What are you listening to and WHY might anyone be interested? (Vol. XIV)
Posted by: Richard Dane on 31 December 2017
On the eve of a new year, it's time for a new thread.
Last year's thread can be found here:
Better than Nils Petter Molvær for me...
It's not uncommon to find bassists and drummers who work together so well that they become almost inseparable; often hired together because of their distinctive simpatico. It's rarer to find full groups with their own signature, expanding their vernacular by recruiting others for alternate ideas. Trumpeter Markus Stockhausen, bassist Arild Andersen and percussionist Patrice Heral have been working together since 1998 but, despite a singular aesthetic, it's their guest collaborators who have helped build a small but diverse body of work; each project blending recognizable elements and fresh perspectives.
Electric Treasures is the first time they've recorded with a keyboardist. Karta (ECM, 2000) was a largely spontaneous and more electrified affair with guitarist Terje Rypdal, while Joyosa (Enja, 2007) focused more on composition; featuring acoustic guitarist Ferenc Sentberger, with whom Stockhausen also recorded the lyrical Streams (Enja, 2007). Recorded live with keyboardist Vladyslav Sendecki, Electric Treasures shares more with Karta's in-the-moment spontaneous composition. Unlike the ECM disc however, where seven of its eleven tracks were culled and shaped from a ninety-minute free improvisation—yet were still each remarkable for their sense of individual completeness—Electric Treasures documents an entire performance from start-to-finish; a document of exactly what went down.
With little in the way of advance planning, Electric Treasure is all the more impressive for the quartet's ability to pull true form out of the ether. While vamp-based pieces act as striking vehicles for the quartet's stylistic diversity—ranging from unfettered free play and hard-swinging modality to hip-hop inflected grooves and dense, post-Miles jungle rhythms—it's when they create song-like structure that the true meaning of spontaneous composition becomes clear. Abstraction and electronics-filled landscapes turn "Electric Treasures Ten" into a stunning blend of texture and ethereal melody, but it's Stockhausen's thematic lead-in to "Eleven" that—with Andersen and Sendecki picking up on the trumpeter's implicit changes—makes it a poignant culmination to a two-disc set that, even at its most oblique, remains eminently accessible.
Stockhausen's range has never been captured so completely on a single release, moving from a rich acoustic tone to fiercely processed tonalities and the occasional brash tinge; effortlessly flowing from singable melodies to fiery post-bop phrases. Andersen, a double-bassist who cites the late electric bassist Jaco Pastorius as a seminal influence, seamlessly integrates processing and loops into a virtuosity that never sacrifices substance for style. Heral not only locks in with Andersen as if they were joined at the hip, but allows the music to take unexpected shape as his textural breadth combines with a wildly encyclopedic understanding of pulse, spanning cultures and decades. Sendecki is just as moving, a strong soloist with no shortage of the jazz tradition at play, but equally comprised of influences ranging from classical romanticism to ambient sonorities and transcendent impressionism.
Together, Stockhausen, Sendecki, Andersen and Heral make Electric Treasures a journey that can be taken as shorter side-trips, but is far more successful when absorbed in its entirety; ninety minutes of spellbinding and enlightening interplay all the better when experienced with eyes closed, ears open and mind unhindered by preconception.
Track Listing: CD1: Electric Treasures One; Electric Treasures Two; Electric Treasures Three; Electric Treasures Four; Electric Treasures Five; Electric Treasures Six. CD2: Electric Treasures Seven; Electric Treasures Eight; Electric Treasures Nine; Electric Treasures Ten; Electric Treasures Eleven.
Personnel: Markus Stockhausen: trumpet, electronics; Vladyslav Sendecki: keyboards, piano; Arild Andersen: bass, electronics; Patrice Herl: drums, percussion, voice, electronics.
Murray Perahia - Goldberg variations
Zsofia Boros - Local Objects
Great atmospheric album
Good day so far
A nice bit of 60s Elvis on vinyl. This is LP one of the six-LP vinyl box, The Definitive 60s Masters. Here the King is still sounding good, before he moved onto those sappy movie soundtracks:
"Coming into Los Angeles..."
It almost feels like summer in sunny Wiltshire.
Maurizio Pollini before sunrise:
Slim68 posted:Nordic Giants, Amplify Human Vibration.
Don’t wait until the last moment of the last hour to listen to this album, it deserves your attention now.
it would be rude not to....lovely stuff, a great find ...thanks
Vladimir Feltsman - Bach: Art of Fugue.
Nice version of the the art of fugue.
Jan Willem de Vriend - Haydn: Divertimenti
Saxophonist/composer Andy Sheppard has found a home in ECM. It's maybe not the perfect home for an artist as eclectic as Sheppard, for it's hard to see some of his other projects—notably the Scofield/Lovanoesque quartet Hotel Bristol—fitting in with the ECM aesthetic. Still, Sheppard's melodic improvisational approach and the airy lyricism on Movements in Color (ECM, 2009) and Trio Libero (ECM, 2012) fitted the ECM blueprint beautifully and rank among his most seductive recordings. With Surrounded by Sea Sheppard expands the sonic palette of Trio Libero with the addition of guitarist/electronics musician Eivind Aarset, whose ambient craft adds profundity—and simmering edge—to the prevailing undertstaed lyricism.
Surrounded by Sea trades some of Trio Libero's rubato grace for greater harmonic layers and rhythmic dynamics; on the stunning opener "Tipping Point," Michel Benita's deep bass ostinato and Sebastian Rochford's skipping grooves drive Sheppard's tenor siren, while Aarset's embedded drone and softly voiced, washing six-string textures add atmospheric ambient textures. Sheppard's trademark soprano melodicism is to the fore on Elvis Costello's "I Want to Vanish," a lulling ballad of folkloric charm where Rochford's brushes sigh like waves on a pebble beach.
Folk music has colored most of Sheppards' recorded output over the years and here the quartet addresses "Aoidh, Na Dean Cadal Idir," a traditional Scottish song. The tune blossomed into a twenty-minute improvisation in the studio, was subsequently pruned and woven through the album in three parts, conferring a suite-like continuity on the whole. Hauntingly atmospheric and abundantly lyrical, Sheppard's yearning soprano is lent buoyancy by the loose grooves on the first and third parts. Part two is a fleeting vignette whose feathery lyricism dissipates and vanishes like the lightest of breezes briefly felt. More of this improvised/studio-sculpted mini-suite embedded throughout the album wouldn't have gone amiss.
Gentle eddies of bass and tenor saxophone color the poetic "Origin of the Species," with Aarset's orchestral waves subtly infusing the narrative; Rochford's presence is ghostly—sensed rather than heard. A similar aesthetic imbues "The Impossibility of Silence," with brushes more prominent. Fractured rhythms and echoing guitar plot the course on "They Aren't Perfect and Neither Am I," a brooding quartet tale where sketchy composed lines and measured improvisation dovetail easily. The low-rumbling intensity of the intro to "I See Your Eyes before Me" gives way to Sheppard's tenor lead, searching and ruminative in turn. The simple architecture of the dreamy waltz "A Letter" foregrounds Sheppard's beautiful weighted soprano lines.
Sheppard revisits older material on the hypnotic "Medication," previously interpreted with the Bergen Big Band; Aarset shadows Sheppard's defining melody closely before the saxophonist peels away over Rochford's light, yet propulsive groove. On "Looking for Ornette," Sheppard is drawn once more to explore the nuances of his Ornette Coleman-inspired piece that appeared on Dancing Man and Woman (Provocateur Records, 2000), closing this album in quietly celebratory mode.
Surrounded by Sea is an intimate statement whose chemistry belies the quartet's brief existence. There's a bold honesty in the music's refined contours and graceful adventure that invites and rewards the patient listener. There's the feeling too, that this quartet has plenty more to offer.
Track Listing: Tipping Point; I Want To Vanish; Aoidh, Na Dean Cadal Idir, Part 1; Origin of Species; They Aren’t Perfect and Neither Am I; Medication; Aoidh, Na Dean Cadal Idir, Part 2; The Impossibility of Silence; I See Your Eyes Before Me; A Letter; Aoidh, Na Dean Cadal Idir, Part 3; Looking for Ornette.
Personnel: Andy Sheppard, tenor & soprano saxophones; Seb Rochford: drums, percussion; Eivind Aarset: electric guitars, electronics; Michel Benita: bass.
Red Hot on Impulse! Good compilation made slightly less enjoyable by Naim's failure to allow proper indexing of such.
Now Playing........
Bill Frisell - Small Town
Bill Frisell (guitar) and Thomas Morgan (double bass)
Streaming on NAS.......... Starting this three day holiday weekend with Bill and will be ending it with Bill who will be performing at Jazz Alley in Seattle on Monday night!
Ray Brown - Summertime
Now Playing........
Bill Frisell - Selected Recordings Rarum V
Bill Frisell (guitars, banjo, guitar synthesizer), Joe Lovano (tenor saxophone), Billy Drewes (alto saxophone), Ed Schuller (double-bass), Paul Motian (drums), Jan Garbarek (soprano saxophone), Eberhard Weber (bass), Michael DiPasqua (drums), Kenny Wheeler (trumpet, cornet), Joey Baron (drums), Lee Konitz (alto saxophone), Dave Holland (double-bass), Paul Bley (piano), John Surman (soprano saxophone), Jamie McCarthy (recorder), Roger Heaton (clarinet), Alexander Balanescu (violin), Martin Allen (vibraphone), John White (piano), and Gavin Bryars (double-bass).
Streaming on NAS.......... Just enjoying some Bill Frisell with a host of other great musicians!
(1967)
Their second album, one of three they released in '67.