The Safety Net

The Safety Net, a Bird is the Worm series which highlights outstanding older albums that may have flown under the radar when first released.

*****

It’s easy to make assumptions.  The premise of To the Moon is that three musicians planned to get into the studio for a recording session of completely improvised music, which they wanted to possess an other-worldly sound.  It wouldn’t be out of line for someone to conclude that this would be free jazz that dealt in cacophony, dissonance, and a music geometry that precluded definition.  And there’d have been nothing wrong with the album had it been exactly that.  Improvised music, especially when several voices join in, it can be just as jumbled and awkward and tangential as any normal discussion between a group of people who sit down in a room and begin talking.

But the thing of it is, improvised music can take any form, and just as it’s possible for three strangers to have a convivial, tempered conversation at the drop of a dime, so it holds that a clarinet, cello, and piano can do the same, were they to come together at a recording studio in Minneapolis on a cold winter day and begin playing.

This is one of those conversations.  And it’s a truly beautiful thing to hear.

Your album personnel:  Jean-Marc Foltz (clarinets), Matt Turner (cello), and Bill Carrothers (piano).

This is thoughtful music.  This is music that possesses a distant beauty, like stars on dark night far away from the city lights, inspiring admiration and ruminations on their majestic power.

Foltz makes his clarinets heard as if emanating from the darkness, seen but not heard, felt but not touched.  The deeper the register, the more soulful his sound, and also the more mysterious.  On the track “To Columbine,” his clarinet stays to the background, yet its presence is most pronounced each time he offers up an unhurried sanguine note.  And when he takes the lead, as he does on “Prayer,” he takes deliberate steps that possess a restraint even when a route is chosen that leads away from the established path.

Pianist Carrothers has developed an elegantly understated tone over the course of his career, making some intriguing inroads with solo performances.  His particular style works to great effect here, imbuing the music with a detached warmth, a quiet nobility that enhances the music’s airy touch, but keeps things close to the earth and prevents it from getting so atmospheric that it becomes insubstantial.  On “A Pale Washerwoman,” Carrothers ties knots around Turner’s thick cello lines, providing a context in which they flourish.

Turner’s cello was such a wise inclusion for this recording.  By its very nature, cello has a dreamy sound to it, and on a track like “Crosses,” where Carrothers slowly builds up to a dramatic point and Foltz shrieks and howls on clarinet, Turner’s immaculate sound on cello is like water washing over scarred rock, filling in spaces, smoothing over rough edges, and making everything cool and clear and new again.  On “Old Pantomimes,” Turner’s slow luxuriant notes give voice to the sound of moonlight.

A few tracks get the heart rate up a bit.  “Gallows Song” begins with a cello that has a bit of anxiousness coloring the edges of the notes, piano with short bursts of twittering notes, and clarinet slashing across the cello’s path at opposite angles.  They continue this pattern, working themselves up into a fervor that ends only when the song reaches its conclusion and the trio goes out like a skittering church mouse.

And then there’s songs like “Knitting Needles,” with its low pulse on clarinet and piano, and a high pitch on cello, stoking imagery of Norman Bates prowling to an eerie groove.  But even here, the music doesn’t become untethered from the album’s ethereal moodiness.

In the album liner notes, there’s mention that Foltz commented that the music from this session took them right to the moon.  Based on the album’s other-worldly sound, and its distantly beautiful qualities, it appears that’s exactly what happened.

Recorded in 2008, and released in 2010 on the Ayler Records label.

Available direct from Ayler Records.

Also, Available at eMusic.  Available at Amazon: CD | MP3

The Icelandic Jazz sound produces notes that linger, frozen in the air, yet still emit a warmth that makes for the kind of early morning music that allows one to slowly rise to the day.  Einar Scheving embodies the beauty and languor of the Icelandic Jazz sound as well as anybody on the scene.

Some albums are like stories.  The music of Cycles is ethereal and vivid, like a story that unfolds within a dream.

Take into account opening track “Sveitin.”  What begins as a tranquil lullaby transitions into a fluttering coda of saxophone murmurs and rhythms like a chorus of crickets.  Like dreams, the context takes a sudden turn, yet it all makes sense in that elastic way logic plays out in slumber.  Track “Recycles,” is a lilting tune, with piano trills, saxophone yawns. and gently loping percussion.

Icelandic Folk music informs much of Scheving’s compositions.  At times it is hinted at, others it shines through bright and strong.  Songs like “No One Knows” have an earthiness to them that speak of old stories told many times.  Languid sax lines belie sprightly piano notes, while shimmering cymbals and the low hum of bass create a foundation that appears perpetually shifting, morphing at the edges of sound.

Dreams can be dynamic and lively.  “Carrots and Ice Cream” dares to wake the dreamer with sharp saxophone and piano interludes, bass and drums upping the heart rate.  On “Rebirth” piano grows tension through rapid repetition of notes, while Scheving’s soft cymbal work counterbalances brooding sax.  Sverrisson’s bass lines paint black shadows in the piano’s wake.

But above all else, this is an album of serenity:

Third track “3” opens with Svererisson’s bass like footsteps awash in moonlight.  Gunnarsson slides his fingers across the piano strings, and the harp-like sound drives the dream-like ambiance in deeper.

“Folk Song” is a pleasant walk through a forest of slightly familiar yet unnameable objects.  Gudjonsson and Gunnarsson attain a casual stroll on sax and piano, while Scheving and Sverrisson walk at a different pace; the crosscurrents of their footfalls is hypnotic.

Title-track “Cycles” is a cloudy day and nothing to do but sit back and enjoy the beautiful cloudy day.  Piano and sax are out front, but it’s bass that anchors this tune in place.

The album ends with “In Sight,” which recreates the pattern of the opening track, but in reverse.  Now is the sense of waking from a dream, stretching arms wide, and greeting the new day sun.

This album is just flat-out beautiful, and emotive as hell.  Exactly the kind of overlooked album that I began the Safety Net series for.  You ECM addicts should be all over Cycles.

Your album personnel:  Einar Scheving (drums, percussion), Skuli Sverrisson (electric & acoustic bass), Eythor Gunnarsson (piano), and Óskar Gudjonsson (tenor sax).

Released in 2007, this album is Self-Produced.

Jazz from the Reykjavík, Iceland scene.

Download a free album track at AllAboutJazz, courtesy of the artist.

Available at eMusic. Available at Amazon: CD

*****

The Safety Net, a Bird is the Worm series which highlights outstanding older albums that may have flown under the radar when first released.