Alexandra Grimal & Giovanni Di Domenico - Shakkei (Relative Pitch Records, 2025)

By Stef Gijssels

French saxophonist Alexandra Grimal and Italian pianist Giovanni Di Domenico have performed and released albums over the years, in different ensembles. This is their fourth duo album, after "Down The Hill" (2020), after "Ghibli" (2011) and "Chergui" (2014), and it is an absolute winner. 

Recorded live in Ghent, Belgium in January 2023, the duo brings us five improvised pieces with Japanese titles. "Komori" means "a person who tends to trees", "Ishi No Irai" means "Request Of The Stone", "Kuden" means "(oral) tradition", "Sanmai" "absorbing oneself in something", "Korishiro" "object to which a spirit is drawn or summoned". If anything, these titles suggest an organic, nature inspired and spiritual musical excursion. Grimal plays tenor and soprano saxophones, Di Domenico plays grand piano, celesta and organ. The music is fragile, ethereal, lyrical and very precise. Both Grimal and Di Domenico master a wide variety of styles and influences, to the extent that a lot of their music would not even match our blog's profile, yet this album will please fans of free improv and avant-garde alike. 

The music is rich, complex despite its spontaneity, light-hearted yet deep. 

The pièce de résistance is the twenty minute long "Sanmai" - starting with a smartphone tone from the audience - on which De Domenico switches to organ. The latter instrument gives more gravitas to the sound, a more solemn and grand vista compared to the more delicate piano pieces. Grimal takes on the sound by long single tones from her tenor, with growing intensity and timbral extensions, resulting in a mesmerising effect. After a little more over six minutes, her tone becomes lyrical, somewhat naive, gentle, playful and on soprano, completely changing the atmosphere of the piece without losing its essential focus and sense of direction. The organ's dark tone from the beginning shifts into a more light-hearted theme and takes over the piece after another six minutes, only to change again into a more unpredictable environment. And it keeps shifting. The effect is astonishing, fascinating. 

I liked their previous albums a lot, but this is the strongest one. Both artists have a very strong sensitivity for each other's sound, allowing to co-create as if every note was planned, as if every change and shift was agreed upon instead of the joint movement into a new uncharted sonic space, and perfected this over the years. 

Don't miss it!

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David Maranha & Rodrigo Amado - Wrecks (Nariz Entupido, 2024) *****

By Stef Gijssels

I'm not sure whether many duets between saxophone and organ have been performed before, but this album is an absolute must-hear, a ferocious dialogue between one of the leading saxophonists of today, Rodrigo Amado, and his fellow Portuguese David Maranha on electric organ. Amado no longer needs introduction, and we have written on Maranha twice during our long existence: he's apparently very active in elecroacoustic work and experimental music, with over twenty albums as a leader. 

The match on this album is perfect. Maranha creates an incredibly terrifying foundation for Amado's magisterial sax, for an unrelenting expressive noise and drone trip that lasts more than forty-four minutes without interruption, steady, massive, disconcering, gloomy. The organ's massive sound is scorching, grinding, searing, blazing like fire, burning like a blast furnace. It's industrial, violent without any melodies or harmonies, a never-ending stream of multiphonic noise and sonic terror. 

Above this, Amado's sax leads us to a multitude of human emotions, from tenderness, sadness and melancholy to absolute agony, misery and torment. He soothes, he sings, he laments, he howls, he screams. In contrast to the often horrifying organ, the sax contains at times some moments of hope, some aspirational sounds for something better than could grow out of the cesspit we find our world in. You can call this 'doom jazz' or 'dark jazz' or whatever description pleases you, the overall sound is still pretty unique. 

The albums is called "Wrecks" in reference to the text that accompanies the album about the sorry states of our world: the wars, the environment, extremist politics and inequality. 

"The wrecks of a decaying age were there to be seen either by the new gentrified glittering façades under the sunny daylight or, less cynically, under the over-glaring LEDs street lights by night".

If there's anything - even any art form - that can convey the state of our world, then it is music. It is this music: creative, impressive, relentless, deep, beautiful, impactful. It's a remarkable and unique feat by two musicians who found a very special common voice and project. 

Brilliant!

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

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