Solo Double Bass Day 2

By Stef Gijssels

To complete the list that Eyal Hareuveni made of recent solo bass albums, I can add a few additions that fans might be interested in looking for.

Barre Phillips & Daniele Roccato - Confluence (Parco Della Musica Records, 2022)

Three years ago, on March 1, 2023, Barre Phillips performed live with Daniele Roccato at the Sala Accademica Conservatorio Santa Cecilia in Rome. The latter is one of the leading modern bass players in Italy, and one of a long list of excellent and creative fellow compatriots such as Stefano Scodanibbio and Stefano Battaglia, who are all as comfortable with classical music as with modern new music. They can also be heard together in the Ensemble Ludus Gravis, which consists only of double bass players. 

On this duo album you hear two masters at work, improvising and exploring each other's skills and sonic possibilities, sharing the perspectives from the two different worlds of sound that they originate from. 

The pieces are relatively short, but very focused and coherent, and especially the arco improvisations work best for me. There clearly is a lot of respect and mutual understanding between both musicians, both personally and musically. 

Even if not everything works or is equally captivating, the collaboration and 'confluence' is strong in most pieces, also to the appreciation of the apparently large audience.

Max Johnson - Hermit Music (Unbroken Sounds, 2022)

New York bassist Max Johnson has been the bassist of many ensembles, including with Karl Berger, Chris Pitsiokis, Thomas Borgman, Vinny Golia, next to his own trios and quartets. His first solo album is the result of the pandemic. I'd rather let him introduce the album in all its power honesty:

In many ways, the pandemic marked the ending of a very busy, productive, and happy time of my life. The following two years have been a daily battle to resume being a positive productive human being, and this music represents the dark confusing place I have been living since. Recording this music was very difficult for me, and created a number of mental and emotional challenges I did not anticipate. What you hear on this record is a different bass player, improviser, and person than you would have heard two years prior, and this music symbolizes my struggle with self, reality, purpose, and mental health. This album represents who I am right now, and I am proud to share it with you.

The fact that this music exists, and is here to listen to, and to enjoyed even, contradicts the 'hermit music' feeling of the composer when recording it. The five tracks have a strong level of unpredictability, of deep feelings with often unclear structures. The advantage of this, is that the listener has to be more active, without any chance of anticipation, pushing you to follow every note in its naked expression.

 

Johannes Nästesjö - The Hand, the Bow and the Bass (Konvoj Records, 2022)

Swedish bassist and educator Johannes Nästesjö also presents his first solo album. His sonic space is more in the realm of free improv, with no clear jazz references at all. I assume that he temporarily resided in Spain, which might explain his collaboration with Spanish artists such as Agustí Fernández, Vasco Trilla, Albert Cirera, Irene Aranda. On 'The Hand, the Bow and the Bass' he finds a nice balance between bowed and plucked bass, bringing slow, moody pieces full of unexpected sonic changes and effects. His music is one of contrasts, with titles such as 'Control-Uncontrol', 'Uncontrol-Control', 'Inhale, Exhale' already indicating some structural aspects to his improvisations, as well as the tensions that the musician and the music are subjected to when confronted with the extremes of disciplined skill and ultimate freedom. 

He asks himself the following research questions: 

• Can I, by reaching for the utmost limits on my instrument, in dynamically, technically and pitch related ways both find, for me, new contemporary techniques and expand the ways on how to play and perform them on the double bass?
• Can I, by illuminating, documenting, studying, organizing and re-documenting my musical process, design a toolkit for improvising bassists with contemporary techniques? 
• Can I, in my musical process both act as the first person, i.e. the subjective musician and as the third person, i.e. the objective observer?

• If so, can I, as the observer objectively observe and organize the ”discoveries” that I am doing in my daily work as first person.
• Can I create this toolkit through the limitations that my instrument offers acoustically (the hand, the bow and the bass).
• And can I through this immerse and widen my musical expressions? - A richer language - more elastic - with more colors. 

Fascinating questions that drive his playing, making it all sound like a very cerebral and rational endeavour, but I can assure the listener that is not limited to this. Beyond this, and at a deeper level, there is the subjective artist with his feelings and personal perspective.

João Madeira - Aqui, Dentro (Miso, 2022)

Drone-like bowed bass with minor shifts and levels of intensity built around a single tone. Some may find it boring, others mesmerising. It requires some good preconditions to properly savour the slowness, the precision and the quality of the sound.

Rick Rosato - Homage (Self-released, 2022)

On his first solo recording Canadian bassist Rick Rosato welcomes us to his refined technique and musical ideas, excellently coming to life in the pristine production quality. The inspiration for the tracks comes from traditional delta blues, from artists such as Skip James, Muddy Waters and Mississippi John Hurt. With the exception of the first piece, all tracks are penned by these artists, adding Thelonious Monk and Elvin Jones - also at their most bluesy - to complete the list. 

By itself I find it amazing that an accomplished jazz bassist enjoys working with the relatively straightforward and repetitive structures and chord changes of the traditional blues, yet it works out nicely. Rosato's heart is in this music, and you can sense it throughout. It's not jazz, but I guess that probably only jazz lovers will appreciate this music. The album is short, but that's just a good excuse to listen to it again. 

 

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Solo Double Bass Day 1

By Eyal Hareuveni

I cannot explain in logical, human terms my fascination with solo double bass deep tones, and how such resonant tones keep my sanity in a volatile and intense environment. Now, it becomes a yearly tradition of the Free Jazz Blog, and here are reviews of 16 new (or not so new) mostly solo double bass albums. Take your chances and you may surprising way to re-calibrate your minds.

Joëlle Léandre - Zurich Concert (Intakt, 2023)

Joëlle Léandre's solo Zurich Concert was recorded at Taktlos-Festival at Kunstraum Walcheturm in Zürich in March 2022, and, as expected, it is an inspired and sublime performance. Léandre plays arco, obviously, with her astounding bowing techniques, but also with great passion, subversive wit and clever irony, powerful and ecstatic energy and poetic, compassionate tenderness. 

She is a force of nature and you can sense her once-in-a-lifetime free spirit personality in this concert. The double bass becomes an elastic material in her hands, an extension of her body and soul, and tells imaginative and free-associative stories. There is no earthly power that can stop her spontaneous and intuitive creative energy when she picks her beloved and faithful instrument. 

 

The Viennese, fellow double bass player-musicologist Nina Polaschegg, who wrote the liner notes, calls the French master a “true magician of sound” and she is totally right. Zurich Concert is another tour-de-force performance of Léandre, and you can feel the appreciative audience bewitched and only wish that you were there too.

Mark Dresser - Tines of Change (Pyroclastic, 2023)

Mark Dresser is not only a true master of the double bass but also a lifelong researcher, innovator and conceptualist of the bull fiddle's almost infinite sonic possibilities, and a rare musician who treats his instrument as an orchestra rather than a string instrument. Dresser finds in the double bass orchestras within orchestras, crosscurrents of harmonic and multiphonic inspiration that engage in captivating and entrancingly beautiful dialogues.

On Tines of Change, his sixth solo double bass album, Dresser presents a dozen new explorations performed on unconventional four and five-string basses crafted by the Colorado-based bassist and luthier Kent McLagan. The title refers to those basses’ most striking feature, an array of metal tines affixed to a secondary bridge. Like the strings, these tines can be plucked or bowed, offering a variety of sounds from the percussive to the ethereal. McLagen also embedded hand-wound individual magnetic pickups into the fingerboard of the bass, one set below the nut and the other at the octave. These additional pickups allow Dresser to sound up to three different pitches on each string, as well as amplify subtle tones and pitches that might otherwise go unheard in a live or collaborative setting.

With these innovative double basses, Dresser experiments, sculpts and orchestrates microtonal, produces soft and exotic flute-like sounds, or crafts mysterious polyphonic dialogs with himself. He juggles with suggestive overtones and percussive beats and explores deep harmonic sonorities and multiphonics that evoke the overtone-rich tradition of throat singing. Dresser’s sonic vision is always compelling and insightful, always performed with inspired musical command, beauty and elegance, and, obviously, always reveals so many surprising, different and distinct voices of the double bass.

Håkon Thelin - Random Partials/ Twinings (Peninsula Audio Records, 2023)

Håkon Thelin - Spektralkompass/Sterbendes Hertz (Peninsula Audio Records, 2023)

Norwegian double bass master-composer-eductor Håkon Thelin calls his new two albums, released on his newly-founded label Peninsula Audio Records, a label for experimental double bass music, a “seismic change of style, a massacre of elements where everything but the pure essence has been shaved away”. Thelin's radical new music focuses on the study and research of purely personal interests in sound and technique, and Thelin means idiosyncratic and idiomatic techniques that originate from the instrument itself and push the limits, in one way or another. 

Random Partials/Twinings, with the Japanese, Oslo-based pianist Sanae Yoshida, is a methodical, minimalist work (he elaborates on each piece and adds notes and instructions on his website). “Twinnings” is based on two different approaches to exploring the aural difference between pure intonation on the double bass and equal tuning on the piano. Each section of the piece is introduced by a 7-note theme from a Norwegian folk melody played on overtones on the double bass and combined with the unison equal-tuned notes of the piano. Thelin employs a technique he has learned from Mark Dresser which turns the intonation of the double bass as it gradually slips away (in micro-intervals) from the equal-tuned piano, and makes the double bass sings suggestive and poetic, otherworldly overtones. 

The 43-minute ”Random Partials” is described by Thelin as a “blissful mix of Alvin Lucier and John Cage”. Its 1-16 harmonic version plays the double bass harmonic partials (just intonation) with the corresponding “unison” tones on the piano, one at a time, as a sustained, slowly fading sound. Thelin and Yoshida create a randomly selected series of partials until all partials are used, and then the piece ends. This piece has a more austere,ritualist-meditative atmosphere.

On Spektralkompass/Sterbendes, Hertz Thelin plays two to eight double basses and sine tones and is accompanied by British, Oslo-based sound artist Natasha Barrett who plays logarithmic sine tone glissando on the six “Spektralkompass” pieces (plus two variations, all clock in about 7:40 minutes). These pieces are an evolving series of works exploring spectral qualities in different playing techniques on the double bass and rely on two sine tones that start in unison and move slowly apart in a long, continuous glissando movement. The double bass lines in all the works imitate the sine tone glissandi and add various sonic phenomena such as beatings, multiphonics, and an extended bowing technique called “spectral phase difference”. Thelin references here the innovative works and the extended techniques of double bass pioneer masters such as Italian Stefano Scodanibbio (especially his seminal Voyage That Never Ends, New Albion, 1998) and Fernando Grillo, or Mexican contemporary composer and double bass player Rodrigo Mata. These urgent and extremely resonant pieces are disorienting, leading the listener into a labyrinth of enigmatic and almost orchestral, voluminous sounds. 

The 34-minute “Sterbendes Hertz” for double bass and sine tones “takes emotions that emerged during a demanding period of the corona pandemic, and transforms them into sound”. It reflects growing dissonances within the family and society and structures that are gradually disintegrating and coming together again. This piece is organized in repeated sections of 30 seconds, and in each section, two unison (or almost unison) sine tones move apart in step-descending or ascending intervals while the open strings of the double bass are almost imperceptibly tuned down or up to match the sine tones. Thelin recommends listening to this piece with headphones due to the very low sine tones. This is an unsettling piece that captures faithfully the stressful era but its stubborn delivery on a way out of this emotional maze. 

 

 

Brandon López - vilevilevilevilevilevilevilevile (Tao forms, 2023)

The in-demand, New York-based double bass player Brandon López says that vilevilevilevilevilevilevilevile is “less about -a thing- than it is about perceptions of things, questioning those perceptions, and possibly altering them”. The title refers to López’ “very personal and obsessive thoughts on what actions are considered vile and evil and how arbitrary our decisions are to proclaim ‘anathema’ while we get on our knees for the president or prime minister, king, queen, the banker, the pope, and praise war unquestionably”.

In a conversation with Kurt Gottschalk who wrote the liner notes, López expanded on his debt to the innovative ideas of double bass masters - William Parker’s musicality, Joëlle Léandre’s bowing techniques (“she scares the shit outta me”) and Peter Kowald (“he was one of those players who destroyed the conception of what it meant to have a beautiful sound”). López follows these masters’ path: “The music that I make is kind of the opposite of what would be considered beautiful. I want to make something beautiful and exquisite and complicated through processes that are not considered correct”.

López, like what Léandre always advises, plays what he has learned and what he tries to unlearn. He does so as if he is totally possessed by the urgency and intensity of the moment, obsessed with complex and dense ideas, exploring subtle timbral territories with commanding and highly inventive technique and boundless power. López sounds like he can do whatever he wants with the double bass - sing, moan, unburden frustrations, take risks and flirt with danger or even seek sonic salvation. But he refuses to answer Gottschalk if mysticism plays an active role in his playing, as it does in Parker’s playing. “There are some things we don’t ask about”, he says. vilevilevilevilevilevilevilevile may be one of the most beautiful solo double bass albums in the least beautiful manner possible.

Gonçalo Almeida - Compositions for Double Bass (Cylinder, 2022)

Prolific Portuguese, Rotterdam-based double bass player Gonçalo Almeida presents four compositions for solo double bass. Almeida performs these demanding and complex compositions brilliantly with inspiring command of his instrument.

The first one “MPK” (Memoriam for Peter Kowald, 2005) by Greek composer-educator Thanos Polymeneas-Liontiris for double bass and live electronics. This composition celebrates Kowlas as an exceptional human being and was inspired by Kowald’s great musician's metaphysical credo for music and life. Polymeneas-Liontiris met Kowald, and, obviously, this meeting informed and inspired his life and music. Almeida performs this complex piece with passionate and uncompromising energy, as one can expect Kowald would do. The second piece “Walk” (2007, revised 2020) by Polish interdisciplinary composer Michał Osowski for a double bass solo aims to create a sonic image of a peaceful and leisured walk, with enough space for episodic improvisations and meditative thoughts. This minimalist and highly resonant drone piece demands a total command of its difficult-to-execute progressions.

The third piece “Mangled Counteract” (2022) by fellow Portuguese drummer Pedro Melo Alves for double bass solo, was written especially for Almeida. It is based on the irregular repetition of fixed sound events, and Alves describes it as a “raw approach to the concept of broken balance as it is a stable embracing and somewhat ethereal landscape on itself”. Almeida introduces a ritualistic vein to this composition that evokes “eternal limbo, cut only by a melody in distress”. The fourth composition “Ritual More or Less Defined (2017, revised 2022) by Dutch drummer-composer-visual artist Friso van Wijck (who worked with Almeida in the Bulliphant quintet) for prepared double bass, tape and live electronics, was written for and dedicated to Almeida, with advice from Almeida. This mysterious, sound-oriented composition employs various notational approaches and flirts with abstract sounds, noise and the lowest possible detuned sounds.

Mirco Ballabene - 7 composizioni Improvvisate Per Contrabbasso Solo (Niafunkem, 2023)

The debut solo double bass album of Italian Micro Ballabene dedicates four “Composizione improvvisata” to influential double bass masters whose techniques, and, obviously, their extended techniques, inspired Ballabene - Mark Dresser’s double pizzicato, Stefano Scodanibbio’s alternation between ordinary notes and harmonics, Peter Kowald’s energy and Joëlle Léandre’s tremolo, and another one to fellow Italian contemporary composer Salvatore Sciarrino. Clearly, Bellabene is well-versed in the complex and challenging work of these innovative musicians, improvisers and composers.

Ballabene uses the term “Composizione improvvisata” as these pieces, and five other pieces (the sixth one has four movements), were shaped over time, through many executions and adjustments, while he was exploring techniques, timbral palette and compositional strategies, but never written as compositions and are still feel free, urgent and open. Furthermore, there is a tendency for each piece to be strongly recognizable from the others, favoring the vertical dimension of the deep excavation, rather than the horizontal dimension of the plurality. Bellabene performs with commanding authority and energy, impeccable and creative techniques and imaginative sonic vision, always willing to take the double bass to its most extreme and unchartered sonic regions. “Composizione improvvisata n. 5 (per Salvatore Sciarrino)” for prepared double bass with colored plastic toy nails inserted into the strings is a masterful piece and corresponds wisely with Sciarrino’s compositions for flute which demanded from its performers an abundance of unusual and inventive sounds. Ballabene is a true hero of the double bass. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Beliah / Heilbron / Majkowski / Shirley - Bertrand Denzler: Low Strings (Confront, 2023)

Low Strings is the composition of Swiss-French composer-sax player Bertrand Denzler for a double bass quartet featuring French Sébastien Beliah, Australian Jon Heilbron and Mike Majkowski and Canadian Derek Shirley, recorded at Ausland in Berlin in Marc 2022. Denzler already explored the sonic range of the double bass in Basse Seule (confront, 2020), a series of études and pieces composed for French double bass player Félicie Bazelaire. Both compositions for the double basses are from 2016.

Low Strings offers two versions of this composition, number 4 and 3, and both are, obviously, dark and deep-toned drones focusing on a sense of almost statis, created by a patient and methodical sustained bowing of the double bass strings that in its turn creates harmonic dynamics. The minimalist and subtle variations of this composition, with their profound investigation of the dark and often dissonant timbral palettes, only intensify the hypnotic impact of the double basses' encompassing waves of slow resonating vibrations and suggests a sense of being out of time and lost - willingly - within the vibrations of the low strings.

 

Bára Gísladóttir - SILVA (Sono Luminus / ESP-Disk, 2023)

Bára Gísladóttir is an Icelandic, Copenhagen-based contemporary composer and double bass player, who mostly plays solo her own music or with her long-time collaborator and fellow Icelandic bassist Skúli Sverrisson. She describes SILVA as “a work for processed double bass built on the idea of a downward growing forest, living its own secret life of underground raves and meditative cohesiveness”. 

Gísladóttir plays the double bass, processed to various degrees (with MAX/Live) and layered into a mass of noise. She adds that she was intrigued by the thought of “something that would otherwise naturally grow upwards, in reach for light and surrounded by air, rather being drawn in the opposite direction where darkness and solid form serve as the source of gleaming luminosity and breezy surroundings”. The 57-minute SILVA is a powerful and suggestive composition that extends, processes and manipulates the timbral palette of the double bass to new and surprising terrains and transforms the instrument into a vivid and tangible entity. It also reflects Gísladóttir’s inclusive sonic vision, experimenting with elements of contemporary music, metal, noise, drone, techno, and electronica. 

Nils Vermeulen - variations (Aspen Edities, 2023)

variations is the debut solo album of Belgian double bass player-luthier Nils Vermeulen, known for his collaborations with Paul Lytton, Seppe Gebruers, William Parker, John Dikeman and Luis Vicente. The versatility of his work includes free improvisation, jazz and contemporary music, and his own groups Kabas and Jukwaa. The title of the album refers to the saying of French philosopher Henri Bergson: “Matter thus resolves itself into numberless vibrations”.

The album was recorded at the empty Ghent Opera in July 2022, where every note, attack and vibration comes through, including the creaking of the wooden door. The strings Vermeulen uses on this recording are inspired by traditional gut strings, and have lower tension to let the instrument resonate freely. Vermeulen explores an array of extended techniques in composed and improvised pieces, some even depart from or tend to almost mathematical material, countered by Vermeulen's highly intuitive playing. He dedicates an imaginative piece to Stefano Scodanibbio and explores multitudes of, obviously, resonating but beautiful, dramatic or lyrical and emotional, deep-toned vibrations, all stressing his profound, continuous physical dialog with his instrument and its new strings.

Bruno Råberg - Look Inside (Orbis, 2023)

Swedish, Boston-based since 1981 double bass player-composer-eductor (he is a professor at Berklee College of Music) Bruno Råberg releases his first solo album when he is 68 years old. Look Inside is, obviously, an introspective journey that reflects his wealth of experiences and studies, from investigations of jazz standards to explorations of Indian and African traditions, and free improvisation to through-composed chamber music. It took Råberg some time until he managed to stop overcompensating for the lack of collaborators and distill the essence of the music. The music aims to make a composition sound like it is an improvisation and improvisation like it is a composition, but all stress a highly melodic but reserved approach and is performed in an elegant and agile eloquence on the double bass. The album is released on Råberg’s Orbis label.

Råberg let his instrument sing like the African kalimba on “Kansala” and links it to a beautiful interpretation of Miles Davis’ classic “Nardis”. “Chennai Reminiscence” reflects on Råberg’s studying of South Indian classical music, with his suggesting exotic, sinuous violin-like lines, percussive rhythms, and vivid harmonies. Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s iconic “Prelude to a Kiss” and George Gershwin's “My Man’s Gone Now” receives touching, lyrical readings. The free improvise “Gyrating Spheres” is the only piece where Råberg dares to be ‘out’ with a few extended percussive techniques. Råberg closes this gentle album with a meditative tone with “Ode to Spring” and “Stillness –Epilogue”.

Vinicius Cajado - LUNA (Urchin, 2023)

The double bass playing of Brazilian, Vienna-based Vinicius Cajado was already praised by Joëlle Léandre, with whom he recently performed in a double bass duet. LUNA is Cajado’s sophomore solo double bass album, inspired by a famous quote by John Cage: "I have never listened to a sound without liking it". It features a 26-minute piece for an unprepared double bass player that meditates on Cage’s Zen Buddhism-tinged abstraction of sounds and nothingness and seeks to be “submerged in sound until you wake up”. Cajado does so with a commanding, possessed-in-the-moment performance. He lets the sounds of the double bass guide him in an organic but also unpredictable manner, but assembles these sounds into a poetic narrative, and with a color palette and vocabulary of his own.

Manu Mayr - Sequenz I - Burning Gas for Solo Acoustic Double Bass (why Keith Dropped The S, 2023)

Italian experimental composer Luciano Berio’s Sequenzas can be characterized as extremely difficult solo works, which propelled instrumental and performance possibilities forward, and in fact, codified new technical standards in the area of contemporary and experimental music. Fellow Italian double bass master Stefano Scodanibbio adapted Sequenza XIVb for double bass and highlighted its abstract rhythmic patterns by creating a variety of extended techniques. Viennese double bass player Manu Mayr, known for his parts in the contemporary ensemble Studio Dan and experimental bands 5K HD, Kompost 3 and Gabbeh, takes this challenging and iconic contemporary composition of double bass literature even further. He uses masterfully the double bass body with intricate plugging and bowing and creates a multilayered and multi-faceted sounding interpretation, and suggests its strong sense of formal structure within the nuanced improvised parts. To give an updated edge to this composition, he added the title Burning Gas, referring to his gas-powered water heater that can be heard in the background, and as a sign of his dismay at the “crazy capitalist free energy market” prices. Still, playing acoustic music gives him, and us - the listeners - some - and even some more kind of temporary relief.

Devin Ray Hoff - Music for Bass Cats (Self Released, 2023)

The last album here is played on electric bass but by New York-based double bass player Devin Ray Hoff, known for his parts in the Nels Cline Singers and his collaborations with Marc Ribot, Steve Bernstein, Sharon Van Etten and Julia Holter. Hoff likes to stay at home as much as possible with his two favorite monsters - the wonderful cats, Liebchen and Dee Dee Ramone. This single Music for Bass Cats is dedicated to these felines, who apparently like Hoff playing bass for them. “Liebchen” is a playful Fender fretless bass song, augmented with samples, while “Dee Dee” is a more meditative and lyrical soundscape that expands the sonic range of the electric bass with effects and samples.

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Solo bass

By Stef Gijssels

Earlier this year Eyal Haruveni already made an overview of new solo bass albums. It's time for an update,  starting with the re-issue of the first solo bass album ever, Barre Philips "Basse Barre". 

Barre Phillips - Basse Barre (Futura, 2021) 

This iconic album was first released in 1971, and it was itself a shortened version of three hours of performance in St James Norlands church in London on 30 November 1968. It's been re-issued now both on CD and digitally by the Futura label. Check it out, if only for its historical importance. It was amazing then that such music was released, and it remains amazing even today. 

Phillips singular vision on the instrument and his skills make this even after all these years still a brilliant piece of music, that has not aged at all. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Michael Bisio - Inimitable (Mung Music, 2022) 

Despite Michael Bisio's large musical output in many bands including his own ensembles, I think this is his first solo album, and it is a winner. Over the years, and possibly thanks to the various contexts and sonic environments in which he performed, Bisio has managed to benefit from the full capacity of his instrument combined with a wealth of musical ideas, be it on plucked bass or bowed. His playing is authentic from beginning to end, and varies between the playful and grave austerity, between lightness and darker sides, between the intimate and the profound. 

Even if I do appreciate the efforts by other artists to use pedals and electricity to broaden the sound of their instrument, Bisio's acoustic playing again demonstrates the beauty of the physical interaction between the musician and his tool, including the effort, the tangible touch, the deeply resonating natural sounds. 

A winner, as I said.

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Michael Bardon - The Gift Of Silence (Discus, 2022)

Michael Bardon is an Northern-Irish national, born in 1986, who moved to Leeds in 2007 to study jazz. He graduated with honours in June 2010. Other albums on which he performed are "Roots" (Not Two, 2017) and "Craig Scott's Lobotomy - I Am Revolting" (self-released, 2021), both reviewed on our blog.

His first solo album is the result of the lockdown of 2020. He used this time to further experiment with sounds, drones, microtonality, using pedals and extended techniques, and Harry Partch's 11-Limit tonality diamond tuning system. Most of the pieces are built around bowed sounds, which resonate in overdubbed versions both on bass and cello, creating unexpected and multi-layered soundscapes.

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Marc Johnson - Overpass (ECM, 2021)

Bassist Marc Johnson is one of the mainstays of creative contemporary jazz, with lots of albums on ECM in various ensembles, with amongst others John Abercrombie, Joe Lovano, John Scofield, Joey Baron and Enrico Pieranunzi. 

On "Overpass", he treats us to his phenomenal technique, his beautiful tone and sense of timing, performing a few known compositions such as "Freedom Jazz Dance", "Nardis" and the intimate "Love Theme from Spartacus". In contrast to many of the other solo bass albums, he improvises without losing the tunes basic rhythm, making it less free but not less interesting. 

Some tracks have overdubs, as on "Samurai Fly", where his bowed lead is accompanied by plucked bass. The best parts are when he goes fully in improvisational mode, where the emotional tension gets more attention than the form. 

Ksawery Wójciński - Tower of Pressure (Antenna Non Grata, 2021)

Ksawery Wójciński is a Polish double basss player, born in 1983, and comfortable in many styles, from folk over classical to jazz. 

This is his second solo bass album, after "The Soul" from 2014, on which he also played other instruments. This one is also not a true solo bass album, since he is accompanied on two of the eleven tracks by Maurycy Wójcińśki on trumpet. Since his collaboration with Wojciech Jachna on "Night Talks" and "Conversation With Space" he clearly enjoys the trumpet-bass duo format too, as do we. 

Most of his pieces are played arco, bringing incredible depth, breadth and dynamics to his music. He varies from the quiet contemplative over heart-piercing emotional moments to daring explorations. On "Eon VII" he sings too, in a kind of wordless melancholy incantation. 

The duets with Wójcińśki continue this mood, resulting in a quiet and peaceful closure for the album. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Thomas Pol - Blue Soil (ZenneZ Records, 2022)

We get one more debut solo bass album by Dutch bassist Thomas Pol, a technically brilliant and versatile musician who departs from his usual jazz environment to bring solo pieces that bridge many genres and styles, but always with taste and taking the coherence of the album into account. Pol describes his own adventure as an exploration of his instrument, a dedicated time to work with more intimacy on the instrument that usually supports other musicians. It's great to hear its voice now on its own. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Daniel Studer - Fetzen Fliegen (Wide Ear Records, 2022)

Swiss bassist takes his bass to a different level of music. Call it avant-garde or experimental, he is exploring the sonic space of his instrument as integrated in the surrounding environment, recorded and mixed to put listener and instrument in the centre of this enlargened space. The result is a truly physical experience of micro-sounds, barely audible caressses of the strings that stir the silence, almost like quantum particles bouncing in total emptiness. The result is both intimate and magical. 

This will not be to everyone's taste, but it's more than worth a try with a good headset. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

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Solo Double Bass Extravaganza

By Eyal Hareuveni

Listening carefully to many solo double bass albums over and over in a few weeks may cause a re-calibration of your body frequencies. The 14 albums reviewed below resist common descriptions, all experimenting with the bull fiddle (one with another sound artist and other teams with a vocalist). But all can guarantee that your sensitivity to the deep-toned vibrations may expand to other vibrations that move this planet and its living beings, and fulfils the wish of one of the prolific bassists, Luke Stewart, to lead to a radical change.

Joëlle Léandre - At Souillac en Jazz (Ayler, 2021) ***** 

French master double bass player Joëlle Léandre has recorded many solo albums since the early eighties, most likely more than any other free improvising double bass player. The last one, At Souillac en Jazz, was recorded live during the festival by the same title and in the Saint-Jacques church of Calès in Lot, with the audience and two short pieces as a private after-set once the audience had left, in July 2021 by jazz journalist and film director Christian Pouget (He directed her musical portrait Affamée, 2019). Pouget, who wrote the poetic liner notes, captured beautifully the spirit of the commanding of Léandre’s tour-de-force performance: “The huge sound, instantly gripping the body, is overwhelming far beyond the music, an experience so strong that tears flow when it comes to the sung parts. From the depths of the ages, evocative of a Native American medicine woman, an Inuit shaman, voodoo priestess or even blues woman, extracting with bare hands her strings rooted in clay, transcending the sound of her double bass, she awakens a thousand-year-old buried 'collective unconscious' with her voice of trance, inviting ancestral spirits to a form of resistance to fight all the injustices of the world, piercing with sound and love the hearts of both aficionados dreaming of impossible musical utopias and of novices stunned by her visceral ‘duende’” The audience thought that Pouget was absolutely right, and obviously, me, who was fortunate enough to experience a few of Léandre’s magical and highly poetic performances, could not agree more.

Nina de Heney & Lina Järnegard - Solo piece for peace, please (Geiger Gramophone, 2021) *****

Solo piece for peace, please is a composition by Swiss, Gothenburg-based double bass player Nina de Heney and Swedish contemporary composer Lina Järnegard. This composition was inspired by fellow-Swedish writer, poet and artist Cia Rinne’s “notes for soloists”, which experiments with the performativity of the text and language at all in readings and collaborations with artists and sound designers. De Henry plays the double bass and cymbals, and this composition was recorded at Cinnober Teater in Gothenburg in 2019. The highly poetic Solo piece for peace, please intensifies the dark, woody, resonating tones of the bowed double bass - with the bow often employed as a percussive instrument - with the resonating tones of bowed, metallic cymbals. It offers nuanced drones that seduce the listener to wander within its enigmatic tones and overtones. Often, De Heney suggests puzzling, chaotic soundscapes by the bass augmented with the cymbals, almost industrial ones, in a way that adds an abstract sonic dimension to the cryptic text of Rinne.

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Gonçalo Almeida - Monólogos a Dois (A New Wave of Jazz, 2021) ****½

Prolific Portuguese, Rotterdam-based Gonçalo Almeida is known for the range of his musical tastes - modern jazz and free jazz, chamber music, brutal jazzcore and contemporary experimentalism with a few combinations in between. His extensive, restless work has sharpened his instincts, techniques and musical imagination and equipped him with impressive physical power. Monólogos a Dois is his second solo double bass album, following Monologues Under Sea Level, released on his own Cylinder Recordings in 2015. In between, Almeida recorded a double bass duo with Dutch Raoul Van Der Weide (Duas Margens / Live at Pletterij (Cylinder, 2017). Monólogos a Dois was recorded at the Old Church in Oud-Charlois, Rotterdam in July 2020 and released as a limited edition of 100 vinyls plus download option.

The 12 monologues are actually distinct dialogs with the double bass, covering the intimate, introspective and often stormy relationship with the bull fiddle. Almeida often sounds as charming and tempting the double bass, dancing gently with it, but also investigating its timbral qualities, provoking or struggles with it and attempts to submit the resisting instrument to his sonic vision, always with natural authority and captivating elegance. The acoustics of the empty, reverberating church contribute to the thoughtful, austere spirit of this album. Guy Peters, who wrote the liner notes, stresses the clever ways that Almeida corresponds with seminal double bass players, from Barre Philips to Charlie Haden, and, indeed, Almeida knows how to tie together different approaches, influences and a vast palette of sounds as well as an array of extended techniques and to own them all, in his own fascinating and special way.

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Paul Rogers - This Is Where I Find Myself (AudioSemantics, 2021) ****  

British Paul Rogers is known for his many collaborations with reeds player Paul Dunmall, including in the Mujician quartet. He plays the A.L.L. double bass, designed by him and built for him by Antoine Leducq, with 7 strings that cover most of the cello range and the double bass range, plus sitar-like sympathetic strings. This Is Where I Find Myself was recorded during April and May 2020, and Rogers says that he recorded with no goal, just letting his “heart, mind and soul be open. It's got nothing to do with what instrument you use, it's the spirit you put into the music”. Rogers plays the bass exclusively with the bow and often his extended bowing techniques suggest that he was playing simultaneously on a few strings instruments or cover the whole range of a string quartet. The two extended pieces “Flexible” and “Now” explore the infinite possibilities of the A.L.L. double bass, as an imaginative sonic generator of alien, resonant multiphonics, conventional and exotic string instruments, or dark overtones of a deeply suggestive drone. All reflect the restless, inquisitive mind of Rogers and performed with a sense of powerful urgency and captivating authority.

Gus Loxbo - Trådknaster (Noshörning, 2021) ****

Trådknaster ('threads' in Swedish) is the debut album of Swedish double bass player Gus Loxbo, who also plays in the experimental-pop bands Pombo (with sax hero Anna Högberg) and Silent Blossoms. Loxbo recorded nine compositions for this album at Elektronmusikstudion EMS in Stockholm in February 2020. His classical training, education in jazz, improvisation and electroacoustic composition enables him to harness experimental threads into subtle yet suggestive textures. Loxbo balances cleverly and organically his extended bowing techniques, the dark and woody, vibrating sounds of the double bass and brief silences to sketch fragile and tentative sonic images and stories, and attaches poetic titles to them. “Allt det vackra” (All that Beautiful) highlights a touching melody, and “Ett Spirituellt Liv Med Fågelerfarenheter” (A Spiritual Life With Bird Experiences) suggests a hypnotic, ritualist pulse. The longest pieces “Där Tankar Föds” (Where Thoughts are Born and “Pappa” capture best his imaginative aesthetics, often transforming the double bass into a totally abstract sonic entity. The beautiful cover art of Henning Trollbäck matches the sonic vision of Loxbo.

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Àlex Reviriego - Raben (Tripticks Tapes, 2021) **** 

Raben is the second chapter in the trilogy of solo albums inspired by German poets from Spanish, Barcelona-based double bass player Àlex Reviriego, known from the Phicus trio. This chapter is inspired by the writings of Paul Celan (1920-1970), who was born in Romania but wrote in German and follows Blaue Tauben (Sirulita 2018), dedicated to Georg Trakl. The upcoming chapter will be dedicated to Friedrich Hölderlin. Raben was recorded by Phicus colleague Ferran Fages in the winter of 2019. Reviriego says that this chapter retains the numbing cold of the winter days when it was recorded, and unlike the bleak expressionistic spirit of Blaue Tauben, it has a more contemplative and pensive mood. He imagines Celan’s stark and cryptic language with mysterious, dissonant sounds created by extremely slow and almost static, repetitive bowings, muted stubborn tremolos and luminous harmonics. The uncompromising music stresses otherworldly sounds of the double bass defined by its dark and austere suchness, with no attempt to suggest a narrative or overt emotionality. The music, like Celan’s poems, creates its own intense and evocative sonic environment and its inner chart of codes and meanings within which it must be listened to.

Paroxysm (A Front Recordings, 2021) **** 

Paroxysm, i.e. a sudden attack or violent expression of a particular emotion or activity, is the duo of Austrian, Berlin-based double bass player Werner Dafeldecker, known from such experimental bands like Polwechsel and Splitter Orchester, and Irish and fellow-Berliner sound artist Roy Carroll, who plays here on electroacoustic media. They describe this project as offering their “precisely articulated timbre-focused music traverses malleability of material and form, pitch interactions, timbral nature and psychoacoustic phenomena, through continually shifting layers and perspectives on singularities and recurrences. Paroxysm pulls apart the temporal structure of a moment, revealing the glistening molecular density within. They exude certain brutality towards their materials; visceral, emotional gestures amidst the forest of oblique and parallel connections/interactions that form their work”. Together, Dafeldecker and Caroll create an ambiguous sonic entity where the patient and methodical exploration of the double bass’ acoustic timbres is extended and mutated by the subtle, otherworldly electronic sonorities, and at the same time, the double bass intensifies the abstract electronics. The first piece “Tendencies” sketches a minimalist, cold and barren drone, while the second one “Basalt” begins with a darker, more sparse and melancholic tone but slowly aims towards a distant, almost industrial percussive coda, but like the first piece has its own accumulative, arresting effect.

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Vinicius Cajado - Monu (Urchin, 2021) ***½ 

The playing of Brazilian, Vienna-based Vinicius Cajado knows combine influences and techniques (and extended bowing techniques, including with objects and loops) from jazz, free improvisation and classical and contemporary music, and already praised by Léandre. Monu is his debut album, and he also leads a quartet that released this year its debut album, both on the label Urchin that he co-founded with Austrian-Japanese guitarist Kenji Herbert. Monu offers 12 brief perspectivess of the sonic palette of the bull fiddle, from deep-toned swamps to delicate, lyrical bowing, clever rhythmic patterns and to enigmatic, processes a meditative sounds and otherworldly multiphonics. All are performed with a poetic, sensual touch and often with a sense of reserved drama. The heartfelt “Clumsy” is dedicated to the great Austrian double bass player Peter Herbert, the uncle of Kenji Herbert.

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Aurelijus Užameckis - Signals (CRRNT Records, 2021) ***½

Signals is the debut solo album of Lithuanian, Copenhagen-based double bass player Aurelijus Užameckis. The music was recorded in September 2020 at the Brønshøj water tower in Copenhagen, known for its unique room ambiance with a reverb of approximately 13 seconds. Užameckis defines Signals as “an ambiguous manifestation of existential considerations that are sonically expressed through minimalistic themes and improvisations”. His approach is quite scholastic and methodic, investigating patiently and thoroughly the extensive sonic possibilities of the double bass, obviously, with extended bowing techniques, and the interaction between himself, the composer-improvisers, his instrument, and the highly reverberating location, the Brønshøj water tower. If I would borrow a few of Užameckis’ titles for his solo pieces, this album offers some imaginative ways to re-calibrate and tame your thoughts and dive into suggestive, nebulous dreams, all arranged as an arresting suite.

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Hernâni Faustino - Twelve Bass Tunes (Phonogram Unit, 2021) *** 

Prolific Portuguese, Lisbon-based double bass player Hernâni Faustino is known from the RED trio and his collaborations with Nate Wooley, Lotte Anker and fellow-Portuguese musicians like Rodrigo Amado, Sei Miguel and Ernesto Rodrigues. He is also one of the founders of the cooperative label Phonogram Unit. Twelve Bass Tunes is Faustino’s debut solo album and it was recorded at Namouche Studios in Lisbon in January 2020. The album surveys the full spectrum of the techniques and extended techniques of the self-taught Faustino. He is an agile and expressive improviser and a spontaneous composer who knows how to tell suggestive stories, equipped with impressive physical energy, and authoritative sound of his own.

Luke Stewart - Works for Upright Bass and Amplifier Vol. 1 (Astral Spirits, 2021) ***½ 

Works For Upright Bass and Amplifier Vol. 2 (Astral Spirits, 2021) ***½ 

Works For Electric Bass Guitar (Tripticks Tapes, 2021) ***

American bassist Luke Stewart plays in the Irreversible Entanglements, James Brandon Lewis Trio and Heroes Are Gang Leaders and is also a booker, promoter, radio DJ, and musician who is determined to extend and expand the sonic palette of the double bass and the electric bass.

Writer and Historian Gabriel Jermaine Vanlandingham-Dunn, who wrote the liner notes for the two volumes of Works for Upright Bass & Amplifier, imagine Stewart’s playing as conjuring up “images of heat”, melting elements of hip-hop, avant-garde music and electronic music. The four-part Vol. 1 is, naturally, sound-oriented and has a quiet, meditative and introspective atmosphere. The sparse touching and bowing of the strings of the double bass punctuate the abstract humming of the amplifier, and these sounds of the amplifier intensify the delicate vibrations of the double bass. Slowly, the bowing of the double bass becomes more intense, raw and louder, deepening the tension with the amplifier’s sounds and suggesting a mechanical interplay. Only on the last part, Stewart’s highly percussive approach to the double bass addresses conventional yet repetitive, rhythmic patterns, eventually taming the amplifier’s humming sounds.

 

Vol. 2 goes even further with Stewart’s radical sonic experiments, investigating the relationship between the wooden instrument and the electric instrument that amplifies its deep-toned sounds. Each piece offers a distinct perspective of the intersection of acoustic and electronic music - one or two amplifiers or an amplifier with a no-input mixing board. Stewart sees these pieces as symbolizing the intersection of the elements in the natural world, intended “to further explore the developments of the Sound. To inspire deeper personal development, and radical change when needed”. Vanlandingham-Dunn borrows French historian and musicologist Alain Daniélou definitions, and compared these sonic experiments to what neo-Pythagoreans called “music of the spheres”, or what in Indian classical music theory is defined as the vibration of ether, which cannot be perceived in the physical sense, and considered as the principle of all manifestation, the basis of all substance. No double, Stewart creates a series of otherworldly, stubborn and some subtle, whispering drone vibrations while moving the bowed double bass back and forth and suggesting an effect of movement that in its turn, may bring the radical change he hoped for.

 

Works For Electric Bass Guitar is a collection of five focused and restless improvisations, all recorded in one take. Stewart employs extended techniques and fights with his instruments, scratches, rubs and grinds the bass strings in manic attacks, often in an attempt to mutate the metallic-percussive sound of the bass guitar and transform it into an entirely alien, unsettling and noisy sonic entity.

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Tülay German & François Rabbath (Zehra, 2021) **** 

French virtuoso double bass player François Rabbath (who was born in Syria in 1931) is revered by generations of double bass players from classical and contemporary music, or jazz and improvised music. The self-titled album is a remastered vinyl reissues of the two duo albums with Turkish great folk and jazz vocalist Tülay German (born in 1935, was forced to immigrate to France in the mid-sixties due to increasing political and cultural repression, and retired from musical activity in 1987). The album offers songs from a self-titled album from 1980 and Hommage to Nazım Hikmet from 1982. The album offers modern adaptions of poems by Turkish poets, mostly by Nâzım Hikmet (1902-1963), a political activist and a romantic, communist revolutionary, and songs in the tradition of aşıks (singer-poets and wandering bards), collected by German’s partner Erdem Buri. Rabbath plays here on the saz and the double bass and arranged the songs - all sung in Turkish - in a timeless, intimate and chamber manner that highlights the passionate, charismatic delivery of German. He alternates the leading instrumental roles between the double bass and the saz and serves beautifully the emotional dramas, all are glowing manifestos for love and justice. A real gem.

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