Jazz Recommendations

The impression made by Looking North is a gradual one, and forces it to happen from a distance.  When opening track “Unringing a Bell” first presents itself, it’s with an impenetrable structure that doesn’t really seem to have the goal of establishing a connection in mind, and the rules for engagement aren’t so clearly drawn.  But then, as it grows older, the song enters into a deeply melodic passage and suddenly that gulf between instrument and ear is no distance at all… ending, even, with a playful flurry.  And while it won’t be for several more tunes before the essential patterns of this solo piano session from Bryan Nichols emerge and reveal the album’s striking personality as one of duality, the fact is that the opening track has already planted the seed.

It’s followed up by the beautiful “Lonesome Tremolo Blues,” a track that finds a deep pool of melody and spends its five minute duration gyrating fluidly.  There are a few splashes of dissonance, but those are eclipsed by a clear melodic imagery.  “Fractures” is stark and austere and the melody is implied, not expressed.  If the previous song’s melodic imagery was one of water, then this song is a vast desert that defines it as an oasis.  Sometimes the sands cycle and swirl in patterns reminiscent of swimming, but for the most part, the melody is scattered across the surface of the song, direction giving way to randomness, tranquility subsumed by soberness.  It’s when the concept of a concise, shapely melody returns on fourth track “We Build and Destroy” that the album’s alternating pattern of compact melody vs. impact melody reveals itself.  That same melodic shift happens within each song, too, but it’s the transitions from song to song that truly manifest their definition and their presence and their will.

The characteristic of duality is best on display on successive tracks “Act Natural” and “Very Low Impact.”  They are exactly and precisely different, as if staring at each other from opposite sides of the same mirror.  Where the former is in-your-face, the latter prefers to back off long enough for calmer melodies to prevail.

The one outlier to the album’s pattern recognition is a rendition of Dave King’s “Lullaby for Sharks,” and it’s offered up with such a quaint, tuneful presentation that it actually sits plumb with the rest of the album just fine, thank you very much.

A nicely expressive album that lets the tiny details be the music’s fireworks.

Your album personnel:  Bryan Nichols (piano).

Released on Shifting Paradigm Records.

Listen to more album tracks at the label’s Bandcamp page.

Jazz from the Minneapolis, MN scene.

Available at:  Bandcamp | Amazon

Adapting pop songs for jazz ensemble is something of a tradition in the jazz universe.  The typically elevated musicianship of a jazz ensemble, combined with the tangential strength in the area of improvisation are potent tools to apply to a pop song, to open it up in ways that the original composer never envisioned or anticipated.  A classic example of this potential is John Coltrane’s adaptation of “My Favorite Things,” and how he honors the original melody by keeping its cheerful and festive tone but also launches into dramatic and free improvisations, infusing it with power and fury and a perspective as vast as any horizon line.  More recently, pianist Robert Glasper’s mash-up of Radiohead’s “Everything In Its Right Place” and Herbie Hancock’s “Maiden Voyage” was a massively insightful vision of the interlocking pieces of melodies and the rhythms that surround them.

The Chris Schlarb ensemble Psychic Temple has stepped up and given a rendition that, arguably, should be included on any list of great jazz adaptations of pop songs.  Brian Eno’s 1978 release “Music for Airports” was the first of his Ambient tetralogy, an outstanding album that showed how a well-crafted melody, breathed out slowly in a minimalism environment, could sound like the unfolding of entire universes.  Triggering that effect is the opening track’s melody on piano and keys.  For Psychic Temple, that is merely the starting gate.

It’s Kris Tiner’s trumpet that voices the melody of “Music For Airports 1/1,” whereas the keyboard roles are assigned to conjuring up a different kind of ambient music, something far more reminiscent of the Miles Davis jazz-rock fusion era… in particular his 1969 release In a Silent Way.  But it doesn’t stay ambient for long, as the large ensemble continues to build the intensity through the layering of their sound while simultaneously intertwining melodic strands through the fabric of the harmonies.  It creates a wave that only crests and breaks near the finale, when it returns to a peaceful state.

It leads into the second of the album’s three extended pieces… “Music For Bus Stops.”  This one takes a straight-ahead jazz route, though with some changes in trajectory for some blues expressions and some funk grooves.  This is not a sea change of sound, though, from its predecessor.  That 1970s Miles jazz-rock electro-acoustic action is still in the mix, but now it gets focused through the lens of a modern jazz voice.  The thesis statement of melody is rolled out in the opening, and it gets referenced throughout, but where the Eno cover was more about ensemble play, “Music For Bus Stops” follows a more familiar mode of development that gives plenty of space for soloists to step up to the front of the stage and be heard.  And, with it, comes its own bird-of-a-feather comparison… Clark Terry’s Serenade to a Bus Seat.  This 1957 recording was your basic straight-ahead bop session, and maybe it was just the suggestive album cover and title, but the music seemed to reflect the synchronized chaos of that mode of transportation.  The Psychic Temple song “Music for Bus Stops” seems to have the same idea in mind, and when compared to controlled, focused, streamlined nature of airports, both in reality and as a sonic expression of the opening track, Psychic Temple seems to have encapsulated the spirit of the experiences.

The album’s third and final track is an alternate version of the opener.  But this time around, the ensemble sticks closer to Eno’s original (and, for that matter, the title-track to Davis’s In a Silent Way), maintaining a tranquil presence from first note to last.  It’s yet another inspired take on this seriously inspired album.

Your album personnel:  Chris Schlarb (electric guitar), Kris Tiner (trumpet), Tabor Allen (drums), Philip Glenn (Hammond organ), Danny T. Levin (trombonium, euphonium, marching baritone, valve trombone), Paul Masvidal (electric guitar), Curt Oren (baritone sax), Cathlene Pineda (Wurlitzer, electric piano), Sheridan Riley (drums, percussion), David Tranchina (double bass) and Mike Watt (electric bass).

Released on Joyful Noise Recordings.

Listen to more album tracks at the artist’s Bandcamp page.

Jazz from the Long Beach, California scene.

Available at:  Bandcamp | Amazon | eMusic

This is a supremely gorgeous album.

This is a supremely gorgeous album.

This is a supremely gorgeous album.

This is a supremely gorgeous album.

I struggle to write about this supremely gorgeous album, because each time I play it over from the start, I get lost in the music and I forget to take any notes, jot down any thoughts, do anything resembling work that might result in an album write-up.  So I find myself perpetually typing, “This is a supremely gorgeous album.”

Pouancé is the debut of drummer Stijn Demuynck.  He and bassist Raphael Malfliet engage in all kinds of subtle shadowplay, and the tempos tend to stalk the melody more than guide it.  Those melodies are shaped by the reed instruments of Leonhard Huhn.  He keeps to the lower registers, which emits a haunting beauty.  It also provides some lovely contrast with the upper harmonics of the choir that joins in on some tracks.

Opening track “Pouancé” speaks to that quality right from the start.  A fluttering melody, yawns of harmony, and percussion that sometimes growls deeply and sometimes throws metallic streaks of dissonance across the surface of the song, somehow, all join together in grand unison.  “A Few Drops of Time” has an alluring blend of focused melodicism and random improvisation.  And then there’s “Ouverture” and the impression of a song in flight, like an Autumn leaf carried along by a stiff breeze.  “Eb & Vloed” has a sharp presence, as clarinet and chorus and percussion reveal some edge and exploit the inherent tension within.  The approach is similar on “Blauw in de Ardennen,” which begins as a stroll through the park and ends in the heart of the storm.

The album ends with the peaceful “Ze huppelde door de nacht.”  Demuynck’s acoustic guitar notes are glittering raindrops caught in the sunbeams of Huhn’s clarinet.  It’s a beautiful send-off on this supremely gorgeous album.

Your album personnel:  Stijn Demuynck (drums, percussion, guitar), Raphael Malfliet (electric bass), Leonhard Huhn (alto sax, bass clarinet, clarinet) and Thea Soti, Mascha Corman, Taisiya Chernishova, Maika Küster, Hanna Schörken, Lisa Müller (choir).

The album is Self-Produced.

Listen to more album tracks on the artist’s Bandcamp page.

Jazz from the Cologne, Germany scene.

Available at:  Bandcamp

There’s a picture slideshow quality to the sophomore release by trumpeter Chris Klaxton.  Imagine a vintage Kodak carousel shining a bright light on a pull-down screen along the wall, Klaxton standing beside the small table the machine rests upon, and then begins clicking slowly, methodically through the different slides and providing a synopsis of each image of each song.  “Here’s where me and the band performed a straight-ahead old-school tune… you can see the swing in the background and the bop right overhead.”  *Click*  “And here’s where he do a modern jazz-pop crossover tune… See where the melody is wearing the soft colors of a Radiohead outfit?”  *Click*  “Ah, this scene is from a romantic evening, where a vocal guest sang a ballad and the moonlight shined brightly as if the night would never end.”

And it works.  Typically an album that eschews a cohesive structure for an album consisting entirely of individual tracks tends to risk creative drift on the part of the album flow, and fragile attention on the part of the listener.  But no one track on Collage eclipses any other, and those emotional similarities create an evenness of tone that keeps a steady ship throughout the album, and in turn, forges subtle bonds between successive tracks along the album’s path.

The track “Don’t All Go At Once Pt1” begins with the aforementioned Radiohead action and slowly transforms to something closer to a 70’s ambient jazz-rock fusion, and it touches fingertips with subsequent track “Touch and Go,” which begins as a contemplative drone and ends as a shout to the skies explosion of intensity, which in turn, holds hands with subsequent track “Rainforest Tortoise,” an anthemic jazz-rock piece that throws anchor in the territory where Chris Lightcap’s Bigmouth ensemble currently resides.

There is an exception to the point made above about similarities in tone and feel between the songs.  The album ends with “Fictional Friends Remix,” a harsh jazz-hip hop fusion that cracks the spell conjured up by the rest of the album… this, even though it does fall into line with the concept of a story told through different, individualistic images.  It’s not a bad tune or anything.  It just doesn’t sit plumb with the rest of the album.

But that’s a small criticism of an album that has plenty of good stuff to offer.

Your album personnel:  Chris Klaxton (trumpet, rhodes), Mark Small (tenor sax), Kendall Moore (trombone), Tim Jago (guitar), Mike Effenberger (Fender Rhodes), Michael Piolet (drums), Sam Weber (bass) and guests: Taylor O’Donnell, Moe Pope (vocals).

This album is Self-Produced.

Listen to more album tracks on the artist’s Bandcamp page.

Jazz from the South Berwick, Maine scene.

Available at:  Bandcamp

*****

And it’s worth checking out Klaxton’s debut album, Starcode.  I never wrote that album up, but it was close to making the cut, and for a variety of reasons, I wound up taking a pass.  But I liked it well enough to remember Klaxton’s name when approached about Collage, and so I mention it here as a worthwhile pursuit.

Here’s a link to where you can listen & purchase it on Klaxton’s Bandcamp page.

*****