Monthly Archives: August 2012

There are solo albums when it is just an artist and their instrument, alone in a room, and their sound as naked as sunlight in a world without shadows.  No looping, overdubbing, effects, or other wrinkles; just one sound all by its lonesome.  Albums like Lynne Arriale’s Solo and Colin Stetson’s New History Warfare Volume II: The Judges are nice examples of this.  The reward of these albums is the stark honesty such music provides, that the artist, with nowhere to hide, puts the music out there As It Really Is.  The danger manifests with the risk that the artist has less to say or is less able to say it than the endeavor requires.

But then you also have the kind of solo album where the artist takes any and all instruments that catch their fancy, and utilize all of the tools that modern technology offers them, the result often sounding like an ensemble recording:  Textured, diverse, and prolific.  An artist sitting alone in a roomful of instruments and toys, an entire world of sound available to them, a world full of shadows to complement the sunlight.  There is an appeal in a recording that employs this method, that in the boundlessness of possibilities, the creative vision can stretch out as far as it chooses, as opposed to creating the perfect world with less.  The danger in this approach is that the music ends up sounding like a lot of disjointed noodling.

John Surman‘s solo effort, Saltash Bells, falls into the latter category, and, thankfully, does it right.

Your album personnel:  John Surman (soprano, tenor, & baritone saxes, alto, bass, & contrabass clarinets, harmonica, synthesizer & effects).

This is early morning music, something to greet the sun as it rises over the horizon.  This is late night music, a lullaby for the crickets as they doze off to sleep.

The tenor and bari saxophones and clarinets take turns humming comforting notes while synthesizers and effects add a susurrus pulse to fall between woodwind heartbeats.

The soprano and alto saxes and clarinets call out softly but urgently while synthesizer rhythms scoot right along beside them.

Occasionally, the sound of bells chiming, a sound more soft than sharp, providing a bit of nuance that goes a long way in a recording like this.

On some tracks, like “Glass Flower,” it’s clean, simple, and sparse.  On tracks like “On Staddon Heights,” the sound is more akin to a modernized version of the jazz-new age successfully performed by the Andy Summers/Robert Fripp crowds in the eighties… shiny and frenetic, with a warm comforting sheen.  Tunes like the title-track “Saltash Bells” are pristine like freshly falling snow, and mournful like dreams of summer days lost.  But nuance aside, this is an album that could’ve been presented as one long track; the cohesion is thick as the music is light.  It’s music that embodies those elements that make people love soundtracks and want to refer to albums as cinematic.  The imagery isn’t seen as much as implied.  Music of an opaque haziness, like out of dreams.

It’s the harmonies than carry the day.  The layering of sounds, looped over one another, are the prettiest damn things you’ll hear.  The melodies are more often hinted at rather than stated, even when they lead out on a tune.  Because, ultimately, the beauty of the album is illustrated by those harmonies.

Surman has been making moody quasi-jazz albums for decades, mostly for the ECM label (significant in that ECM Records is the vanguard label when it comes to introverted Euro-Jazz).  Saltash Bells isn’t a huge leap forward for him.  Hell, it’s hardly the first solo album he’s recorded.  1995’s A Biography of the Rev. Absalom Dawe doesn’t sound too far distant from Saltash Bells, though it’s generally more austere in sound.  Likewise, 1979’s Upon Reflection comes off as a slightly more caffeinated version of Saltash Bells.  1988’s Private City incorporates many of the New Age sensibilities that were prevalent at the time in Jazz, and not as strongly represented on Surman’s current recording.  The only real variation in sound for the solo format for Surman would be in comparison to 1972’s Westering Home, which delves into the curious blend of World Jazz and avant-garde blossoming in that decade.

I guess where I’m going with all this Looking Back is that I had hoped for a new plateau in solo creativity from Surman on his current recording.  It’s a little disappointing that didn’t happen, though only as much as one can be disappointed with one’s favorite blanket, taken right out of the dryer all warm and comfy.

This isn’t experimental music or music that takes huge leaps forward for him personally or the genre as a whole.  It isn’t prodigiously challenging, nor does it present a compelling joyousness.  It’s not going to make my year-end Best of 2012 list.  However, it is a beautiful album that I have been listening to several times a week for the last couple months since first I heard it.  I don’t expect this trend to change.  Saltash Bells doesn’t do anything new, but Surman proves he’s more than capable of doing it right each and every time.

Jazz from the UK.

Released on the ECM Records label.

Available at eMusic.  Available at Amazon: CD | MP3

I keep saying that I’ve reached my limit on Jazz vocals albums for 2012, but it seems like every month there’s a new one to make me reverse that decision.  Today, it’s Sunny Kim‘s Painter’s Eye.

Recalling the heavenly symbiosis of Latin vocalist Gabriela and guitarist Bill Frisell, the collaboration of Kim’s Korean lyrics and Ben Monder’s moody guitar make Painter’s Eye absolutely shine.  The entire album is something of a stunning experience, and it might just break a few hearts, too.

Your album personnel:  Sunny Kim (vocals), Ben Monder (guitar), Chris Speed (tenor sax), Sean Conly (bass), Angelica Sanchez (piano), and Richie Barshay (drums), Pheeroan AkLaff (drums).

A vocalist that sounds driven to elicit the imagery of her words with the methods of an Impressionist artist, Kim’s delivery evokes permutations of the melody without ever needing to definitely state it.  Bending notes that dive and rise without warning, yet never veer into the avant-garde aeronautics of, say, a Jen Shyu (who is an experience all to herself), Kim’s voice provides thrilling moments while remaining tethered to the earth.

The music is based on the work of Korean painter and poet Sun Doo Kim, and though that is the source of the initial inspiration, it clearly blossomed in the recording studio.

As mentioned in the opening, the interaction between Kim and Monder makes this album smolder with emotion.  Songs like “Passing,” “In Silence,” and “A Slow Landscape” find Kim matching tension-filled vocals with Monder’s slow dramatic notes on guitar.  Even when other instruments provide accompaniment, the music is a movie scene of two actors sitting across from one another and locking eyes; everything else is just fuzzy imagery in the background.

However, when the compositions bring the other musicians into the spotlight, the album resonates just as strongly.  The sound of Conly’s bass like footfalls ominously approaching from the darkness and the twinkling starlight of Sanchez’s piano are the treatments that bring black & white photos their vibrancy and life.  The drums of Aklaff and Barsay are the spray and foam of waves that never make it to shore; not the same, but related in form and purpose.  Speed’s tenor sax brings a luxuriant heat that ably counterbalances the heavier aspects of the recording.

And though the album is best defined by its smoldering intensity, there are songs that present facets of that sound with an alternate touch.

“A Tree and a Bird” has the whimsical seriousness of a children’s lullaby, providing strange truths in a simple melody.

On “In Between,” Sanchez’s piano and Speed’s sax add a warmth to Kim’s voice that is like the rising sun fighting back the cold winter night that had settled over the city.  The music is soft and sublime and takes all the hurt away.

“Bloom and Wither” comes off as a bit scattered, but it doesn’t sound unintentional.  The proof of intent is best illustrated when Speed enters at the song’s halfway mark and provides the thread that weaves all the parts into a cohesive whole.

And “Worm,” surges and ebbs with the motion of the creature the song titled shares its name with.

Painter’s Eye doesn’t cover a lot of ground.  Instead, it stares at a small spot and slowly, delicately, explores the glorious intricacies and their infinite possibilities, exalting the worlds within worlds, with the unhurried grace of one with all the time in the world on their hands.  This is an album that will, in turn, slowly reveal itself as something very special.

There is a very nice passage written by Kim about her inspiration for the album on the album label’s artist page for Kim.

Released on the Sunnyside Records label.  Jazz from NYC.

Available at eMusic.  Available at Bandcamp.  Available at Amazon: CD | MP3