Bisio and percussionist Juma Sultan, the trio bring forth a radical force of divine exploration into the excitement and mischief of free expression music. Harding has gone on record stating that Michael is “on it in an organic fucking explosion and is always there”. With track such as “New World Gypsy Dawn”, "Forgive, Forgive, Forgive” and the album’s title track, the dynamical trio embark on a journey through a meditative inferno enriched with cold stone spells, galactic paranoia and blissed out fever dreams.
Across the album’s 13 tracks dwells an ecosystem that holds high regards to Harding’s heroes such as Coltrane, Davis and Dolphy, but there are elements within the album that sincerely captivates its listeners in a way that these legends did not. Harding’s voice has chemistry like that of the cosmos and historical mantras all going out to lunch for a picnic in a rainstorm. A perfectly good window in a perfectly good airplane and one still finds themselves in the grip of desire to free fall for the sake of killing time. “They Tried To Kill Me Yesterday” is loose and forever fluid in a way that flows through the veins of the lucid universe both subtly as well as personally.
