The genre as listed is jazz. And, y'know some of this certainly qualifies. However, another way to look at this is that Dennis Palmer is on Public Eyesore, which has been releasing albums from the fringe for more than 30 years. And he definitely has a fine shanty in that development.

Dennis Palmer White Wuff (Public Eyesore)

Truthfully, this is one of the lusher, more-crafted PE releases I've heard. Palmer leaps around from genre to genre, dropping in references as he feels them. There's more than a bit of the Eugene Chadbourne guitar whacktoid going on, but Palmer's ensemble includes winds of all stripes and impressively diverse percussion. And these feel more like compositions than improvisations (though the line can be somewhat tenuous).

No matter how far afield Palmer wanders, however, he tends to pull his pieces together. Not in a verse-chorus-bridge-chorus way, but there is a summation for most, and I'm satisfied that I understood something about what I just heard.

So, uh, yeah. This is participatory listening all the way. Palmer challenges, but he leaves bread crumbs as well. I don't know how to classify this, and I don't really want to. But I know I'll be crawling back in, hoping to find more jewels in the mine.

Jon Worley