Something Different

Sep 13 2014

Something Different: Tom Varner – “The Swiss Duos”

 

Tom Varner - "The Swiss Duos"Enjoying one of those mornings when I just follow random leads across the internet, moving from one artist and one album to the next, I stumbled across The Swiss Duos, the 2000 release of French horn player Tom Varner.  On it, he collaborates with four different pianists in duo performances:  George Gruntz, Gabriela Friedli, Christoph Baumann, and Hans Feigenwinter.  The album consists of twenty-four tracks, but with most lasting no more than a minute or two.  And while the duration of the pieces may suggest mere interludes, the actuality of these tunes is simply that they are brief expressions that reach their fullness in a very short time.  There is something very refreshing about that.  The music is direct and to the point, and when a song does extend out a bit (as a few do), it’s not done unnecessarily and only until the particular idea has been fully realized.

But it’s hearing French horn in this context that really drew my interest.  It’s not a common instrument to hear on a jazz album, though not unprecedented, either, to be sure.  Varner himself has appeared on albums by John Zorn, Miles Davis, Steve Lacy, Bobby Previte and Franz Koglmann (among others), as well as recordings under his own direction and where he was behind the steering wheel.  What I most appreciate about this session is that French horn isn’t part of a larger ensemble and acting in a complementary role… Varner’s French horn is standing there in the wide open, and how it interacts with piano is going to come through unobstructed without the distraction of other ensemble instruments.  I thought it would be an interesting listen going in, and my assumption was met.  The conversations recorded on The Swiss Duos are a winner, measured both as an enjoyable listening experience and as a source of curiosity.

“Bursting Hymn” and “Quasimodo” have Varner offering solemn tones and excitable ones, with pianist George Gruntz serving up some chipper accompaniment.  And Gruntz is no less cheerful even when he and Varner speak from the soul on “Big George Blues.”  But it’s on a track like “Summertime,” where Varner fully displays the melodic side of his instrument and framing Gruntz’s upbeat disposition in a new light that this particular collaboration shines brightest.  It’s an effect given even greater definition on a rendition of “It Could Happen To You,” with its smoky presence and patient, evocative discourse.

It’s the kind of approach Varner adopts in most of his duets with Gabriela Friedli.  Both of the tunes “Soft” and “Gabriela” shine down with the distant warmth and hazy form of moonlight.  “Big Fall” sees some atonality enter the frame, and the shift to a certain dissonance is completed on the frenetic “Circuits.”

And it’s that kind of behavior that typifies most all of Varner’s duets with pianist Christoph Baumann.  Tracks like “Play,” “Barbarians,” and “Alien Bug” present themselves as would a series of sparring sessions… the trade of punches, bobbing and moving, circling one another as they look for an opening.  The only reprieve is the melodic interlude of “Funny,” which slows things down and attains a relative peacefulness.

The duets with pianist Hans Feigenwinter represent the strongest collaboration of the four.  One of the longer pieces on the recording is a rendition of Feigenwinter’s “Elegy,” which provides Varner his best opportunity for extended melodic development on the album.  Feigenwinter, who has a talent for creating sublime music with brass instruments in small combos (see his excellent 2014 album Whim of Fate), continues that trend here.  “What Is This Thing Called First Strike Capability?” sees the duo in a greater state of agitation while still showing the same care and concern to melodic development… an approach continued on the melancholy “Cool.”

An interesting recording.  I’m glad I stumbled upon it.

Your album personnel:  Tom Varner (French horn), George Gruntz (piano), Christoph Baumann (piano), Gabriela Friedli (piano), and Hans Feigenwinter (piano).

Released in 2000 on Unit Records.

Jazz from the Seattle, Washington scene.

Available at:  eMusic | Amazon MP3

 

By • Jazz Recommendations, The Safety Net • 2 • Tags:

Jul 19 2014

Something Different: Tunto – “Huvi”

 

Tunto - "Huvi"It seems there have been a handful of new albums that hit the sweet spot between jazz, folk, and pop, and immersed so deep in the traits of all that when the music rises back above the surface, it sounds quite unlike any of those influences… or anything else for that matter.  Recent recordings by Stein Urheim, Cliff Hines, and the I Think You’re Awesome ensemble create an intoxicating mix of oddball music that is undeniably absorbing and exceedingly tuneful.

Huvi, the newest album by the Tunto ensemble doesn’t range far from that group.  Led by Matti Wallenius, they incorporate a ridiculous array of instruments to pull off their unorthodox sound.  The catchiness of the songs is highly indebted to an intricate rhythmic approach, one that allows melodies to bounce and jostle and groove and stretch out within the environs of the bustling activity.

Tunto translates from the Finnish as “sense of feel” or the sensation of touch.  That squares with the music, which is something of a tactile sonic experience.  It’s also just plain fun.

Your album personnel:  Matti Wallenius (baglama, balalaika, charango, clay whistle, electric bass, guitars & baritone guitar, keyboards, mandolin, percussion, programming, ukulele & baritone ukulele), Petri Heimonen (clarinet, bass clarinet, contra-alto clarinet, concert & bass flutes, tenor sax), Petri Reinikka (snare drum, rimshots, brushes, cymbal), Henrik Duncker (snare drum, brushes, percussion), Tero Siitonen (double bass), Rudi Nerz (Swiss yodeling), Ahmed Abou Elseoud (voice), and Satu Lankinen (voice).

Released on Aani Records.

Music from the Helsinki, Finland scene.

Available at:  eMusic | CDBaby | Amazon MP3

The Something Different review series highlights albums that are unlike anything else, and which embrace the best qualities of creative vision.

By • Jazz Recommendations, Jazz Recommendations - 2014 Releases • 0 • Tags:

Apr 30 2014

Something Different: Roberto Negro – “Loving Suite Pour Birdy So”

 

Art can speak to us.  Creativity is a method of communication.  The craft of various arts often has established lexicons, accepted foundations on which creativity can take shape.  It’s exciting and it’s a joy to hear musicians that present a mastery of their particular language by presenting it in a state of perfection.  Also true that it’s exciting and a joy to hear musicians present a mastery of their particular language by skillfully distorting the rules to present new visions of old vocabularies.  And then there are instances, like Roberto Negro‘s Loving Suite Pour Birdy So, where a new language is built from the ground up.  It is a moment of dramatic inspiration and resounding poetry.

Your album personnel: Roberto Negro (piano), Elise Caron (voice, flute), Théo Ceccaldi (violin), Valentin Ceccaldi (cello), Federico Casagrande (guitar), Nicolas Bianco (double bass), and Xavier Machault (lyrics).

The pianist doesn’t subscribe to any one particular school of music on this massively imaginative recording.  He walks a fine line between jazz and classical without ever stepping into the territory of either.  Vocalist Elise Caron imbues the words of Xavier Machault with a liveliness and a resonance that every author wishes for.  Guitarist Federico Casagrande, who has displayed an envious trend at appearing on the most creative projects around, brings a searing heat to the recording, but even those moments when Negro unleashes him on a song, Casagrande delivers his part with a masterful precision that gives a satisfying sense of form and shape to even those moments of unbridled ferocity.

The bass of Nicolas Bianco isn’t one that gets much separation from the rest of the pack, and yet there are times that his contribution can be felt like the disconcerting, profound rumble of the tiniest earthquakes felt just below the surface of things.  The violin and cello of Theo and Valentin Ceccaldi offers up beautiful harmonies of heartbreaking proportions and the most delicate expressions of melodic intent.

The songs each have their individuality, yet are strongly tethered to one another via a shift into a familiar tempo or the referential accents on Caron’s vocal cadence.  Common fragments of melody pop up at delightful moments.  The album builds a familiarity across the breadth of the songlist, and on an album that is so very different in what it is presenting, that is a quality that can’t be esteemed too heavily.

The urgency of “Tout de toi” yields the prettiest wind-downs of intensity with swells of string harmonies, whereas “Champagne,” drenched in a rising tide of strings and percussion, never turns back.  Retaining the stately elegance of classical music, it matches the Velvet Underground’s terrific surge of rock ‘n roll intensity on “Heroin.”  And then there’s “”Comme un livre d’Erri de Luca,” which blends the two of these approaches to intensity, building oh so slowly that it doesn’t even seem like a build until a certain elevation is attained and the rush of perspective is as thrilling as the music itself.

Caron’s vocal delivery has a persistent edginess to it, even as it comforts the ears.  The acrobatics of “Bal(l)ade volée de Birdy So” has her paired with strings, and transitioning from concentric loops of melody to rhythmic lateral scrambling.  “Bicyclette” is her personification of sunlight flitting through the cool shade of wavering leaves.

The refracted melody and hint of dissonance on “M’avez-vous dit vous?” and the odd groove of “Pivoine Shichifukujin” provide horizon lines of perspective to an album that trades in singular visions.  This is further evidenced by “Toi, moi, oie,” which begins as lullaby before waking up to dance as folk song.  There is a sense of dream to this entire recording.

An album of massive imagination, and that it can also be so simple to engage is just more proof of the masterful touch applied to this thrilling album.

Released originally on La Curieuse.  Now released on Triocollectief.

Listen to more of the album on the label’s Bandcamp page.

Available at:  eMusic | Amazon | Bandcamp

The Something Different review series highlights albums that are unlike anything else, and which embrace the best qualities of creative vision.

By • Jazz Recommendations, Jazz Recommendations - 2014 Releases • 0 • Tags:

Apr 8 2014

Something Different: Stein Urheim – “Stein Urheim”

 

Stein Urheim - "Stein Urheim"Aside from excellent musicianship, the eminent quality of the music of folk guitarists Leo Kottke and John Fahey that draws in so many fans is the storytelling nature of their music.  Whether accompanied by a band or, even better, in a solo setting, Kottke and Fahey were able to create entire worlds in their music, populate them with a variety of characters, and then lay down a little bit of plot into the foundation of a tune.  Live, it’s common for Kottke to tell anecdotes from his own life, and show how they inspired the next song to be performed… additional exposition adding more texture, more color to the story of the song.  And the music had so much to say, even in its simplest forms.

Stein Urheim has that quality.  Building on the territory covered on his excellent 2012 release Kosmolodi, his new recording, the self-titled Stein Urheim, creates entire universes from scratch, then presents a microcosm of each one song at a time.  A kaleidoscopic array of influences of regional folk musics, of blues, of jazz, of classical, of avant-garde, of whatever unique expressions reside in his head, Urheim presents them all with the heart of the storyteller.

Your album personnel: Stein Urheim (guitars, flutes, harmonica, slide tamboura, fretless bouzouki, gu qin, mandolin, langeleik, charango, banjo, analog synths and effects) and Jørgen Træen (modular synth and effects).

These are stories told patiently and thick with details, but at its heart is some universal truth, untranslatable, but represented by its melody.  Second track “After the Festival” reveals a diverse parade of expressions so typical of this inventive recording, and at the very end of the tune, Urheim reveals the simple, yet poignant melody that had existed all along, hidden until the last moment, and illuminating the meaning of it all… like watching a reverse time lapse of the life of a magnificent flower, and at its conclusion, witnessing the tiny seed that led up to the majestic bloom.

Urheim uses a vast array of instruments for his purposes, with Jørgen Træen adding some synths and effects.  The looping effects on album opener “Kosmoloda” provides the ethereal magic reminiscent of Bill Frisell solo folk-jazz recordings like Ghost Town and The Willies… an alien warmth that is both comforting and spooky.

The harmonica on “Beiing Blues” spreads all kinds of sunlight over the languorous tune, and the blues of “Great Distances” adds an appealing grey-skies quality to the affair, whereas “Watch the View” rustles up tension between those opposing forces… an unsettling ambiance from knowing that the world can turn on a dime with a downpour of rain or blanket of sunlight.

Perhaps most compelling about this album is that the presentation of this myriad of sounds and influences is done with a casual ease, a lazy Sunday atmosphere that is supremely compelling… intricacies and complexities delivered with an easy grace.

Just a beautiful album, where there is no end to the details and their magic never fades.

Released on Hubro Music.

Music from the Bergen, Norway scene.

Available at:  eMusic | Amazon CD – MP3 – Vinyl

By • Beyond Jazz Reviews, Jazz Recommendations, Jazz Recommendations - 2014 Releases • 0 • Tags: , ,

Mar 27 2014

Something Different: I Think You’re Awesome – “Løft Mig Op, Så Jeg Kan Nå”

 

I Think You're Awesome - "Loft Mig Op Sa Jeg Kan Na"I am absolutely captivated by the debut EP Løft Mig Op, Så Jeg Kan Nå, from the endearingly named ensemble I Think You’re Awesome.  A mix of jazz, folk, pop, avant-garde, rock, and, apparently, any other influences that just seemed to click at the time, this live performance recording has a unique personality and a sound all to itself.

Many of the albums I feature on the Something Different review series are best observed from a distance… they are as much spectacle as sonic engagement… expressions of creativity that should be bonded with both for enjoyment of the music and the intrigue from edgy creative endeavors.  I Think You’re Awesome negates that duality entirely, creating an album that is so genial, so simple to connect with that it’s easy to overlook the massive achievement of creating something so extraordinarily idiosyncratic.

Your album personnel: Kasper Staub (juno, wurlitzer), Alex Jønsson (guitar), Morten Kærup (banjo, guitar), Jens Mikkel (bass), Andreas Skamby (drums), and guests: Scott Westh (trumpet), Maria Isabel Edlund (cello), and Jens Bang (trombone).

The title translates to “lift me up so I can reach.”

Right away the album shows its unique personality.  The album opens with “Be Kind to Your Neurosis,” a song that matches Kærup’s peaceably ambling banjo with wavering synth chords and a cheerfully twittering drum contribution.  Jønsson adds some melodic shading in accompaniment on guitar.  The music’s individuality does nothing to stifle its genuineness, an abiding sense that this music comes from the heart and isn’t some wild stab at differentiation for the sake of, well, just being different.

“Girls With Radical Haircuts” rambles right along, Mikkel’s bass and Staub’s wurlitzer an enchanting pattern of twisting lines.  It continues right onto “Jeg Vil Ik’ hjem,” but with Westh’s trumpet slowly exhaling melodic notes over the top, something he continues to do on the title-track “I Think You’re Awesome.”  Featuring the melodic lines of guest trumpeter and trombonist Scott Westh and Jens Bang, it’s a series of long sonorous sighs from brass instruments bolstered by the brighter shades of guitar accompaniment, and punctuated by drummer Skamby’s easy-going cadence… creating a dreamlike atmosphere, of mesmerizing qualities within a sea of activity.

“Morgenfunk” changes things up a bit, opening with the sound of flailing brass instruments, breathy and volatile… a bit of dissonance from a highly melodic album.  Jens Mikkel’s bass grows increasingly prominent as the song progresses, eventually leading to a talkative solo passage.

The album ends with “Schwartzwald,” and features cellist Maria Isabel Edlund, whose contribution is one hundred percent hypnotic beauty.  Cello, backed by the Staub’s enthralling wurlitzer accompaniment, brings this captivating album to a lovely conclusion.

The album is Self-Produced.

Music from Denmark.

Available at:  eMusic | Amazon MP3

The Something Different review series highlights albums that are unlike anything else, and which embrace the best qualities of creative vision.

By • Jazz Recommendations, Jazz Recommendations - 2014 Releases • 0 • Tags:

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