An exceptional album. Their previous album Moments In Time had a folkish feel to it. This one is different; it tells a story, a tale of collaboration between different cultures, South American and Asian, Middle Eastern and European, a blend of jazz, world music, pop and a bit of R&B. The result: a multi-layered cultural mix that can only be Australian
Category: Reviews
The horn unison passages have the extraordinary unity – bright and seemingly electrically fused – that characterised the famous pairing or alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman and trumpeter Don Cherry; while their solos are freely melodic, somewhat in the Coleman vein.
The Foundry 616 Harris & Mary Ann Streets, Ultimo, Sydney. 3 September 2014 Review by John Clare Walking from Glebe to the relatively new jazz […] Read More
The Wilfreds’ singing seems all the more urgent when it is riding atop a band that is in this state of what we might call restrained agitation. And it is this interplay that breeds that sense of mystery, where both parties are enriching the other’s tradition; when the Dreaming of the Yolngu people intermingles with Western flights of imagination; where any demarcation line between ritual and creativity is blown away in a sand-storm of sound.
When I listen to music that has an important place in history I sometimes gaze out the window and feel the here and now more intensely, while also feeling myself in the time when this particular style emerged. I do the same with Haydn, Ornette Coleman and the Beatles. I’m not sure why, but it makes you feel very alive.
The Life Electric is of its time but is also of the tradition of jazz. PW Farrell has caught the balance of both deftly – not an easy thing to do: too many have failed by tipping too far one way or another.
Internationally acclaimed US pianist/composer Myra Melford, and one of Australia’s most original pianist/composers, Alister Spence weave an extraordinary, unified soundscape in their first musical encounter.
“When Jackson first recorded – with the subtle and distinctive Trio Apoplectic – I was not the only one who found a surprising echo of the floating lyricism, unusual intervals and limpid sound of Paul Desmond…”
Just as the album’s title is both brooding and punning, so the music is in a constant flux of what, were it writing, we would call ‘tone’. Grabowsky can seem to create a pastiche of an idiom out of which a deep truth will grow in the improvising, while a more solemn-sounding piece will spawn sly asides and dramatic jolts from the players, or perhaps contain an unexpectedly curdled harmony.
This is a disc you should perhaps listen to casually at first, (perhaps while ironing your sheets or perhaps just your shirts) then return and take your place in this remarkably silent audience.