Category Archives: Bands/Artists I rate very highly

Bands/Artists I rate very highly

Albums I really like, Bands/Artists I rate very highly

Album review: Nick Mulvey: First Mind (released May 2014)

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Nick MulveyJust a few weeks ago at Cheltenham Jazz Festival I held my breath as Nick Mulvey stood at the edge of stage, hesitating for what seemed like ages, gazing out at the packed Arena, before giving us a heartfelt performance, one of the highlights of my festival.   Was he remembering his last visit to Cheltenham, his final performance with Portico Quartet when we gasped, convulsed in sadness, as we learned he was leaving the band?   Or was it simply that the beautiful personal lyrics he was about to sing required stillness?

In this stunning debut album, First Mind,  the gentle hang player of Portico has emerged out of his chrysalis, a fully fledged troubadour with a pleasing, light, unforced voice and a rich song book.  Add to this his breathtaking guitar and layers of delicate instrumentation with synths and mellotrons and you have perfection. There is nothing showy here,  the beauty of each composition requiring you to reflect on it, like a poem.  So many influences crowd in, but never overwhelming each composition – take the subtle Beach Boy /Brian Wilson/God Only Knows feel to the title track First Mind.   And English folk song in  Ailsa Craig,  with shades of Nick Drake.  A chill goes through me when I hear the line in Venus:

To the calling of the morning,  yes, the falling lovers leap

A nine-eleven reference?  A searing image.  An outstanding track with its Botticelli image, sadness and heartbeat.

This album touches me deeply with its maturity, dreaminess and gentleness.  See Nick in performance if you can, but savour the album quietly on your own too, and discover its depth.

★★★★★

All songs written by Nick Mulvey

Nick Mulvey

Mary James 26 May 2014
Albums I really like, Bands/Artists I rate very highly

Album review: Kevin Seddiki and Bijan Chemirani: Imaginarium (2013)

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Kevin Seddiki and Bijan ChemiraniYou may well be captivated by a few words on the sleeve notes of the album Imaginarium by Kevin Seddiki and Bijan Chemirani:

“Kevin Seddiki and Bijan Chemirani may not share the same parents, but they belong to the same family of roaming musicians, with no fixed abode, who have cast off those things that tie us down to one place.  Always looking to connect with others, they know that when the time comes to leave one another, they will always meet up again.”

You will instantly connect with this beautiful album by guitarist Kevin Seddiki and percussionist Bijan Chemirani.  These are troubadours with pedigree.  Seddiki has played with Al di Meola, bandoneonist Dinu Saluzzi and won the prestigious European Guitar Award in Dresden in 2009.  Chemirani comes from a family of outstanding percussionists and singers from Iran (who settled in France in the 1960s).  They have worked together since 2007, starting with a project called Oneira (a dream) in which each artist combined tradition with their own backgrounds and travels.

So perhaps it was inevitable that this new project would build on that experience –  the title Imaginarium gives you a clue – here are exotic places, sunlit coasts, romantic train journeys, planets, tragic operas. You are free to roam in your mind, transported by the most delicate sounds and rhythms that are half familiar if you have ever travelled in North Africa,  the Middle East or West Africa. Here are stringed and percussion instruments with wonderful names like zarb, udu, daff and saz and equally gorgeously heady sounds and trance-like rhythms which rise, fall and move with the sinuous grace of a dancer.  Their shared background in classical music and open minded embrace of other traditions, gently mixed with some subtle electronics,  makes for a rich combination –  like a persian rug or medieval tapestry. They deserve to be better known in the UK for their supreme artistry on interesting instruments, their glorious melodies and the sheer joy they exhibit in their performance – it is captivating and absorbing.

This is a deeply satisfying, dazzling and quite magical experience, and not just for dreaming.  You will want to go travelling…

  •  Kevin Seddiki, classical, folk and 12 string guitars, zarb and percussion
  • Bijan Chemirani, zarb, udu, daff, saz and other percussion
  • Kevin Seddiki
  • Bijan Chemirani

 

Albums I really like, Bands/Artists I rate very highly, Gigs I've enjoyed

Album review: Phronesis: Life to Everything (released April 2014)

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PhronesisIs it unorthodox to start a review with an appreciation of the recording quality? Yet without the technical skills of Matt Robertson and the sheer genius of the mixing by August Wanngren, we’d not have this album. Without those engineers, the energy, the passion and the sheer life-grabbing urgency that always characterises live performances by Phronesis, only a few hundred people would have experienced this extraordinary trio live, in the round, at The Cockpit in November 2013.

So we have the best of both worlds in this wonderful album – Life to Everything  – the sheer joy and expansiveness of live performance fused with recording-studio sound.   Of course, if you were not there you would not know that Anton often plays with cutlery, that Ivo sits so quietly at the piano, you think he is asleep, and that Jasper moves with his bass like a dancing partner.  And the result of these things is that unmistakable Phronesis sound!   As the audience we responded with whistles, whoops and gasps and that is what you will do at home, you will feel you are there.   The bustle, the clatter, the dancing-down-the-street feel of Anton’s compositions such as Herne Hill  is balanced by the ethereal, symphonic beauty of those of Ivo where he takes us into space and deserts, and explores the unspoken strength of deep friendship in Phraternal,  the life-changing experience (for him and us) that is called Phronesis.  And Jasper’s strong, instantly hummable tunes provide the sinew that runs through it, his bass playing is so delicate and responsive it drives the Phronesis machine as if it were a high-powered car  – which it is.

Phronesis’ fifth album, Life to Everything is quite simply one of the best albums you will hear this year! And their best!

★★★★★

Available here from Edition Records.

Mary James 6 April 2014

Bands/Artists I rate very highly

Concert review: Maciek Pysz Trio at Pizza Express Soho London, 25 March 2014

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Maciek Pysz_Pizza ExpressPerhaps as I write this I am subconsciously influenced by the proximity of the British Museum and the Elgin Marbles, but something about last night lodges in my thoughts under the heading ‘Timeless’, something about earthly nature being united with ideal heavenly beauty.   There were many moments in the opening concert at Pizza Express of guitarist Maciek Pysz’s Insight album tour that made a connection, for me anyway, between our physical presence, the transience of life and much deeper truths.

This is a trio of superstars, Yuri Goloubev on bass and Asaf Sirkis on percussion. They hadn’t played together since November but those intervening months have only served to deepen their harmony as a trio, their instinctive support of each other.  There was a darker feeling to the compositions, they took them slightly slower than the album, giving us the opportunity to relish the cool transcendency of Asaf’s drumming, the earthiness of Yuri’s mastery of his bass where the vibrations of his bowing come through the floor to connect you to the sound, and Maciek’s delight in tiny sounds like static floating in the air. His was a restrained performance, not showy, just impressive by what it omitted.

To celebrate the start of the tour, Maciek invited Tim Garland to join them for several compositions including a new piece by Maciek called Desert.  When Tim joined them for Those Days, the slightly Elizabethan dance feel of the original became a dark dense tango.  And Insights (with its many notes) was strongly syncopated.  But perhaps the zenith of this celestial evening was Ralph Towner’s Beneath an Evening Sky, which Tim has played with Ralph Towner.  The gentle serene soprano sax in conversation with the guitar was very special, with space for Yuri and Asaf to add to the quiet atmosphere, the tiny pattering steps of hands on udu drum grounding us again.

A couple of weeks ago I speculated whether this guitar/sax partnership would be Bill Frisell / Tom Rainey or Ralph Towner / Jan Garbarek.  It was neither of course,  it was subtle and mellow, and deeply satisfying.  After the final piece, the audience were silent for just a beat, we had been taken somewhere very special.

Try to see this wonderful trio somewhere on their tour. You will catch some of the magic.

Photo by Clement Regert.

Mary James 26 March 2014

 

Bands/Artists I rate very highly, Gigs I've enjoyed

Gig review: John Law’s Boink! Stratford Jazz, 12 March 2014

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BoinkThis was a gig I savour more in my mind 24 hours after the event than when I was actually there.    I have had this feeling before:   the first time I saw Brad Mehldau’s Mehliana at The Village Underground.  I just didn’t get it. It was too loud,  I couldn’t see.  Then I saw him again at the London Jazz Festival and it clicked.  This new project of John Law has the same effect.    Boink! is the electronic brainchild of guitarist Rob Palmer and John Law.   The press release says  the idea is to explore “electronic sounds and effects over drum grooves. Spontaneous group interaction between keyboards, soprano/bass clarinet and guitar, coming out of pre-composed electronic music scores. Underpinned by propulsive drum grooves. Jazz, rock, ambient, electronic…”    So we knew what we were in for.  Or did we?

But seeing the project live, with a screen showing videos by  Patrick Dunn which became increasingly interesting, absorbing and distracting as the evening wore on, I felt I was being overloaded with sensory experiences – I just couldn’t absorb them fast enough.   Now as I unpick the experience I can see that the concept is extremely good, it just needs a bit more time to bed in as a live venture.   There were so many experiences crammed in – an obscure  piece of Samuel Beckett, our responses to 9/11,  the challenge of being a jazz musician performing to an indifferent chattering sophisticated audience, what it’s like to be a tortoise ( yes!).    I wondered what it was like on the stage – the musicians couldn’t see the visuals behind them or our expressions as we listened.   Maybe in future the setup could allow visuaIs to be seen by everyone so there was true interactivity? I missed the cool clarity of Jon Lloyd’s sax (he is on the album and Laurie Lowe is on drums).   But I admired the  delicate poise of Lloyd Haines on drums, the quick thinking of Rob Palmer  who could change mood swiftly (this was 90% improvisation after all) and as always the  mesmeric skills of John Law on keyboards.

I hear that John’s next project is an animated version of Bach’s Goldberg Variations.   Please slow down John and let us grow into Boink!  The album really does grow on me, I just need to catch up.

John Law, keyboards, iPod
Rob Palmer, guitar
Lloyd Haines, drums
Patrick Dunn, visuals