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.
Mr Olivetti
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...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 […]
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 […]
...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 […]
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.
Attenuation Circuit has been releasing their limited-run experimental releases for over twenty years with no sign of running out of enthusiasm or willing contributors to broaden our aural palates. Two recent releases go a long way to showing how diverse the releases can be.
Joined by various guests to add colour and character to the mysterious surrealism of the story, Aksak Maboul weave a genre-defying web around the listener, guided onward only by Veronique's recounting, the thread that draws the unwitting ever deeper.
For the inaugural release on Clonmell Jazz Social, they have called upon guitarist Harry Christelis to convene a quartet of upcoming players that will do justice to a series of elegant drifting creations that hover somewhere around the border between jazz and minimalism, ever-moving but also always gently steering the listener towards soft, unexpected landscapes.
Steve's voice gives an unusual perspective, a fine enunciation always surpassed by the words. You feel him tasting them, rolling them around like brandy and then carefully allowing them out, each word ideally formed. The players, himself included, swirl a magical, churning mixture, hypnotic dereliction, groaning grey and often uncomfortable, but only because that is what the message demands.
The awkwardness is intriguing but is in no way alienating, you just need to listen again to fully understand how it pieces together and the stripped down post-jazz stylings of the album closer are just the icing on the cake, all judicious placing, a distant wail and momentum you can sink into.
There is structureless flickering with the voice as old and arid as forgotten wheat, shimmering in a heat haze, the vibrato hinting at something while the guitars howl like guiding beasts desperation ever present.