Joëlle

By Stef Gijssels

You have to give it her. Joëlle Léandre is one of those musicians whose relentless passion and musical exploration have been a lifelong pleasure to hear. Even if she remains true to herself in her music, there is also an element of surprise in every new album, something new, something different, something unexpected. When you think you've heard it all, please think again. This is also the result of her careful networking with other musicians, as on the three albums presented here. Whether with established musicians like Craig Taborn and Mat Maneri, or with less known and younger musicians, such as Rodolphe Loubatière and Vinicius Cajado. She works with them to expand her sound pallette while at the same time she likes to be challenged and to create musical innovation. 

Joëlle Léandre, Craig Taborn & Mat Maneri - hEARoes (RogueArt, 2023)

It's amazing to hear three established musicians create music that could easily fit within the current 'classical avant-garde' when the music is only fully improvised. The three 'hEARoes' of this album are Joëlle Léandre on double bass, Craig Taborn on piano, and Mat Maneri on viola. 

This is improvisation without leadership, true co-creation of three like-minded artists. They are all three at the same level of instrumental virtuosity, they have nothing more to prove, and what they show here, could be a great example for other musicians about the incredible value of discipline. The quality of the album is to a large extent the result of the mastery of the artists on their own creativity as well as keeping the overall sound, the structure of the improvisation, the balance of instruments and the sense of direction under full control. The pieces are relatively compact, each with its own voice, with no time for long meanderings and expansion. And at the same time they bring something unique and refreshing. 

I will not go into the detail of each track. Just know that all three musicans are in great shape, and their musical output here more than meets the expectations, presenting music that can range from cautious development to agitated intensity, from bright sounds to dark moments, jazzy and avant-garde, and the biggest feat is the feeling of freedom, in the knowledge that the control they have no longer requires attention, and that the full focus is on the expressive power of the ensemble-playing.

I've just read - now that I wrote this review - fellow reviewer Stuart Broomer's liner notes, and they are spot on. It's a long text, really worth reading, and these two paragraphs cover it best: 

"Another miracle of musical time? Joëlle Léandre informs that she has played with Mat Maneri many times over a 30-year period. The surprise may be that they never sound mechanical, jaded or responding by rote. Further, Léandre remarks that before this day she and Craig Taborn had never played together. The surprise, perhaps strongest, is that they never sound like they’re studying each other, laying hints and clues for ready discussion. They just play, not like they’re reading a score, but rather reading each other’s vast, copious, musical mind.

All three are always playing full out, participating wholly, coming from three different spaces, each a master with a wealth of general and specialized musical experience, collectively assembling and sharing a century of improvisatory practice as well as particular dialects: Joëlle Léandre with experience in every form of improvised music as well as special collaborations with Giacinto Scelsi and John Cage; Mat Maneri, long-time musical partner to his father Joe, and thus an indefatigable explorer of microtonal music, composed and improvised; Craig Taborn, a musician so universally informed and adept, that likely no other pianist might have fit so readily into a band called Rocket Science."

Enjoy!

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

Joëlle Léandre & Rodolphe Loubatière - Estampe (Confront Recordings, 2023)

To be honest, I had never heard of Rodolphe Loubatière, a French percussionist and visual artist, residing in Geneva, Switzerland. He is a sound explorer, using all kinds of tools to produce percussive effects, forms and textures. On this album, the snare drum is his instrument, worked on with a few dozen other tools to create the desired sound. 

Joëlle Léandre has performed often in duo formats, with saxophonists, pianists, bassists, koto and even saw players, but the number of duets with percussionists is rather rare. In the 128 albums she released as a leader, the following can be identified: "Tricotage" with Daniel Rogier (2000), "Evident" with Mark Nauseef (2004), "Winter In New York" with Kevin Norton (2007), "Off Course!" with Paul Lovens (2022), "BlaBlaBla" with Nuria Andorra (2022). 

It's a pleasure to hear her with compatriot in this intimate musical setting. Loubatière is a rather minimalist percussionist, someone who discreetly colours the sound rather than co-lead. This gives Léandre the possibility to design her own improvisations, listening and respecting the percussionist, who is also adept at creating sustained tones from his instruments, often merging with the sound of the bowed bass. 

As of the fourth track she starts her powerful vocals, surreal bluesy chants full of repetitions, improvised meaningless and meaningful words. She does something similar on track six, but then with half angry shouts, furious rantings, possibly kicking her instrument, expressing her dissatisfaction with the world, but with the fun laughing interjection "on rigole, tu sais" (we're laughing, you know), as if to reassure her audience.

The last track is the most powerful, gradually building up from near silence to a high-powered single tone bowing contest near the end. 

It's certainly not her best album, yet it remains great to listen to. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Joëlle Léandre & Vinicius Cajado - Storm Dance (Not Two Records, 2023)

Her collaboration with the young Vinicius Cajado is great. Cajado, born in 1988, is from São Paulo, Brasil, and he has already made a strong impression in the jazz world. He already won several awards, including at the International Society of Bassists competition. His debut solo record for double bass “Monu” was nominated as “Best of the year 2021" by “The New York City Jazz Record” . 

Léandre has a knack for welcoming new talent, regardless of their instrument, as long as they have a musical vision and the willingness to listen and learn, yet I guess she also likes the challenge of the new voices, the new approaches, the things they learned recently. It keeps her young, and it keeps us young. 

They perform six 'dances', as each track is called, mostly bowed improvisations, that demonstrate a really close dancing format, all well attuned and like-minded. On the "Fifth Dance", Léandre starts with her usual vocal works, decisively taking the lead in a territory that the young Brasilian is unable to follow, yet he supports her well after some initial background position. 

The great thing with Léandre is that she always performs to the full, nothing is done halfway, she shows how to put her entire soul into her music, a level of self-confidence and use of energy that requires time to acquire. Cajado does well in this context, and that's to his credit. 

A French virtuoso who makes everything interesting, and a young Brasilian high potential to follow. 

Enjoy!

Listen and download from the label. 

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Drum 'n' Bass update

By Stef

Over the almost eight years of this blog's existence, the line-up with only bass and drums is one of the least reviewed, because probably the least performed. Henry Grimes and Rashied Ali come to mind, and the brothers Marcin Oles and Brat Oles.

So here is a quick update on some recent albums with the same format, but with very different music.

Charles Rumback & John Tate - Daylight Savings (Ears & Eyes, 2015) ***½

Both Charles Rumback on drums, and John Tate on bass, have performed in all musical genres, including creative jazz, but also with rock and pop bands, and they met in the Chicago jazz scene. On this intimate and very jazzy album, they show how great the limited line-up of bass and drums can be. The accessibility of the music makes this an album that is somewhat out of scope of this blog's profile, yet the beauty of the sounds, the rhythmic subtleties and the overall warmth make it such a pleasure to hear, that I wanted to make sure that fans of good music, without pretense, but with excellent execution, could be made aware of it. The superb quality of the sound, and the perfect balance between bass and drums is a great example of how the bass-drums duet should ideally be recorded, and that's unfortunately not always the case. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

Gonçalo Almeida & Friso Van Wijck - Dialogues, Quarrels & Other Conversations (Cylinder Records, 2015) ***½

It's only a short album, around twenty minutes long, with Gonçalo Almeida ("Lama", "Albatre", "Tetterapadequ") on bass and Friso van Wijck on drums. The single track starts with slow arco wailing, like whales, getting agitated when the percussion beats hit the ears, switching to pizzi and back to arco, creating soundscapes full of dramatic power and tension, in a well-paced and slow development. Van Wijk uses a whole range of percussion instruments and extended techniques on piano strings (?) bells and other objects. 

The end result is short, but is equally not very expensive. A great short performance. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Antonio Ramírez, Marco Serrato & Borja Díaz - Arconte (Sentencia Records, 2014) ***½

Despite the three names in the title, this is a bass-drums duo, with the third name of Antonio Ramírez being the illustrator whose work inspired bassist Marco Serrato and drummer Borja Diaz to perform their music. Each of the tracks is the result of the drawings by Ramírez, which come in a handy booklet together with the record.

Both musicians offer us a broad spectrum from very expressive and expansive, rockish, sometimes aggressive playing, as in the title track, to more intimate free improv, with lots of silence and quiet subtlety. The music not only tries to reflect the visual impressions and transform it into sonic evocations, but it also tries to use the same technique of the illustrator's subconscious and automatic drawings.

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

Milford Graves & Bill Laswell - Space, Time/Redemption (TUM, 2015) *

I am not sure what to think of this album. On the one hand you have Milford Graves, who is a centipede on the drums, polyrhythmic and even beyond rhythm at times, wonderful to listen to, including on this album. On the other hand you have bassist Bill Laswell, whose music and playing has always left me quite indifferent, but here it no longer does, it irritates me. Laswell's electric bass and the electronic alterations create a fusion-like kitsch to most of his endeavours, and things are not different here. Pieces such as "Eternal Signs", "Another Space" and "Another Time" are bland fusion excursions, without the instrumental pyrotechnics. Tracks like "Sonny Sharrock" and "Autopossession" are better because the role of Graves is more dominant. Still, it's all a pretty bland and synthetic affair. Well, maybe I am sure what to think of this album. 

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Benjamin Duboc - Primare Cantus (Ayler, 2011) ****½

By Stef

French bass-player Benjamin Duboc has been reviewed quite extensively on this blog in the past few years, and rightly so, with the quintet "Afterfall", the quartet "Nuts"the piano trio "Free Unfold", the sax trio "Les Fées Du Rhin", the trumpet-bass duo with Itaru Oki, and now, he released his first album under his own name, and what an album.

It is a box set with three CDs, the first one a solo bass improvisation of fourty-two minutes, but not of the kind you would expect. Duboc plays primarily on the tail-end of his bass, combining bowing and pizzi, resulting in a mesmerising repetitive sound, over which the loose strings are strummed. Intensity and finesse are the words that best describe the endless shifts in tone shading and coloring.

The second CD starts beautifully, with Jean-Luc Petit on baritone and tenor saxophones, playing three stupefying improvisations with shimmering nebulous sounds coming from both instruments. This exceptional power is continued in three pieces with  Didier Lasserre on snare drum and cymbal, equally minimal and intense, with percussion and bass creating and embracing sounds you will have rarely heard from this sober line-up. On the last three tracks, Duboc plays duets with tenorist Sylvain Guérineau resulting in quite different, more abstract and voiced sonic environment, in which suddenly the tension of monotony is broken.

The third CD starts with bass in duo with Pascal Battus on "guitar pickup", creating a slowly moving deep-sounding minimalist environment, full of monotal shifting intensity, and the weird electronics coming from the guitar. The second piece is solo bass - I assume - and is little more than white noise, as an interlude before the weird frenzy of the closing piano trio starts, with Sophie Agnel on piano and Christian Pruvost on trumpet, first loud and dissonant, then moving to the barely audible with the trumpet sounds nothing more than physically intense blowing with minimal release, then Agnel takes over with scratching strings gradually leaving more room for voiced keys, supported by the deep hypnotic repetitive tones of the bass, and near the end, the incredible tension builds up for a terrifying doomsday finale.

This album is fantastic for many reasons. First, it brings together some of France's most explorative and skilled musicians. Second, it shows how jazz has found its way in a more modern artistry, one that is inventive and leaves a deep emotional imprint in the listener's brain. You want to listen to some parts again and again, and you look at the album lying there in full anticipation of the next listen. Third, the quality of it all is superb. Even if it shows the new way, it is for sure among the best of it.

The album's only downside is it's aspect of being a collection of various parts, put together quite skillfully and with its own logic and listening sequence, evolving from solo to over duo to trio, from slow monotony to a paroxysm of sound at the end.

In any case, this CD box comes as highly recommended for listeners with open ears, and without a doubt it contains some of the best things I've heard this year.





Buy from Instantjazz.


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Henry Grimes & Rashied Ali - Spirits Aloft (Porter, 2010) ****

Last year Porter Records already released a bass & drum duo album by two of free jazz great musicians: Henry Grimes on bass and violin, and Rashied Ali on drums, recorded live in February last year, some six months before the great drummer passed away. An unsual line-up, but one that seems to work.

The album starts and finishes with a short poem by Grimes, but the music in between is raw and ferocious, starting with the long "Rapid Transit", on which Grimes leads with screeching violin sounds, an intro for Ali to start attacking his drums, tribal, polyrhythmic, becoming a solid backbone for Grimes powerful plucking, that shifts back to bowing, raw and intense near the end of the piece. "Oceans Of The Cloud" is slower and evokative of unknown worlds, filling empty space with sparse notes and weird sounds, light and breezy. Grimes' violin-playing is technically bizarre but highly expressive to say the least, as is also the feeling of the enthusiastic audience. "Larger Astronomical Time" is a great drum solo, something I usually dislike, but Rashied Ali keeps the attention going, offering a great lead-in for some ferocious solo bass-playing by Grimes, first pizzi, then arco, with some limited accentuation by Ali at the end.

And so it goes on, strangely enough they give each other lots of space, which gives sometimes the bizarre feeling that they are playing either drums solo or bass solo consecutively, with limited moments of actual joint playing, but either way, the quality and the energy are high. You can feel the joy they had in the performance.

And it's that what makes this a memorable album, two musicians giving themselves to the full, believing in their art and succeeding in transferring this to the audience: great stuff.

Buy from Instantjazz.

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Marcin & Bartłomiej Brat Oleś - Duo (Fenommedia, 2008) *****

The Polish Oleś brothers, Marcin on bass and Brat on drums, are like the William Parker and Hamid Drake from Europe. They can play in any environment, with any musician or line-up, playing strong and in line the other musicians' musical vision, yet still sounding like themselves: creative, rhythmical, lyrical. To hear them play with just the two of them, as they do here, is a real treat. And if you think that a line-up of just bass and drums is a little too limited to be captivating or gripping, think again. I could give several examples, but just take "Skrik" (sampled below), and listen how Brat's drumming, next to being absolutely rock solid, adds variation and accents in support of his brother, while changing in the meantime the piece by moving from a very light touch to the lower sound of his toms and bass drum, herewith mirroring the dialogue that the bass is holding with itself, between the bowed high notes, contrasted with a single deep tone. The result is one of plaintive drama, full of tension and suspense hoping for release. And then listen again to assess how much can really be heard, just played by two instruments that are traditionally only in support roles.

During the album, they move from Ornette Coleman influenced pieces ("Betula"), tracks with a boppish bass vamp à la William Parker ("Lukacs"), klezmer ("Jewisher"), African polyrhythmics ("Afrik"), to more adventurous abstract pieces ("Avalanche"), and whatever the style, the quality is superb: balanced, rich, with lots of feeling. Each piece is not limited to the exploration of one melody or theme, it contains a wealth of ideas, the opening of new possibilities, going beyond predictability, creating new angles and approaches as you move along. There are moments that I was wondering whether the drums were overdubbed, which is not the case. Add to that a high recording quality which gives the music a very crisp and clear sound, as if they're playing in your living room. William Parker and Hamid Drake also recorded a duo CD ("Piercing The Veil"), but they added a whole arsenal of additional instruments, here you get the real stuff : just bass and drums, but Goethe's line "in der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister" (it's only within a context of strict limitations that a true master reveals himself) has never been more true. This is definitely not a record that will only please drummers and bass-players, this album should appeal to all music lovers. It is fun, expressive, moving, adventurous, melodic and accessible. Don't miss it.


Download directly from the musicians.

Listen to an excerpt from "Skrik"





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Henry Grimes & Rashied Ali - Going To The Ritual (Porter, 2009) ***½

Rescued from oblivion, and given a second jazz life by William Parker, Henry Grimes is one of the icons of jazz bass in the sixties, having played with everyone from Benny Goodman to Albert Ayler. And Rashied Ali is possibly best known for his work with John Coltrane in the last period of his life. Since Archie Shepp's "On This Night" (1965), both Philadelphians had not played together again, but here we find them back in this unique duo setting, more than fourty years later, for an improvised set of fresh and open-minded jazz. Both musicians play full of controlled fervor and passion, obviously enjoying the chance to interact creatively. Ali is careful enough not to drown the bass in the volume of his drums, choosing to play losely and supportively, and when Grimes picks up his softly screeching violin, Ali becomes even quieter. But the sound is at its best when Grimes plays arco, which gives the music more voice, more volume, allowing for a more powerful interaction, as on the longest third track "Gone Beyond The Gate".

In the second and fourth track, Grimes recites one of his poems, giving a sense of conceptual unity to the album. Grimes has been writing poetry all his life. You know what I think of poetry in jazz, but nevertheless, it does not spoil the fun.

Despite the limitations of the setting, the two veterans manage to bring a captivating piece of music, fresh and open.

Listen to and buy from Porter Records.


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