The Bad Plus is often presented as an American jazz trio from Minneapolis. A more appropriate description would be that of three adventurous musicians playing instruments traditionally associated with jazz (drums, double bass and piano) but composing tunes following Rock structures, or de-constructing famous Pop anthems. Over ... [Continue Reading]
Contemporary
Air: Sonic Armada
Both Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret (2007) and Martin Scorsese's Hugo (2011) have done a lot to reintroduce "cinemagician" Georges Meliès to an entirely new audience, especially to his ground breaking masterpiece Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon). The science-fiction short was originally released in 1902 ... [Continue Reading]
Susanna Wallumrød: Who by fire
Released in 2011 on the ECM record label, If Grief Could Wait is a remarkable cross-genre recording featuring indie pop and jazz Norwegian singer Susanna Wallumrød, Swiss Baroque harp player Giovanna Pessi, Italian nyckelharpa (the Swedish keyed fiddle) player Marco Ambrosini and Swiss-based viola de gamba player Jane ... [Continue Reading]
Nils Petter Molvaer: Presence
Presence is a beautiful track from Norwegian trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer's 2002 recording NP3. While the video clip was superbly crafted, I can't dissociate the track from the album's cover featuring life-size figures on a beach staring at the horizon. The cover is a photograph of an existing installation called "Another ... [Continue Reading]
Jon Hopkins: Monsters theme
Monsters is a 2010 British independent science fiction film written and directed by Gareth Edwards with a wonderful soundtrack by Jon Hopkins. Monsters chronicles the journey of an American journalist and her fellow citizen from alien-infected and quarantined Mexico to the American border. Filmed on a shoestring budget with ... [Continue Reading]
Sam Jackson: The Gramophone
Sam Jackson is a Dublin based pianist, but when I heard "The Gramophone" for the first time on the radio, I mistook it for what could have been a track from an early recording from the Esbjörn Svensson Trio. Sam Jackson's music is of the same calibre. "The feeling I have something to say, the great difficulty ... [Continue Reading]
Gerry Diver: Music for tape loop
Multi-instrumentalist Gerry Diver based the Speech Project on several interviews of Irish musicians and singers such as Shane MacGowan, Christy Moore, Damian Dempsey, Martin Hayes and Danny Meehan. It also features archival recordings of Galway accordion player Joe Cooley. The various musical pitches of the musicians’ ... [Continue Reading]