Oct 1 2017
Your Sunday Morning Jazz Album: Oriol Roca Trio – “Mar”
Sunday morning is when the serenity comes down. Sunday morning is the cocoon from the heavy exhaustion of too much Saturday night fun. Sunday morning is when the city agrees to use its inside voice. Sunday morning is when a hush settles in over the land. It is a time for sitting still and listening to quiet music and silently praying the aspirin and coffee do something to stop your head from exploding. Drama and stress are strictly forbidden on Sunday morning. Your Sunday Morning Jazz Album is just for you, for times just like these.
It’s an uneasy serenity Oriol Roca settles into on his new recording Mar. All of the ingredients necessary for a strong dose of tranquility are present: melodic fragments suggestive of possible endings, the murmur of percussion like slow, easy breaths while dreaming, and highly-charged, vivid imagery. But the drummer, along with his trio of pianist Giovanni Di Domenico and double bassist Manolo Cabras achieve a tone that is subtly ominous and reveals a strange beauty.
“Cançó Sense Lletra” begins like a thick fog, allowing only brief glimpses of the melody hidden within. But gradually, and almost imperceptibly, it attains a momentum that cycles back upon itself, creating a layered, melodic repetition. The result is a presence far more dangerous than that which the song was introduced with. It’s a similar effect on “Straight Line,” in which a wisp of a melody becomes more imposing, as if it were a slowly rising tide.
A few tracks mimic the act of slowly waking up and getting ready for the rest of the Sunday. “In Dyotta” and “You’re not Maurice Chevalier” twitter with life and roll out a tempo that’s ready to run. But nothing they’ve got is anything that’ll interfere with the solemn atmosphere of a peaceful Sunday morning. Nor is it anything that clashes with those tracks that present a more contemplative demeanor.
You need this album today, right now.
- Artist-Title: Oriol Roca Trio – Mar
- Personnel: Oriol Roca (drums), Giovanni Di Domenico (piano) and Manolo Cabras (double bass).
- Proper Use: 1) Something to help get the brain fired up as the New York Times crossword puzzle calls out to you, 2) A soundtrack for cats chasing after the toy mice you launch across the room, or 3) Mapping out your day as you plan the rest of your weekend, and before the Monday morning blues begin their inexorable creep into your subconscious.
Released in 2017 on El Negocito Records.
Listen to more of the album on the artist’s Bandcamp page.
Music from Barcelona.
This Is Billy Mitchell practically screams First Day Of Autumn. This 1962 session featuring the profusely talented and tragically under-the-radar
Oct 22 2018
The Round-up: I was becoming a fixture
Here is some very good new music.
Onyx Collective – Lower East Suite, Part Three (Big Dada)
This is more a collection of photos than songs, where the sharp imagery, frozen in time, resonates far longer than the brief moments captured on film. Most of the album’s ten tracks are quick and to the point, as if simply introducing an idea and letting the listener flesh it out on their own time. Individually, this works well for each piece, but taken as a whole and in the context of the flow of one track to the next, it’s pretty damn thrilling. Barely has one reaction hit its peak before you’re put in the position of having to absorb the next. There’s something special about an album that forces you to stay on your toes. Your Collective is saxophonist Isaiah Barr, drummer Austin Williamson, upright bassist Walter Stinson, electric bassist Spencer Murphy, plus Roy Nathanson guesting on saxophone. Music from NYC.
Artist site | Listen | Buy: Bandcamp – Amazon
Stijn en Mala – Vaart (Self-Produced)
Here’s your music for a peaceful Sunday morning, when all you want to do is bring tranquility to your life, and, perhaps, nurse away your Saturday night hangover. The duo of violinist Mala Dengkeng and pianist Stijn van der Smagt cycle through a pattern of soothing melody dissipates into a warm blanket of harmony. The only complaint I have about this recording is that there’s only five tracks. They could have tripled this album’s duration and it still wouldn’t have been enough. Music from Delft, Netherlands.
Here’s a video for the title-track. It has everything I could want from a video: Trains, boats, planes, seagulls, moody landscapes accompanied by moody music.
Artist site | Listen | Buy: Bandcamp
Bongwool Lee – My Singing Fingers (Origin Records)
Sometimes you just want to sit back with a piano trio recording that plays it nice and straight, and patiently dives into a melody to explore every inch. The debut from Bongwool Lee will definitely fit that need. The pianist straddles that middle ground where old-school jazz bleeds into the modern post-bop, and so the music is always plenty lively even when it grows increasingly contemplative. Bassist Luques Curtis and drummer Kendrick Scott are attached to the hip with Lee throughout, and that grand unity is why the music possesses a seriously appealing flow. Music from NYC.
Artist site | Listen | Buy: Bandcamp – Amazon
Thomas Nordlund – Miles Left Behind (Shifting Paradigm Records)
Miles Left Behind has got an easy-to-like personality to it. A modern jazz recording with healthy doses of blues and country, Thomas Nordlund modulates the heat level along the spectrum of campfire warmth to raging bonfire, but keeps closely to one extreme or the other. Ben Abrahamson on banjo is a nice touch, with bassist Doan Roessler and drummer Zach Schmidt rounding out the quartet. The music is stronger when Nordlund’s guitar behaves as the train tracks guiding a tune rather than the locomotive driving it, but I tend to be more particular when it comes to jazz guitar, so that could be written off strictly to personal tastes. Nordlund ends the album with a magnificent rendition of Nils Frahm’s “Si,” which will be addressed in an upcoming column. Music from Minneapolis, MN.
Artist site | Listen | Buy: Bandcamp – Amazon
7to Hot Clube de Portugal – Vol. 3 (Self-Produced)
Breezy tempos and melodies thick as a moonbeam at midnight are the signifying marks of this enjoyable septet session from guitarist Bruno Santos, vocalist Joana Machado, trumpeter João Moreira, saxophonists Pedro Moreira & Ricardo Toscano, bassist Romeu Tristão and drummer João Lopes Pereira. While the gravitational pull is likely stronger towards those pieces that ratchet up the electricity, the ensemble is at their strongest when thoughtfully expressing a melody and nurturing it patiently to a fuller bloom. Music from Lisbon, Portugal.
No artist site | Listen | Buy: Bandcamp
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By davesumner • Jazz Recommendations - 2018, These are videos that I like • 0 • Tags: 7to Hot Clube de Portugal, Big Dada, Bongwool Lee, Delft (NL), Lisbon (Portugal), Mala Dengkeng, Minneapolis (MN), New York City, Onyx Collective, Origin/OA2 Records, Self-Produced, Shifting Paradigm Records, Stijn en Mala, Stijn van der Smagt, Sunday Morning Jazz Album, The Round-Up, Thomas Nordlund