„New stuff from the world of improvised music, with Michael Engelbrecht, hello! Three protagonists of free jazz participate in this hour – Pharoah Sanders, once John Coltrane’s comrade-in-arms in his most radical music, and heard at the beginning with an artistic credo as simple as it is elementary, as well as two European pioneers and developers of free jazz of past decades, Evan Parker and Mats Gustafsson.
The connection between spirituality and political consciousness, which historically goes hand in hand with American free jazz, continues to have an effect in current albums by the American pianist Vijay Iyer and the English formation Sons of Kemet In addition, there are two specialists of „ritual groove music“, the pianist Nik Bärtsch – and the Gimbri player Joshua Abrams, whose „Natural Information Society with Evan Parker“ provides the acoustic mood.
Beginning and end belong to two productions by Manfred Eicher and Blake Mills, respectively: in both cases, reduction is the magic word. While bassist Pino Palladino relies on post-production finesse, and the music never sounds like people communicating in a real space, that’s exactly the case with drummer Thomas Strønen’s trio. Ayumi Tanaka plays piano, Marthe Lea alternates between clarinet, percussion and ascetically deployed vocals.
„Bayou“ is an equally primal and radical release from the ECM label. „The most beautiful sound next to silence“ – what became an advertising slogan in the early years of the Munich-based label is not realized in such an exemplary way every day either. Silence is a natural part of free-floating sounds, in every moment the wide space of a radio hall in Lugano is palpable. No partition walls, no headphones – And the three perceive the sounds exactly as they are recorded.“
POSTSCRIPTUM:
Unforgettable, Joshua Abrams‘ „psychedelic“ introduction to the double album „Descent (Out Of Our Constrictions)“ from The Natural Information Society w/ Evan Parker. For „Klanghorizonte“ exclusively.