Musical Ramblings

St Aignan 2007 : a great vintage (Day 1)

I just came back this sunday from the latest St Aignan harmonica festival, the now famous Harmonica sur Cher. For the first time in seven years of festival, I went there with wife and kids. We rented a small boarding house, an old farm wonderfully refitted, so we were totally independant. I spent a lot of time at the festival, obviously, but I still managed to visit an underground mushroom farm, spend a day at a great local zoo, eat cherries of the trees with my boys and do a flea market with the family, on top of doing most meals together. A great combination that we will no doubt reproduce.

We arrived on Thursday afternoon, and after settling down we went to the festival inauguration. We missed the mayor's speech as well as Jean-Jacques Milteau's, but the food and wine were nice, as well as meeting a ton of harp players I know from previous years and a couple of new guys I hadn't met yet. Since I never travel without my weird chinese bass harp, I was asked to display it and play it, so a couple of impromptu jams occured in the streets. Later on we went for food, and I ended missing the very beginning of Joe Powers' concert (as well as the local kindergarten's show). When I arrived, Joe's shirt was already quite wet from the spotlights and exertion, but the music was wonderful. Joe was accompanied by Argentinian musicians who live in France, a guitarist called Norberto and a double-bass player called Antonio.

I'd heard some of Joe's recordings from a couple of years back and the progress he's made musically is stunning. The stuff I'd heard previously felt a little mechanical, very precise and clean, but without that dose of soul that characterises the music that moves me. Here I heard something much closer to the records of Astor Piazzola or Hugo Diaz I own, something dirtyer, more soulful and more broken in many ways. Admittedly, I haven't heard enough tango to catch all the nuances, and I imagine there are many, but Joe charmed the audience with ease and the fact that he occasionally sang lent variety to his show. The Argentinian gentlemen were strictly there as sidemen, but like all great sidemen they carried the soloist to greater heights. All in all a great opening concert. During the intermission I met yet another bunch of harp players or fanatics including many from the French harmonica mailing-list Harmonicaland.

The second concert was Charles Pasi, a young player who I'd discovered last year through his record Mainly Blue. Charles and his gang have an amazing ability to play delicate stuff. His guitarist in particular is quite soulful, both electric and acoustic. The set was varied, alternating between fairly classic takes on selected covers and the more intricate blues-y compositions of the band -often featuring radical in-song rhythm changes and even groove changes. Charles vocals are superb, warm and sensuous - though his accent is a little off. I was a little less impressed by his harp improvisations which I felt were a too often in the fast and furious mode, even when the songs themselves didn't call for it. Charles has great technique, but lacks a little reflexion towards the musical use of that technique in my opinion, but he's still young and has all the chops to rise to even greater heights. The gig on the whole was quite cool - and not the same old blues thing, a welcome change - and Charles even invited any harmonica player who felt like it to jam on the last song (fortunately, only three of us came up, imagine the risk he was taking at a harmonica festival!)

I ended a very satisfying first evening at one of the local pubs with a hosted jam. It was a jazz band, and they weren't very adequate to host a jam in general (not listening to the "guests" and playing jazz-y tricks to destabilise the soloists) but it was fun nonetheless. Joe's double-bass player Antonio asked if he could play a blues number so we forced the band into some form of submission and did a Stormy Monday that was quite enjoyable. Antonio really is an amazing bass player, full of feeling, and I hope I get the chance to see him live again.

The Rhythm Junks - Pop Off

I've been a close follower of Steven deBruyn's  carrier ever since I discovered El Fish in 1998. Steven is a superb harp player, but more importantly, one of those rare solists who understand that you don't need to be at the front to contribute meaningfully to the music. After El Fish disbanded, Steven started a very different, non-blues related project called The Rhythm Junks.

The RJ line-up is quite unusual since it features no harmony instrument: horns (two trumpets, two saxes), bass, drums and harmonica. I'd be hard pressed to fit them into a specific genre either: influences range from blues and jazz to punk, pop, groove, and even in this latest opus, disco. Yet apart from a little bit of electronic trickery played by Steven on an elaborate toy, the music is all played live on real instruments.

The stage set-up of the band says a lot on how the music sounds. Tony Gyselinck, the drummer, is at the front of the stage in the center, with the bassist on the right, Steven on the left, and the horn section behind him. And indeed, Tony's drumming is absolutely central to the RJ sound, it's both extremely elaborate and absolutely adequate, so that he's never showing off. This was already a characteristic trait of the Rhythm Junks' first album, Virus B23, which still sees the inside of my CD player on a regular basis.

The new CD, Pop Off is aptly named, and when I first heard the record I honestly thought it would be too pop for me. And yet, after a couple of attentive listens, I realised that while the material may seem more accessible at first, it's no less interesting, and more importantly, no less entertaining than the original opus.

Pop Off opens on an upbeat ska-ish tune called Join the Bus which is reminiscent of the heydays of ska in the late seventies but with an updated, modern sound. Join the Bus was quite high in the Belgian charts for a long while, and deservedly so. It brings a smile to your face, you can dance to it, what's not to like? Join the Bus doesn't set the mood for the whole record though, there are more introspective pieces like Kerosene, jazzier ones like the mad Monk it Up, and even a supremely cool disco cover, Moskow Diskow.

There's a good mix of instrumentals and vocal pieces. Steven seems to have found his singing voice, and he delivers his lyrics with a lot more assurance than he used to. The rest of the band is a lot more present on backing vocals as well, and the inclusion of a female trumpet player gives a new colour to that part of the arrangements. Steven's harp playing is top notch, as usual, and more interestingly it's cleverly part of the whole. There's plenty of harp in there, but ultimately few solos. Don't buyt this record for the harp playing though. Buy it cause it's groooooooooooooovy !

This new opus, just like the previous one, defies categorisation. It's a little less in your face, a little more accessible, but it's certainly no sell-off. I hope that the injection of quality pop will help the Rhythm Junks find a larger audience, because I want to be hearing the albums they'll hopefully be bringing out in the years to come. And I want a live CD/DVD release! So go purchase that new record, if you can't find it, buy it from iTunes, and pray as I do for the band to come near you.

For him the Bell tolled...

Last saturday I received Carey Bell's latest release in the post, his live CD/DVD with son Lurie. Today I learn that Carey passed away on May 6th, from heart failure. I point you to a good biography. Carey Bell was one of the last harmonica players alive to have learned at the feet of the first generation of harp heroes. Despite the towering influence of both Little and Big Walter, he developed his own style, with a characteristic fast phrasing. He will be missed. I'll write more about him and review the DVD I received last week soon, but in the meantime, enjoy some Carey Bell. He was a great man and huge harp player.

Memorable night...

A couple of weeks back, I spent an evening at the New Morning - a famous parisian jazz club - enjoying the fine fleur of New European Jazz. I went there originally to see Le Monde de Kota, but it turns out that the same label - Italy based Radar - that has released Murmures, their first album, also carries Cristiano Arcelli, an Italian composer and alto sax player.

Arcelli opened the evening with a project entitled Bestiario, featuring both an unusual line-up and an atypical approach to jazz composition. The band was composed of a rhythm section of electric guitar, drums and double-bass (that particular seat was filled by Kota's Guido Zorn but I suspect he's not the regular guy) and a horn section of bass saxophone, alto saxophone and trombone. The trombone player also doubled up on accordion for a couple of tracks.

Arcelli's repertoire (at least in this project) could best be described as heavily written pieces inspired by European folklore with jazz time signatures and occasional improvisation. Actually there was quite a bit of improvisation, but it was individual improvisation with little or no interplay. The compositions were quite amazing, making full-use of the low register power of the bass saxophone (so much so that, at times, you were wondering why there was a double-bass player in the line-up: you couldn't hear his playing). A lot of two or three piece harmonies between the horns delineated the "themes".

Overall, it was quite hard-hitting, driven music. Imagine the energy of Kusturica's No Smoking Orchestra but with a mad jazz composer and you'll get close to the feeling I had that night. The compositions were varied both in tempo and mood, with the accordion pieces laying a subtler, more western European feel. Both Arcelli and the trombone player are fierce improvisers, both lyrical and pulsating. The bass sax did only a couple of improvisations, and one of them at least was more showmanship than music (but fun nonetheless). The guitarist took a number of choruses but he seemed out of focus and I couldn't work out if him being off the beat all the time was deliberate or if it was an off-night for him.

Overall, a great musical discovery. I purchased Arcelli's Bestiario, which I hope to review here soon. After a short break, it was time for Le Monde de Kota to take over the stage. It was the third concert of theirs I attended, and while I know most of the repertoire very well by now, I was still blown away. First of all, this being a large club, their sound was bigger, with an aggressive edge that the near acoustic context of my previous attendance hadn't translated at all. Plus the musicians were all really hot that night. Probably due to the fact that they were playing in the temple of Parisian Jazz.

Le Monde de Kota is lyrical yet modern, their repertoire is mostly slow tunes, though they can sound really harsh, and they are all top notch musicians while their greatest asset is the collective work. The contrast with the previous band was nice, Kota's music being more introspective and somber than Arcelli's.

Apart from one tune which I didn't know, all the rest of what they played that night is on their CD Murmures. While the written parts are mostly similar to the album versions, the improvisation is very fresh each time, and there's a lot of interplay between harmonica and trombone, trombone and bass, bass and guitar, etc.

My impressions on the musicians were reinforced from the previous times. Guido Zorn is a stunning bass player, not scared to mistreat his instrument to extract new and powerful sounds from it. I think he even hurt himself once, so hard was he slapping on the strings. His playing really forms the backbone of the music, and it's astonishing to find that such a floating and writhing backbone can be so solid a foundation at the same time. Julien Omé is a superb backing player, using his guitar in interesting ways to contribute a harmonic backdrop to the whole. He's not so solid as a solist though. In a way, surrounded by such strong personalities, it feels like he doesn't find the right ways to assert himself.

Stéphane Montigny on trombone and chromatic player Olivier Goulet are great soloists and play around each other a lot. It's really fresh that they can listen to each other so well and build collective phrases on the vocabulary the other contributes. Montigny uses his trombone in surprising ways as well, both in the aural range of the instrument and as a percussion. Olivier does the same and longs, it seems, to use a variety of harmonicas instead of just his chromatic. His attempt at a diatonic solo, though, was not entirely appropriate to the harmonic complexity at hand.

At least, this constant experimentation guarantees that - though the repertoire is mostly the same - no two of Le Monde de Kota's concerts are the same. Their fresh appraoch to music and their exploration of their own composition is fueled by the fire of a true love of jazz. There's no falling back on trusty old phrases for these guys. One thing that was nice is that, although they don't speak to the audience much, a few of the songs were introduced to us. Stéphane mentioned, in particular, that Guido's somber composition Radio Cora was a homage to the Italian citizens who ran a radio station during WW2 to inform the freedom fighters of the fascist regime's moves. They were all shot in the village where Guido was born.

I hope to hear more new compositions the next time I see Le Monde de Kota live, but still, I can't complain. I had an amazing evening of jazz, and I was even lucky enough to have my wife with me (although she found it all together too progressive, if you see what I mean!) Altogether a great evening!