Martin Pyne – Spirits Of Absent Dancers

Discus

Martin Pyne spends a lot of his time preparing music for use in a dance studio environment, so during this recent period where everybody is shut up in their own little universes, he has found his mind wandering. Images of a lonely musician adrift in an empty theatre bereft of performers abound in this latest collection of lovely stripped back pieces that utilise percussion and vibes, with the resonance of an empty room and the swelling reverb of the vibes lending gravity and melancholy to the improvisations.

There is a shadowy mystery at play on Spirits Of Absent Dancers; the initial piece featuring a toy piano, but still managing to evoke ghostly movement, the affecting resonance caught in a shuttered, dust-flecked aura. From then on, the pieces seem to alternate between percussion-led tracks and vibes-oriented pieces that cause constant change and the swirl of limbs passing through air. The echoes are pure and unfettered, untouched by obstructions and objects, just drifting in the darkness.

Japanese bowls add a spiritual element and a hazy feel to some of the pieces, and sit well with the firefly-like vibes. This is improv but in a thoughtful way, scattered yet ruminative. The vibes are a magical instrument that you feel just might dissipate into the aether in the more abstract pieces, while some of the drum pieces are jazzy and can have a touch more heft. Regardless of this, they are always about the capture of movement and that elusive sensation that the missing dancers attain.

There is nothing gauche here and nothing derivative, everything sinuous and travelling with a certain distant grace. Martin is a great player and he wrings everything out of the shrunken kit he has chosen to use, while his feeling for what the vibes can transmit with the faintest of notes is impeccable. His ability to evoke mood without resorting to standard rhythmic practice is great for the atmosphere required here, and the deft juxtaposition between movements is nicely done.

When a martial rhythm is employed around the middle of the album in “Visitant”, this comes as quite a surprise, with its all-round kit workout and general liveliness highlighting the sparseness of the preceding “Charm”, where the vibes take on the distant tremor of wine glasses. It sounds as though the edges of the vibes are being bowed on certain pieces, and particularly on “Hexing” that juxtaposition with the more exuberant workout moves from light to shade with great subtlety.

Spirits Of Absent Dancers is a selection of pieces that are in a way melancholic, but aim far higher than that, twisting sound and texture to fit the sort of whirling physical shapes that the spectral dancers of the musician’s imagination may have conjured. Unusual in a way, but so atmospheric and evocative that it works perfectly.

-Mr Olivetti-