Once again the erudite Jazzman label invites us godless heathens to open our ears to Europe’s rarest spiritual jazz cuts and performances; collated and hand-picked from a golden epoch, 1963 -72.
Continuing to share a bounty of “esoteric deep jazz” the third volume in this unmissable series of “liturgical traditions meets Miles Davis” seraph worshipping music carries on from where the last compilation left off, albeit with a more plaintive and heavy heart. Marking the important polygenesis developments, and subsequent breakaway, from their American fore-bearers, the European scene added elements of sagacious folklore and atavistic veneration to the modern jazz age template. In a way, this album is a study, or survey of that transition.
The opening concomitant pairing of French musical legend Jef Gilson‘s unknown entitled vignette, and Hermann Gehlen‘s Kyrie (Greek translation of “lord”) both feature sanctified Catholic choirs and Orthodox sombreness; an introduction if you like to the less flamboyant, but more hair-shirt serious nature of contemplative jazz. However, Michel Roques‘s Le Temps (The Times), throws caution to the wind, taking us instead on a close sweltering trip to the Tangiers, as the spiritual message gets lost in translation, our protagonist’s accompanying monologue addressing the tumult melting pot of cultures that find their way into this Calypso jumpy track. Louis Xavier really works up a sweat on his Afro-beat, acid-funk jam, Suite, and Dennis Wiley‘s Barrio Chino stretches the Soft Machine all the way to the Asian Steppes.
Strange, but surprisingly harmonious, tones and styles are merged or absorbed into the jazz vernacular. Hungarian jazz doyen Károly Binder‘s Quartet take a peyote induced camel ride through the Gobi desert on Vasvirag, and The Crescendo Quintet marry Coltrane to Caspian Sea resort jazz.
Those influential Atlantic cousins can’t help but imbue and pierce the Europe sound, producing a sort of Manhattan skyline meets the old world mutation; best exemplified by the Gershwin blows his stack in the Greenwich Village, Mongolia – by the Swedish assemble of Palle Mikkelborg & Radiojazzgruppen – and on the Mondrian Broadway Boogie Woogie geometric soundtrack Sakura Waltz – by the German trombonist led Albert Mangelsdorff Quintet.
Another successful anthropological dig (after all their motto is “we dig deeper”) of experimental and gilded jazz from the undergrowth that doesn’t quite match the brilliance of the last volume, but remains an essential addition to the collection.
03/09/2012
[Rating:4]
