Guitarist Dave Harrington, drummer Max Jaffe and saxophonist Patrick Shiroishi return for a sequel to their first musical meeting Speak, Moment, recorded and released by Los Angeles label AKP Recordings in 2024.
For the sequel, they go deeper, with a record whose A-side is essentially a suite of four distinct movements. On the B-side the three tracks reflect “a growing embrace of the sonic vacuum that electronic music depends on…a heaviness that the trio’s 2024 live record Zebulon! unlocked…and an outstretched and unhurried melodic ambience”.
What’s the music like?
There is a fascinating variety of styles and textures at play on this album, rooted in avant-garde jazz but exploring musical territories of great interest to those who love ambient electronica and upfront improvisation.
The four-movement suite with which the album begins moves between ambience and ear-shredding intensity, carefully controlled and yet with the opportunity for each of the three performers to cut loose, which they do on the extended sweat street 7-QS:ZBN9_. The second half finds Shiroishi assertive on Fractal Hash, while Harrington’s studied guitar leads the long form trackerKeeper under spacious California skies, a compelling track of ambience and yet powered by a curious tension.
The frisson of live performance crackles throughout this compelling trip, and at times it is possible if not too far-fetched to sense the wide open plains of the Mojave desert.
Does it all work?
Yes. The musical chemistry between the three is compelling, as are the sound pictures they create.
Is it recommended?
It is. Making Colors is a natural progression for the trio, whose musical acumen and communication is leading them to greater heights. Making Colors is a fascinating album, and a rewarding one to follow.
Bristol-based composer Dan Moore made a three-day field trip to Kielder Water in 2022, having completed some extensive work into the history of the site.
This EP reflects on what he found, both from first-hand experience and from sonic material gathered from the site, which is Britain’s biggest man-made reservoir, a controversial redevelopment plan dating back to the 1960s. Dan’s music blends electronics with field recordings, interview samples and more analogue writing for strings.
Throughout the project he was mentored by film composer Dan Jones.
What’s the music like?
Consistently engaging, and pictorial.
As you might expect, the textures are wide open, but Moore approaches his audio descriptions in a number of different ways. The Architect is busy, its riffs playing backwards and forwards over a spacious backdrop, but the speed drops completely as the music pans out for VT-15, a piece of luxurious ambient textures but uncertain harmonies, using field recordings made from the tunnel underneath the valve tower. It has both depth and a glistening surface, richly coloured.
A Shift In The Land is initially uncertain of its direction, wavering uncertainly, until an emphatic string motif weighs in powerfully, dropping anchor over a distorted backing. The lapping of water is the restful backing to Mike, though the string figures above – often beautiful – are wary, too, and when dropping away in pitch leave the listener feeling uncertain.
Does it all work?
It does – and the only regret is the music isn’t longer, for there are some vivid stories here.
Is it recommended?
Yes. Kielder Water is an ambient experience but is tinged with unease, sitting on the edge of reality. Its music has the same appeal as the breathtaking scenes you encounter on a visit, and have an equally mysterious allure, too.
MF Robots is proving to be an unstoppable train of feelgood music. The project was begun by Brand New Heavies founder Jan Kincaid together with former band vocalist Dawn Joseph, with the idea of achieving musical liberation without any ties to genre.
Despite that, soul, funk and jazz inevitably feature high in the mix, with the two linking on a series of carefree club-based songs.
What’s the music like?
Summer was invented for bands like MF Robots! Their music takes you into the sunshine with immediate effect, as soon as the opening strains of That’s The Way kick in. This breezy first song is backed up by the call to arms that is Children Of The World, a classic soul number.
Cares are well and truly thrown to the side as the album unfolds, with a style rooted somewhere in the late 1970s of Earth, Wind & Fire but with Brazilian, jazz and soul thrown in to the melting pot in liberal measure. Through The Pain is the pick of these freer numbers, a persuasive sway to its rhythms and heat-soaked keyboards.
The Pressure offers a sultry complement to the quicker tracks, while Glide, a love story, and Hello Sunshine offer up radio-friendly choruses. Lay It Back, meanwhile, harks back to the best, communal numbers of the Brand New Heavies.
Does it all work?
The best indication of the effectiveness of this album is that once it finishes you’ll want to hear it all over again. It may be short, but III delivers!
Is it recommended?
Yes, enthusiastically. Dawn Joseph has a great voice, and the band deliver summery funk in abundance. If you have an acre of sunshine to fill, use MF Robots as your soundtrack!
Recorded 17-19 April 2024 at St Silas’ Church, Kentish Town, London
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse
What’s the story?
Toccata Classics continues its exploration of Naresh Sohal (1939-2018) with this release of four of his string quartets, admirably rendered by the Piatti Quartet to make an illuminating overview of Sohal’s musical language from across the greater part of his composing career.
What’s the music like?
Although he attracted most attention in his lifetime for his often expansive orchestral works, Sohal wrote widely for chamber media and not least string quartet. This medium brought his intended amalgam of Indian and European facets into acute focus though, typical of one who from the start approached the Western Tradition head on, there is nothing anecdotal let alone tokenistic about Sohal’s idiom which, as these quartets amply confirm, is unified stylistically and remains consistent as it heads toward the formal and expressive clarity of his final pieces.
At the time of his first quartet, Chiaroscuro II (its predecessor for brass quintet is on Heritage HTGCD122-3 – review to follow), Sohal was exploring an overtly avant-garde idiom evident through diverse and starkly contrasted techniques given focus by climactic cadenzas on cello then first violin – prior to its final evanescing into silence. Likewise in a single movement of 15 minutes, the Third Quartet could not be more different in aesthetic. Initially heard against an insistent drone from second violin and viola, its ideas emerge as demonstrable variants on what went before such that its animated central section then its inward continuation are made part of an indivisible process. This only makes those over-emphatic closing chords the more jarring, as though the work’s ultimate resolution had to be stated rather than just insinuated.
The remaining works, both with three movements and each lasting around 20 minutes, might be thought even closer to tradition yet, as so often with Sohal, matters are never this concrete. Thus the Fourth Quartet’s initial movement alternates its impetuous and ruminative themes to purposeful effect, then its central Moderato balances eloquence and introspection with a poise as makes this the likely highlight of the album; the final Allegro channelling motifs previously heard towards its satisfying denouement. The Fifth Quartet manipulates form and expression even more deftly, the Allegretto’s incisive yet never unyielding rhythmic verve duly matched by the Adagio’s melodic richness or the final Allegro’s contrapuntal dexterity on the way to a decisive close. Both of these pieces abound in quartet writing as unaffected as it is masterful.
Does it all work?
Indeed it does. Whether conceived as a single span or separate movements, the musical range of these pieces is a constant source of fascination. Even more surprising is that the Fourth and Fifth Quartets are only now receiving their first hearing, but it would be hard to imagine more committed advocacy than from the Piatti Quartet, which has taken this music to its collective heart. Hopefully these pieces will now find greater exposure in recital, as the importance of Sohal’s legacy becomes evident and its relevance to the present more widely acknowledged.
Is it recommended?
Indeed it is. Sound is almost ideal, while Utsyo Charraborty’s overview is complemented by a biographical note from Suddhaseel Sen and Janet Swinney. Hopefully the Second Quartet and the brief Awakening (soprano and string quartet) feature on a further release from this source.
Daniela Braun (violin), Anna Carewe (cello), Irmela Roelcke (piano)
Anatol Vieru Versete Op.116 (1989) Piano Sonata no.2 Op.140 (1994) Piano Trio (1997)
Toccata Classics TOCC0762 [65’09”] Producer Justus Beyer Engineers Philipp Wisser, Oliver Dannert
Recorded 14-17 June 2024 at Deutschlandfunk Kammermusiksaal, Cologne
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse
What’s the story?
Toccata Classics issues a volume of late chamber works by Romanian composer Anatol Vieru (1926-98), authoritatively realized by three Berlin-based musicians and so confirming him as a major figure during what was a period of intensive creativity for Romanian musical culture.
What’s the music like?
Along with contemporaries Pascal Bentoiu and Stefan Nicolescu, Vieru was a leading light in the post-war era. A successful academic and administrative career went hand in hand with an increasingly forward-looking approach to composition, making for a substantial and diverse output of almost 150 opuses. Only a fraction has been recorded, but performances of various works (including nearly all his seven symphonies) have been released while other pieces can be accessed via YouTube. This album duly collates three chamber works from his last years.
Most substantial is a Piano Trio from the year before his death. As in all three of these works, Vieru eschews tempo indications for metronome markings (something his older contemporary Mieczysław Weinberg favoured in numerous late chamber pieces), while the hybrid nature of its four movements blurs formal divisions so that a motivic continuity audibly extends across the whole entity. Its expressive ambit likewise projects qualities drawn from Classical or even Baroque models decisively into the present, thus offsetting any possibility of this being music with ‘neo-’ connotations. Trenchant and incisive over much of its course, a more yielding and inward aspect increasingly comes to the fore such that the finale concludes in a mood of keen understatement – not so much avoiding a decisive close as rendering one entirely superfluous.
If the other pieces seem less unequivocal in outlook, they are hardly less refractory in content. Indeed, Versete evidently consists of two-dozen ‘‘microstructures’’ as might equally be called vignettes in their brevity and starkness of gesture; any merging toward a cumulative structure effectively determined by the interpreters. Its three movements may suggest the Second Piano Sonata as favouring a more Classical conception, but this is belied by its opening movement’s formal fluidity, its interlude-like successor’s tensile expression, then a finale which pointedly deconstructs its main motifs as to result in the most distilled of resolutions. Many composers adopt a ‘less is more’ strategy in their later music, but Vieru remains unusual in carrying this through to a logical outcome from where any further development cannot easily be imagined.
Does it all work?
Indeed it does. Vieru’s later music derives from an intricate yet never abstruse compositional strategy – succinctly outlined here by Dan Dediu – which ensures formal unity as surely as it promotes expressive variety. If the Piano Trio is the most absorbing work, the remaining two pieces are never less than distinctive and likewise benefit from the unstinting commitment of these players – Irmela Roelchea writing about her involvement with this music in the booklet. Musicians everywhere should hopefully be encouraged to explore such pieces for themselves.
Is it recommended?
Yes it is. The sound has no lack of clarity and definition, if seeming a shade brittle in louder passages, while the booklet also features an overview of the composer by Martin Anderson. Hitherto unrecorded, Vieru’s eight string quartets would seem to be a worthwhile next step.
Arcana.fm 