Matt White leads Fight the Big Bull, an adventurous nonet from Richmond, Virginia. His compositions draw from a host of jazz idioms, with big band moments and blues passages alternating with sections of full band improvisation. You can hear the ghost of Mingus behind him, but more than anything else, Dying Will Be Easy shows his love of textures. The title track opens with a low hum (A fully muted trumpet? Someone playing a mouthpiece?) that mimics feedback as it swells and is joined by the other horns. Drummer Pinson Chanselle’s sounds vary constantly, and he often plays a plate of clanking metal instead of a cymbal. White’s compositions give a lot of the heavy lifting to trombone players Reggie Pace and Bryan Hooten, who color behind other solos, often in their biggest, brassiest modes or with mutes for a little more hair. The album’s just over a half-hour long, and at that it’s a tight, effective introduction to an interesting project.