Sep 14 2017
Now seems like an ideal time to talk about Jean Lapouge
Jean Lapouge has a new album out, and he’s also dusting off some of his older recordings, too. This seems like a good time to give a rundown of one of my very favorite guitarists, a musician who spins sonic beauty quite unlike anyone else.
It’s a curious beauty. It’s not your typical pretty sounds, even though there are plenty moments that seem to embrace those qualities. This Sarrazac-based guitarist endows his music with an affectation of populism and idealist postures, as if it were a cryptic equation capable of obliterating the veil between the waking and dream worlds. His is music for the masses one individual at a time, and each in their own way. It is not unlike how a blizzard affects the crowd, but each person views it only through their very own unique set of snowflakes. That’s the music of Jean Lapouge.
Let’s begin…
Jean Lapouge – Temporare
Some music just sounds pretty when all evidence indicates that it shouldn’t. Jean Lapouge’s 2011 release Temporare makes for an excellent Exhibit A. As dreams can be both serene and terrifying, Temporare shows no inclination to draw a dividing line between the varied emotions this album evokes. There is tension throughout the recording, even when tranquility rules the moment. And there’s plenty of edge, to boot. “My Song Goes Wrong” is just one example of many where a piece with a lullaby demeanor, at times, jabs and flails and speaks of anything but peaceful night’s sleep. Lapouge’s guitar melts into a melody with Christiane Bopp‘s trombone while threading the rhythmic needle of Christian Pabœuf‘s vibraphone patterns. It is haunting music, and yet terrifyingly beautiful. It was also one of the very best things to come out in 2011, and it still is.
Your album personnel: Jean Lapouge (guitar, guitar synthesizer), Christiane Bopp (trombone), and Christian Pabœuf (vibraphone, oboe).
Released on Musea Records. Available at: Bandcamp | Amazon | eMusic
Jean Lapouge – Des Enfants
What a cold person you must be not to fall in love with the lullaby melodies of Des Enfants. As opposed to the uneasy serenity of Temporare, this 2012 release employs a far softer touch. And this applies to those tracks that let out a roar like “Les Américains” and those that stomp their boots like “Two Days Before,” just as it does the sing-song title track. But the heart of this album is reflected in how “Les Soldats” lets linger the suggestion that the intensity could suddenly spike, but harnesses that energy, instead, to make a softly spoken melody resonate with incredible strength.
I could listen to this album forever, and I’ve spent the last handful of years proving it. It received the #24 slot on this site Best of 2012. Here’s a link to some reasons why.
Your album personnel: Jean Lapouge (guitar, guitar synthesizer), Christiane Bopp (trombone), and Christian Pabœuf (vibraphone, oboe, bass flute).
Released on Musea Records. Available at: Bandcamp | Amazon | eMusic
Jean Lapouge Trio – Plein Air
Lapouge’s 2014 release Plein Air is about as close to a standard guitar album as he’s likely to get. That said, his trio with drummer David Muris also has the cello of Grégoire Catelin, so perhaps even using the word standard is out of line. But being that as it may, the amiable chatter of “Par la côte” and the get-up-and-go of “En Campagne” stray far from the contemplative ambiance and thickly-layered melodicism of previous collaborations. That said, the addition of cello opens up all kinds of melodic possibilities, and the trio takes advantage of each and every one. Tracks like “Acteur fétiche,” “Mario” and “Un hymne” open with languorous passages that eventually shift into weightier passages as they achieve a captivating volatility, and these are where to find the heart of this lovely recording.
I wrote more about the recording when it first came out.
Your album personnel: Jean Lapouge (guitar), Grégoire Catelin (cello) and David Muris (drums).
Released on Musea/Great Winds Records. Available at: Bandcamp | Amazon
Noëtra – Neuf Songes
The word is that the music of Neuf Songes was destined for release on ECM Records, but it just never quite happened. A shame, really, because not only would this older material from Lapouge’s Noëtra ensemble have fit in perfectly with ECM’s output back in the 80s, it might’ve had an impact on the label’s existing stable of musicians. It has the dramatic orchestration and the introspective interludes, the prog-jazz hopscotch precision and the jazz-folk fusion that embodied a segment of the modern jazz scene of the 1980s… but Noëtra brings all of those elements together in remarkably vibrant ways. It just resonates brilliantly. And how nicely it would have sat beside ECM Records works by Eberhard Weber, Steve Tibbetts and Miroslav Vitous.
Thankfully, Lapouge has loaded this album up on his Bandcamp page and made it accessible to present-day listeners. I gotta say, it holds up remarkably well. This music’s ability to enchant hasn’t waned even a little bit.
Your album personnel: Jean Lapouge (guitar), Christiane Bopp (trombone), Christian Pabœuf (oboe, flutes), Denis Lefranc (bass, tuba, voice), Daniel Renault (drums, percussion, violin), Pierre Aubert (violin), Pascal Leberre (clarinet, tenor & soprano saxes), Francis Michaud (flute, tenor & soprano saxes), Denis Viollet (cello), Claude Lapouge (trombone), Jacques Nobili (trombone) and Laurent Tardif (alto flute).
Released on Musea/Great Winds Records. Available at: Bandcamp | Amazon
And now, finally, let’s talk about the new release from Jean Lapouge…
Jean Lapouge Trio – Hongrois
Lapouge’s newest recording has him sticking with the same trio that led to the success of Plein Air. It also reveals a clearer image for how Lapouge wants things to shake out. This music sounds crisper and rings with clarity. Revealingly, there isn’t the ebb and flow of melodic control between guitar and cello. On Plein Air, there were the “guitar songs” and the “cello songs.” That back and forth led to some intriguing moments. But the synthesis between the two instruments on Hongrois utilizes those same tools of intrigue, and focuses them through a much sharper lens, leading to some necessary cohesion.
Opening track “Naples” gets right to the heart of the matter with two sections of guitar-cello unity book-ending a more conventional trading of ideas between all three musicians. It doesn’t pick and choose which instrument will be in ascension; it simply allows shifts of focus to occur while keeping the entire picture in the spotlight. But more to the point is the title-track “Hongrois” and how all three instruments come together in a way that makes it so the spotlight and the focus need not adjust or choose at all. And “Illusion du Fond” is illustrative of how comfortable the trio has grown with this approach in the way a song-like structure is the foundation for both jazz and blues and chamber streaks to seamlessly wash over one another, time and again.
Your album personnel: Jean Lapouge (guitar), Grégoire Catelin (cello) and David Muris (drums).
Released on Musea/Great Winds Records. Available at: Bandcamp | Amazon
And remember, you can explore all of this music and more on Jean Lapouge’s Bandcamp page.
Otto’s collaboration with the Ensemble Ibérica is a series of languid expressions, each possessing the potent combination of a stunning beauty and a disarming gentleness. The delicate accents of Spanish and chamber add some compelling textures, and the inclusion of instruments like oud, steel guitar, cavaquinho, cello and Cuban tres brings a liveliness to the conversation that serves to emphasize the serenity, not threaten it. And while Matt Otto’s tenor sax has a bold voice clear as day, his slight modulations between a sunny smile and a moody calm incites the prevailing serenity to resonate with a spellbinding intensity. Ibérica is easily one of the most gorgeous things to be released in 2017, thus far.
Of particular interest on this straight-ahead session from Otto and 
Otto’s 2012 release Broken Waltz was my introduction to his music. What immediately grabbed me was the interplay between Otto and the bass clarinet of Brian Walsh. Otto clearly loves the conversations that occur with other reed instruments, and seems to delight in creating intertwined melodic lines and watching the array of patterns emerge. A similar effect occurred on his Reunion collaboration with fellow saxophonist Andy Ehling, but hearing the light & dark contrast between tenor sax and bass clarinet is a seriously arresting element to Broken Waltz, and while it certainly isn’t the only compelling feature of this excellent recording, it possesses a gravitas that earns the attention it draws in.
This 2010 collaboration
The 2009 release Alhambra Love Songs is one of my very favorite Tzadik releases. It’s also proof of how diverse the label’s range of expression has grown. This set from the trio of pianist Rob Burger, bassist Greg Cohen and drummer Ben Perowsky performs John Zorn compositions paying tribute to the Bay Area and the artists who call it home. But while the tribute subjects range greatly from Vince Guaraldi to Mike Patton to Clint Eastwood, the album’s prevailing sound keeps to one where melodies generate a ton of warmth and tempos keep to a chipper, easy-going nature.
The scope and breadth of the Alhambra Trio grew for the 2010 release In Search of the Miraculous. Gone were the associations with a specific place on planet Earth. Zorn wrote compositions that would serve as odes for the new millennium. And where Alhambra Love Songs had an almost quaint personality to express its gorgeous melodies, the reformatted Alhambra Quintet lets loose with dramatic flourishes and surges of intensity, and trades in a streak of nostalgia for a more abstract sense of mysticism.
The third of the (to date) three Alhambra Ensemble recordings expanded the line-up while continuing the evolution of the theme. The 2010 release The Goddess: Music for the Ancient of Days is a set of odes paying tribute to women of mythological significance. Guitarist Marc Ribot and harpist Carol Emanuel sit in on this session, and both accentuate the melodies in ways not done previously, with the former bringing out their combustibility and the latter their potential for growth if allowed to go wandering.
On Lean, the trio of 
Every bit of this album leads to the impression that they’re having the most ever fun on Swivel. Miller’s 
What a seriously rich sound Miller and company conjure up on Otis Was a Polar Bear. Her Boom Tic Boom sextet could masquerade as an ensemble twice that size, and probably still eclipse the larger group with its presence. Some of this has to do with the pairings that create ideal situations where the sound of consequence is greater than the sum of the individual parts. It’s why the contra-alto clarinet of
Jul 16 2018
I am here for these solo percussion works on Ventor Records
Melbourne, Australia label Ventor Records states they are here for the rhythmically obsessed. Nothing about the three solo percussion albums on their Bandcamp page would give any other impression. Speaking from personal experience, this music will have no less appeal to those of us who consider ourselves more in the camp of incurable melody addicts. It sure as hell applies to me. I’m going to run each of ’em down for you.
Let’s begin.
Ronny Ferella – Invisible Skin
Give the album a listen and purchase it on the artist’s Bandcamp page.
Sam Price – Rubicon
Give the album a listen and purchase it on the artist’s Bandcamp page.
Nat Grant – Marengo
But that’s not where things end up. The hydrophone makes its presence known, and the first impression of a straight-ahead recording transforms into a new impression of something quite different. The flame of intrigue starts to burn at the half way point of the recording, and what was hinted at so subtly in the first fifteen seconds begins to emerge. It’s a slow reveal, and it gradually increases in speed. It becomes more than just the dialog of a drum set. The dialog achieves a richness that has subtlety as its foundation, where the addition of textures, though dramatic at times, burn brightest as nuance, and are best viewed not in how they drive the conversation, but, instead, how they surround it.
It’s a single track of just over thirty-seven minutes, and there ain’t a moment during that span when it seems like Grant is struggling to come up with something more to say.
Give the album a listen and purchase it on the artist’s Bandcamp page.
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By davesumner • I Listen To All Of This, Jazz Recommendations - 2018 • 0 • Tags: Melbourne, Nat Grant, Ronny Ferella, Sam Price, Solo percussion, Ventor Records