Mar 6 2017
Recommended: Angles 9 – “Disappeared Behind the Sun”
This is protest music at its best. The tonal changes between unrestrained fury and celebratory cheer mirror the shifting emotions that strike the heart during those moments of despair when we rise up and shout ‘no.’ Time and again, the Angles 9 ensemble capture that with their new album Disappeared Behind the Sun. There’s how “Equality & Death (Mothers, Fathers, Where Are Ye?)” transitions between states of raw intensity and joyful enthusiasm and the way that “Ådror” has a martial cadence matched up with a fluttering melody. There’s also how “Pacemaker” moves like a Mardi Gras second line sent forward into the battlefield and also how the title-track enters a state of self-reflection even when the tempo spurs things on relentlessly and the song explodes into a thousand pieces. And wrapping up with “Love, Flee Thy House (In Breslau),” a piece that emphasizes the heartbreak of the blues in both a solitary and collective context, speaks to the meaning behind the album’s title.
There is a power in overcoming fear, surmounting despair, and fighting back. And there is a great relief, bordering on euphoria, of discovering you are not alone and that others, too, are rising up in opposition. It is a time when we are reminded of the best of humanity at the very same moment we are facing down the worst of it. Those conflicting emotions are also complementary, and the music of Angles 9 addresses it with an immediacy that strikes a mainline to the heart.
Your album personnel: Martin Küchen (alto & tenor saxophones), Alexander Zethson (piano), Mattias Ståhl (vibraphone), Magnus Broo (trumpet), Goran Kajfes (cornet), Mats Äleklint (trombone), Eirik Hegdal (baritone sax), Johan Berthling (double bass) and Andreas Werliin (drums),
Released on Clean Feed Records.
Music from Lund (and many other parts of), Sweden.
It’s notable how impressively trumpeter Ian Carey is able to keep Interview Music sounding unbound and free even within a meticulous framework of compositions, and how the ensemble doesn’t leave its fingerprints on the transitions between planned and improvisational sections. But what really elevates this session to something special is how much fun they have playing with a straight-ahead sound. It’s the suddenness of wind instruments exploding with the grace and speed of a murmuration of starlings, and how bass & drums attempt to break the sound barrier while trumpet patiently sighs out a melody, and how a sing-song melody snaps into place with harmony that is all about contemplation, and how the wind instruments take angles and bend curvatures that brush up against the expected change in direction without actually taking it. It’s all of these unexpected traits, accents and differentiations, that has the cumulative effect of transforming the album’s entire world.
Mar 7 2017
These are videos that I like: Angles 9 in Trieste and Hasselt
Today’s featured videos put the spotlight on the ensemble Angles 9. Their new release Disappeared Behind the Sun was yesterday’s daily recommendation (go read it).
Our first video is from a May 2016 performance at Le Nuove Rotte del Jazz in Trieste, Italy.
And the next video goes back a little ways for a 2012 performance of the song “In Our Midst” Live in Hasselt, KC Belgie.
The song “In Our Midst” appears on their excellent 2014 release Injuries, which earned the #8 slot on this site’s Best of 2014 list.
You should check that album out (go read about it).
Like this:
By davesumner • These are videos that I like • 0