Still happily ensconced on Tapete, his fifth album for them emerges from the gloom with a stripped-down sound that, although still slow and steady, certainly has chinks of light filtering through the treetops.
Mr Olivetti
765 posts
All the way through the album, though the clarity of sound sparkles, the definition between the three players is just right and the overall mood transient, moving from the melancholy delicacy of opener "Little Abi" right on to the more mournful cello drone infused "En Stor Dag".
Friend of and brother to Townes Van Zandt, Roxy Gordon was a Texan-born outlaw poet who used the spoken word medium to highlight the contentious relationship between European settlers and native Americans. Working with other marginal Texan musicians, his dry as a bone drawl, ancient as the dusty earth from which he came is perfect for these cheaply produced but supremely moving and historically fascinating vignettes.
Containing four trumpeters and five trombonists as well as an array of sax, clarinet, percussion and electronics, it really does contain an army of noise makers ... feels a little like being poked in the chest as someone makes a strenuous point while travelling on a roller coaster.
Guitarists Sylvain Chauveau and Joel Merah, along with percussionist Stephane Garin, conceived Ensemble 0 with a self-imposed rule that the instruments for all the pieces written for the trio should fit into a suitcase so that touring abroad would be a lot easier.
...allowing the octet to straddle the borders of swinging, classic jazz with a freer, more progressive approach, shading in the areas between and generally having a fine old time if the smiles on the album photograph are anything to go by.
That wonderful louche coolness that epitomised the last Terry album is still here in droves on their fourth longplayer, but you have the feeling that there is a little anger and frustration in the mix. The album pointedly mentions that it was recorded on unceded Aboriginal land and they seem to be drawing the listener's attention to elements of Australia's shady past.
Clearly, although the interconnectedness of the players is as rich as before, they have chosen to take things in a more contemplative and languid manner, letting the music to reflect back on the listener, raising the beaded curtain and allowing them to peer through into their uniquely glazed realm.
Computer Students have uncovered the only album produced by Boston-based Lynx, a turn of the millennium instrumental quartet whose silverfish flourishes and head-spinning interplay shared some elements with the likes of Don Caballero and Polvo from the Touch & Go camp and Sonna and Rumah Sakit from the Temporary Residence family...
...for his first release on the Glacial Movements label, it sounds as though he has uncovered a cocooned world, with electronic sounds thrumming and reverberating, half-heard through gauze, oblique movements that hint at places unknown...
Thanotosis Produktion I was intrigued to discover that, as well as performing in various small ensembles over a twenty-five year career, Tomas Hallonsten has offered his skills to such diverse acts as Fire! Orchestra and The Concretes. I can’t think of two more disparate acts and neither group really sheds any obvious light on the pieces compiled in Monolog, his first solo offering. He has a welcome home […]
Soul Song The pairing of bassist Yosef Gutman Levitt and guitarist Tal Yahalom is an intriguing one, both wishing to bring greater attention to those melodies of the Hasidim that might otherwise escape the attention of the average gentile listener. This is their second album together and here, they turn their considerable skills to nigunim — traditional wordless Jewish melodies — that were transcribed and recorded by Eli Rivkin […]
...here with All Hands_Make Light, he finally teams up with old friend and erstwhile Broken Social Scene vocalist Ariel Engle for a series of dawn-related gestures that hint at the drifting work with Kevin Doria, but allies that vibe with a kind of astral sea shanty atmosphere that finds the listener drifting with the pair through uncharted melodies and unexpected depths.
Discus This is the sixth Orchestra Of The Upper Atmosphere release in ten or so years, and the distant adventures on which they embark are always welcome. Still an eight-piece, Theta Six finds the ensemble distilling their ideas into shorter pieces, although where some of them end and some of them start is not always so obvious. But the essence of spatial exploration and yearning for ways to […]
They were recorded live at the NRK Studio and in places you can hear the appreciative audience. The list of personnel for Kork amounts to forty or so and that is players alone; so you would imagine that their sheer numbers would overwhelm the trio, but thankfully there is an incredible subtlety as well as variation to their additions which enhance and, if anything, draw fresh thoughts from Rymden.
The fact that this long gestation has neither disrupted the flow nor knocked them off course says a lot about the trio’s interaction, their ability to lock together and ride a groove to its inevitable conclusion; because for all the talk of consciously unfashionable, this music still rocks and maintains a momentum that surfs right through the album.
There is a dreamy quality to his sax playing on Balans and the opening track feels like an introduction to an inner world. Synth tones drift in a similar romantic Angelo Badalamenti vein. There is distance to the piano; but all is welcoming, even the soft flutter of the percussion. There is intimacy here, close-up sounds evolving just for you, a soft air of someone with something special to show.
The synth and organ sounds vary greatly across the tracks and at some points sound like children's cartoon effects, while in other there is an almost sepulchral grandeur. The drums tend to shimmer in the background, gently propelling but never overstepping and the first side is over in no time; four tracks in ten minutes or so.