Charlotte Keeffe – Alive! In The Studio

Discus

Diverse trumpeter and flugelhorn player Charlotte Keeffe is a restless soul and one who itches for musical opportunities. For this album, she has has re-assembled the quartet that appeared on the previous album Right Here, Right Now and thrown them into the studio to see what can come from this immediate interaction.

Each of the pieces presented here are instinctual journeys traveling from structural bases and disappearing into an ever expanding improvisational universe. Playful intros often hinting at their improv roots, all players tinkering, dropping sounds into a hidden well and seeing what lands first; a shuffle, a snort, a stamp of the foot, a tingling guitar run that is mimicked almost cheekily by the trumpet. They chase one another, blearing and bleating, fast and slow, pensive then forthright; and then all hands inside as they dip into the abyss.

Fully textured drums with dreamy cymbal clatter and fleet footed diagonals, the rimshots waking us from our slumber. The sharpness then makes for a sweet treat of a bass riff, tumbling up and down, breathless through the ragged pathways. The trumpet gives it an old-fashioned TV show shot, our ears pricking with possible familiarities as the ghost of Django Reinhardt steps lightly. The resonance and stretch of the bass is divine, while the guitar and trumpet appear like jugglers, passing the objects between them, daring the other to drop the ever increasing load.

At other points they stall, stuck in the mud, wheels spinning. Spattering the surroundings with clods of whatever is picked up, dodging and ducking to avoid a clout in the eye while elsewhere the cutest of guitar led melancholy melodies tugs at the heartstrings. It is also so nice to hear a bass with ample opportunity to stun us with solo sensibilities; melodic, mellow, ever an antithesis to the fractured, fluctuating flugel. You feel as if that is a hint of Joaquín Rodrigo‘s Concerto de Aranjuez, but as if heard through a blender filled with cotton wool and those noises that Charlotte teases from her horns. Breathy blasts that taunt the guitar which hobbles and quivers in response. In fact, Charlotte plays like she has a radio dial that somebody is gaily twisting, taking her through the spectrum, moving from melody to mania in a swift twist.

Helicopter noises from the drums seem unlikely, guitar pick-up stutter fragmented, trumpet moving just out of reach; it is hard to make yourself comfortable as a hint of “Summertime” (or is it?) wavers in the air. Guitar feeds back over droplets of sound scattered across a windswept lake while the trumpet comes across like a horn / human hybrid; the noises escaping are neither one thing or the other, inhuman eructations prompting the others to diversify if they can.

An anti-rock, obsessive, cyclical motif escapes towards the end. It is a beautiful thing to which they return time and again, powerful cymbal play disappears into a Technicolor stratosphere, hurling in violent orbit as the trumpet reeds disintegrate upon re-entry. We end with another bass-led lullaby, the pure woodblock texture lending an ’80s-ish slant to the guitar and bass interplay; and when wordless voices finally break out, it all makes perfect sense, a joyous, wordless exclamation that nothing can follow.

Alive! In The Studio is a shapeshifting delight of an album, an explosion of sounds and rhythmic interjections that never really lets up. Impressive stuff.

-Mr Olivetti-