Just all the right (and leftfield) notes in a very silent way. Deep listening is rewarded in regards to some new and forthcoming albums that reach from soft drone to neo classical, from radical chamber jazz to wind-swept, sun-parched guitars. No time for easy listening even if listening seems easy (and who says so). Moving along the point of vanishing seems to be the ethos on Mark Nelson’s Pan American opus (Martina‘s secret favourite) – „12 songs are given just enough space to develop a clutch of themes, mostly on guitar, which are then wrapped in textural detail via effects and subtle electronics“. Or the lovely music from Korean drone queen Park Jiha: slow music gradually moving from morning reveille “At Dawn”, with the especially lovely “Nightfall Dancer” soothing at the day’s end. Roger Eno is mixing colours again, on „The Turning Year“ (to be released in April, along with Joep Beving’s piano meditations) – masterly executed with blurred horizons (the piece „Intimate Distance“ made me think of switching a tiny light on in one of my favourite, almost pitch-black, Rothko paintings). Did you ever follow a tensely plotted dulcimer through a fog of scraped strings? Abd then, Trumpet player Avishai Cohen‘s take on naked music (let us avoid the word „awesome“, but how do so?) – listen to the words of drum master Ziv Ravitz below! „Naked Truth“ is, in the words of John Fordham „a barely-40-minute miniature of an album, beautifully executed and steered by the idea that improvising musicians good enough to play any headlong stream of consciousness can reveal a lot more if they sometimes play only a fraction of what they know.“ All has been said (and not enough) on Group Thinking‘s „Wohnzimmermusik“. When asked for a recording anecdote Stephen Black said: „Nothing particularly exciting, just your usual next door’s dog barking, or the sound of a pigeon in the chimney breast. It was fuelled by coffee and cheap bread.“ And then Joep Beving‘s courageously hypermelodic attempt on letting notes hang in the air – a little bit longer (it impressively worked as part of a trance work with a client of mine). And Richard Williams is diving deep into the blue moments of 21st century Frippertronics: „Miraculously, at least to my ears, the risk of passivity is avoided. Some tracks, like “Strong Quiet I and II” from Brussels in 2009, feature an improvised solo guitar line over the drifting clouds of sound: recognisably Fripp, completely lacking in ego-play, always worth following where they lead.“ A garden of treasures indeed. If earthly or unearthly, you may decide for yourself. A solitary evolution in sound anyway: so close to, and so far away from, the heartbreaking spaciousness of side one of the Eno/Fripp ancient ambient expedition „Evening Star“. One instant ECM classic, and some other „most beautiful sounds next to silence“. Be prepared.
Park Jiha: The Gleam
Group L i s t e n i n g : Clarinet & Piano: Selected Works, Vol. 2
Roger Eno: The Turning Year
Pan American: The Patience Fader
Avishai Cohen Quartet: Naked Truth
Joep Beving: Hermetism
Robert Fripp: Music for Quiet Moments