It is my honor to announce that Terje Rypdal’s Melodic Warrior, a masterpiece commissioned by the Hilliard Ensemble and featuring Rypdal on electric guitar fronting two separate orchestras, will include liner notes by yours truly. You can pre-order your copy from Amazon here, or from your vendor of choice. In the meantime, I encourage you to check out a sample. Now the question is: How am I going to write a review for this one?
Dino Saluzzi
El Encuentro
Dino Saluzzi bandoneon
Anja Lechner violoncello
Felix ‘Cuchara’ Saluzzi tenor saxophone
The Metropole Orchestra
Jules Buckley conductor
Live recording February 13, 2009 Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ, Amsterdam
Music supervisor: Gert Jan van den Dolder
Recording engineer: Gert de Bruijn (Dutchview)
Assistant: Per van der Zande (Dutchview)
Mixing engineers: Gert de Bruijn and Ronald Trijber (Dutchview)
Concert production and executive producer for the NPS: Gustavo Pazos
A production of NPS Radio in collaboration with ECM Records
El Encuentro depicts Dino Saluzzi as a composer willing to go wherever the stream of consciousness takes him. In this, his first live album, the bandoneón maestro joins Anja Lechner (cello) and brother Felix (tenor saxophone) before the Metropole Orchestra, under the direction of Jules Buckley, for a varicolored quatralogy. Because the bandoneón is practically an orchestra unto itself, pairing it with strings feels like an implosive rather than explosive stroke of sonic fortuity. This introspective dynamic is heightened by the asymptotic relationship between the soloists, who are fully present in Plegaria Andina. This piece revisits thematic material from 1988’s Andina in a braid of wind, branches, and leaves: each strand a traveler from a different corner of the world. Even when silent, the soloists float like an oar-less vessel bobbing to the pulse of tide. The ruminations of this piece are thus deeply aquatic and equally representative of the clouds they reflect.
The relationship between bandoneón and cello is the album’s main anchor, and takes root in deepest reef in Vals de los días. Like the program as a whole, its moods and melodies are in constant flux, its themes as fleeting as the air in Saluzzi’s bellows, the touch of horsehair on Lechner’s strings. Assailed by dances and memories, their vessels keel and spread their melodic passengers far and wide. There is abundance to be felt here, plucked like ripe fruit from a branch, squished between the toes like wet sand, and dunked like the baptized body into holy river’s flow.
Despite its massive proportions, the title piece comports itself with the delicacy of a spider. It is the most brooding piece of the four—one which, despite its peaks and gorgeous finish, wallows in a pool of shadows. Its final jubilations pick at a lone thread of light, unravel the tapestry of the night, and weave a new one into the Miserere that follows. The strings, robust yet tentative in their dynamic recession, are servants to the bandoneón, the latter a messenger sent from above. Its lungs exhale only peace, leaving no doubt that Saluzzi’s is a spiritual art.
Despite the number of musicians gathered here, El Encuentro is one of Saluzzi’s most intimate realizations, compressing the sweep of an epic film into the eye of a spyglass. Because the title means “The Meeting,” it is tempting to read the album as one large cycle. Closer listening, however, reveals the self-awareness of the compositions therein. They are not cardinal points on a compass, but rather corners of a world that share a plane only in maps. Their yearning is more than physical; it is environmental. They meet only in dreams, drifting farther out to the sea with every heave. Were it not for the applause, we might blissfully remain so, never to feel the touch of shore beneath our soles.
(To hear samples of El Encuentro, click here.)
Enrico Rava
Easy Living
Enrico Rava trumpet
Gianluca Petrella trombone
Stefano Bollani piano
Rosario Bonaccorso double-bass
Roberto Gatto drums
Recorded June 2003 at Artesuono Recording Studio, Udine
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Enrico Rava has singlehandedly defined Italian jazz as a technical wizard. More importantly, he has also enlivened its soundscape with a playbook that balances verve and thoughtfulness. After a 17-year hiatus, the trumpet champion returns to ECM among his trusted quintet with what might just be his finest album yet (an opinion shared by Rava at the time of its recording). Wherever it may rank in your mental charts, it is a comfortably burnished standout in his discography, due in no small part to the artful brilliance of engineer Stefano Amerio.
Perhaps not since Annette Peacock’s an acrobat’s heart has an ECM cover portrait so well captured the atmosphere of the music behind it. Indeed, the thoughtful sincerity of “Cromosomi” unfurls a palette befitting of Roberto Cifarelli’s warmly hued portrait. Rava’s interaction with the young trombonist Gianluca Petrella is close-eyed, intuitive, and lays the groundwork for some crystalline reverberations. The pointillism of Stefano Bollani and coruscating accents of drummer Roberto Gatto paint the last rays of sunset. Make no mistake about the title’s significance: Rava’s approach is fiercely biological, so attuned is it to the mutual appreciation of his band mates. “Drops” follows with a handful of candy, turning the chromosomal into the chromatic at the touch of a keyboard and setting the stage for Rava’s soaring flights in “Sand.” Using a slack backdrop as trampoline, he devises lyrical acrobatics and microscopic exchanges galore. Rava continues in this vein throughout the title track, the only one not composed by him, backed by support that has the consistency of meringue and is just as sweet. “Blancasnow” is another brief exercise in pure intonation. Fans will recognize it as the concluding track of his ECM debut, The Pilgrim And The Stars, and here its austerity is even more heavily shaded.
Lest the listener think that Easy Living is all drift, “Algir Dalbughi” plots a hard swing at album center. From Petrella’s ebullient harmonizing comes a vast, big band sound and foils Rava’s extroverted heights with pale fire. Bassist Rosario Bonaccorso opens “Traveling Night” with a fluttering solo and leads the band into another flowing diary entry. Gatto communicates hyper-effectively with Bollani as Petrella fires off a round of humid motives. “Hornette And The Drums Thing” is the finest track of the set and an even finer vehicle for the drummer, who jumps, skips, and shuffles his way through the deck like a blindfolded magician—though he has some acutely observant spectators in Petrella and Bollani following his every move. Rava’s sweep is characteristically melodic and assured. His fingers stir up their own concert, notes singing by like arrows. Gatto’s full-on wizardry quiets into a lush carpet for the band’s legato breakdown, bringing us at last to “Rain,” which draws the curtains, breaks down the set, and bids farewell in style. Between Gatto’s cymbal-laden drizzle, Bonaccorso’s thick sags, and Bollani’s varietal drama, there is plenty to admire in this luxurious sendoff.
Easy Living is ideal for an afternoon drive or lethargic morning alike. Its verdant fields and canopied paths smell of a grandmother’s food: no matter how many times you eat it, it will always taste like home.
Essential listening.
<< Dave Holland Quintet: Not For Nothin’ (ECM 1758)
>> Harald Bergmann: Scardanelli (ECM 1761 NS)
John Surman
Coruscating
John Surman soprano and baritone saxophones, bass and contrabass clarinets
Chris Laurence double-bass
Rita Manning violin
Keith Pascoe violin
Bill Hawkes viola
Nick Cooper cello
Recorded January 1999 at CTS Studios, London
Engineer: Markus Heiland
Produced by Manfred Eicher
The title of John Surman’s Coruscating means sparkling. Yet with track names like “At Dusk,” “Moonless Midnight,” and “An Illusive Shadow,” we are squarely in a nocturnal realm. The multi-reedist, along with bassist Chris Laurence, puts his touch on this set of eight compositions, which over the album’s course blend into a seamless whole. At their center is an ad hoc string quartet, to which Surman and Laurence act as improvisatory satellites. The two aforementioned sections drop Surman’s oboe-like soprano into pre-written cuts of land, each a ripple in a lake that holds ebony sky in its cup.
Although it will not be surprising to any Surman fan, it is as baritonist—ever the rightful successor to Gerry Mulligan—that he comes closest to bringing the shine. Whether in the softly rolling sentiments of “Dark Corners” or the muscular stirrings of “Stone Flower” (in memory of another baritone great, Harry Carney), his low reed dots the compass many times over through charcoal travels. “Winding Passages” is the most mature of these breeze-swept soliloquies and provides a solid platform for the composer’s bronzed hieroglyphs. Laurence shakes his most geometric ghosts out in “Crystal Walls,” while “For The Moment” mixes cello tracings into vibraphone, Surman’s restless gestures carrying us all the while into deeper pasture.
Those who weren’t quite feeling Proverbs and Songs might find Coruscating more accessible, if only because there is so much space for listeners to relax and, in spite of all the darkness, feel their way around. It is a dream of quotidian objects sleepwalking for want of a place to have purpose, only to discover that their wandering is that very thing.
<< Jan Garbarek/The Hilliard Ensemble: Mnemosyne (ECM 1700/01 NS)
>> Gianluigi Trovesi/Gianni Coscia: In cerca di cibo (ECM 1703)
Arild Andersen
Celebration
Arild Andersen double-bass
Tommy Smith tenor saxophone
Scottish National Jazz Orchestra
Tommy Smith director
Recorded live October 2010 at Stevenson Hall, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland by Mark McKellen
Edited and mixed at Rainbow Studio, Oslo, September 2011 by Jan Erik Kongshaug, Arild Andersen, Tommy Smith, and Manfred Eicher
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Since debuting on Jan Garbarek’s Afric Pepperbird in 1970, bassist Arild Andersen has been a staple of the ECM diet. Forty years in the making, Celebration pays tribute to the label that has been his home for just as long with a live “best of” recorded 2010 at Glasgow’s Royal Conservatoire. Flanked by the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra under the direction of tenorist Tommy Smith, Andersen is as much the focal point in this set of six tunes as the music itself. His role as primary soloist materialized at the behest of Smith, the two of them already well acquainted in their trio work with Paolo Vinaccia, and it was Smith’s compositional prowess that led him to propose and shape the once-in-a-lifetime performance documented here.
“May Dance,” by fellow bassist Dave Holland, comes to us by way of the 1975 classic Gateway in a thoroughly swinging take replete with sulfuric interaction. Smith grabs us from breath one and throws us into a pit of melodious fire. Andersen and drummer Alyn Cosker—a team that becomes more vital as the set goes on—throw nets of excitement into the air and catch an entomologist’s worth of specimens. Compared to his essential Green In Blue, Andersen sounds as electrifying as ever in this concerted leadoff to an album of vivacious character. Part 1 of saxophonist Jan Garbarek’s “Molde Canticle” (I Took Up The Runes, 1990) is another fitting choice—all the more appropriate for also being a celebratory commission, this in recognition of the Molde Jazz Festival’s 30th year. Andersen floats here in a harmonic abyss, switching axes in slow tension with the horns. Smith’s muscled tone is an ideal match for Garbarek material, and his leadership of the larger forces at hand elicits some visceral making of music. “Crystal Silence,” off the eponymous 1973 classic by Chick Corea, is surely the album’s best known, though here it feels like the first time. The arrangement is decidedly aquatic. It places its feet on the shore, feeling wet sand between the toes, the scuttle of horseshoe crabs beneath, and the lapping of waves on the ankles. Before long, the world is submerged, blue in blue. Andersen’s robust brushstrokes evoke schools of fish, swimming as one.
From the most to least familiar, the program changes gears with “Ulrikas Dans” by saxophonist Trygve Seim, whose big band sensibilities come through rather gloriously in this selection from his 2000 album Different Rivers. Andersen and Cosker are again the main attraction. They build Seim’s forested themes in dense pockets, evocative and sure, dropping strings and cymbals in the form of dreams. These elements render Smith’s cathartic revelation in the final stretch that much more satisfying. Andersen cannot help but include his own work, and here he selects Part 4 of his “Independency” suite from Live At Belleville with the aforementioned trio. Having first appeared on disc only in 2008, it is the most recent of the music represented here. It opens with Andersen’s bass, drawn at the touch of a bow, in an electronically enhanced echoing universe. Brass resounds like foghorns, voices in the night treading water in want of moon. This eases into some intuitive free dialoguing between Andersen and Smith, who dominate the stage with their forthrightness. Their combination of fawning glissandi and whisky expulsions spins a fuse, which Andersen and Cosker light midway through. Smith’s tenorism is the implosion. The group encores with Keith Jarrett’s “My Song” (from the eponymous 1978 album). Andersen clearly finds poignancy in its tender summation of a life lived for art. He consciously approaches his bass as the piece’s composer approaches the keyboard, his fingers melding with the instrument. To underscore this point, pianist Steve Hamilton joins him for a spell: the draw of a slingshot that ultimately sends us reeling into the distance.
Andersen is duly enlivened by the atmosphere of his fellow musicians and of the timeless music in his hands. His voice leaps from the stage in sheer joy of creation, with every note proving his rightful seat in the pantheon of modern bassists. This is a fine recording as well, for it keeps the big band close enough to punch but far enough away so as not to overwhelm. The amplification of Andersen’s instrument has never sounded better. Credit must also be given to the fine arrangements, courtesy of Christian Jacob (Holland), Tommy Smith (Garbarek), Makoto Ozone (Corea), Øyvind Brække/Trygve Seim (Seim), Mike Gibbs (Andersen), and Geoffrey Keezer (Jarrett).
A celebration indeed of a consummate artist, but also more than that: a masterful affirmation of all that is good and true in jazz.
(To hear samples of Celebration, click here.)
Anna Gourari
Canto Oscuro
Anna Gourari piano
Recorded May 2011, Historischer Reitstadel, Neumarkt
Engineer: Stephan Schellmann
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Born 1972 to a family of musical pedagogues, Russian (and, since 1990, Munich-based) pianist Anna Gourari makes her ECM debut with a characteristically unconventional recital…or so it would seem. Two of J. S. Bach’s chorale preludes, as arranged by Ferruccio Busoni, parenthesize the program’s modern heart. “Ich ruf’ zu Dir, Herr Jesu Christ” and “Nun komm’ der Heiden Heiland” both come from the incomplete Orgelbüchlein, a pedagogical scrapbook compiled in the earthy 18th century. Busoni’s erudite touch burgeons further in Gourari’s, opening a doorway all the grander for being so austere. Yet here is a Bach that, while adorned, breathes with the minimalism of a single voice. The tenderness of these leaves betray nothing of the fragile limb to which they cling.
From light to brokenness, the program tilts its wings eastward to Sofia Gubaidulina’s Chaconne. Composed in 1962, this deconstruction of a b-minor triad represents an key period in the Russian composer’s development. One may be tempted to read grand philosophical statements of suffering into such music, when really it turns itself inside out for all to hear. This is not an evocation of suffering, per se, but an acknowledgment of its necessity. The effect is such that even the overt references to Bach come across as probing, strangely confident, and spiraled like a unicorn’s horn. Its elegiac impulse is foxed by ragged edges, given light in measured doses. Here is a lighthouse without a vessel to guide, a signal without a flare.
Paul Hindemith (1895-1963), a prolific composer yet one whose piano works have only in recent years begun to crop up on CD programs, is given plenty of space in Gourari’s ecstatic take on his Suite “1922.” Although its effect would surely have raised a few eyebrows that same year, as was Hindemith’s intention, today his experiment stands as a fascinating cross-section of early expressionism. Over the course of five parts, this jocular, if rigorous, piece takes us on a wild ride. Titles like “Shimmy,” “Boston,” and “Ragtime” transport the listener to a time when said dances still hit the floor, when financial doom was still some years away. Such historical perspective lends poignancy to the central movement, a “Nachtstück.” Like a fragment of title card found in the wreckage of a silent film warehouse, it tells only part of the story that its context makes abundantly clear. Hindemith’s references are seeds for more complexly developed ideas and beg comparison with contemporary George Antheil, whose own “Shimmy” graces Herbert Henck’s fascinating Piano Music. Gourari’s resolute command of, and passion for, the material makes this a benchmark recording.
Busoni resurrects Bach again in his supernal arrangement of the Chaconne from the solo violin Partita No. 2. The mighty Chaconne has always been a keystone in Bach’s solo literature. That it speaks with the same colors is testament both to arranger and performer. From the chord-enhanced arpeggios to the requisite drama throughout, Gourari allows the music to resound not by means of surface but interior. If Busoni has given it an elastic quality, then she has stretched it to the limit in an interpretation that promises to open new doorways with every listen.
Were this program a long day, Bach’s e-minor Prélude (transposed here to b minor) would be its longed-for slumber. In a stained glass arrangement courtesy of composer-conductor Alexander Siloti (1863-1945), this relatively small piece from the Clavier-Büchlein vor Wilhelm Friedemann Bach reminds us that duration has nothing to do with density. There is bounty in this music that one discovers through living it.
(To hear samples of Canto Oscuro, click here.)
Anouar Brahem
Astrakan café
Anouar Brahem oud
Barbaros Erköse clarinet
Lassad Hosni bendir, darbouka
Recorded June 1999, Monastery of St. Gerold, Austria
Engineer: Markus Heiland
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Tunisian oud master Anouar Brahem has singlehandedly rewritten the history of his instrument, elevating its status to self-contained orchestra. Like a film director whose camera is a third eye, he paints in moving images—no coincidence, given that much of his music is written for screen and stage. His virtuosity is the pulsing stuff of life and therein lies the power of his music, itself a language beyond the grasp of this meager orthography. Astrakan Café is among his best records, for the solemnity of its nourishment is as attuned to the ether as the two musicians who aid in Brahem’s quest to describe its taste. Turkish clarinetist Barbaros Erköse returns after his invaluable contributions to Conte de l’incroyable amour, intense as ever in the spine-tingling depth of his song. Percussionist and longtime Brahem collaborator Lassad Hosni brings likeminded expertise to the table, adding just the right dash of spice to every tune.
Of those tunes we receive a lavish tale, each chapter a depth-sounding such as only Brahem can elucidate. As a meeting place, the titular café lends itself to intimate conversations and a feeling of community across borders. It introduces us to the protagonists of an epic, cohesive narrative. Erköse’s opening gambit in “Aube rouge à Grozny” cuts straight to the marrow, his notes captured at the height of their emotional density. If this is the defining of a door, the title track is the opening of it. Brahem’s plectrum takes its first dance steps into the morning, the streets fresh with vendor smoke and tourist chatter. Beyond them is “The Mozdok’s Train,” in which the trio comes together in the spirit of travel, not as outsiders but as those whose home is wherever they happen to be: disciples to no one but the steps they have yet to take. Brahem chooses his words carefully. He rallies heroes and villains, spirits and the lowly, in a single breath and submits them to his verbal employ. Little do the passengers know that in the next car over, wedged between a folded shirt and a thumb-printed map, is a box of “Blue Jewels.” Brahem sets the stage as Erköse inlays the clasp that keeps those secrets locked. Hosni jacks up the train’s speed. His are the fingers drumming on the stretched leather of a many-stickered suitcase, the conductor’s practiced hand on burnished controls. A memory assails this assailant, a vision of love long buried until now. It awakens in him the will to change in “Nihawend Lunga,” which moves at a clip so untouchable that its eyes bleed silk, a spider’s web for the prey of “Ashkabad.” Erköse flings cries backward and sideways, writhing in the vision of a life he could have had. And just before the train drowns in the darkness of a tunnel, he jumps from an open door and into the mirage of “Halfaouine.” He awakens to the themes of a passing caravan and clutches his prize even as the “Parfum de Gitane” seeks him out like a desert oasis. He listens to the elder sharing tales in “Khotan,” a solo track from Brahem. Youth returns in “Karakoum” as if time has reversed. This lifts his spirit to the realm of “Astara.” Here feet tread lightly but surely, using mountains as stepping-stones to walk across distant suns. Erköse’s haunting monologue, rendered in hourglass shape, inspires a measured line of flight through the alleys of “Dar es Salaam,” across the waters of “Hija pechref,” and back to the album’s title scene, sipping at the bitter fruits of the earth until these fantasies become apparent to us, ephemeral like the swirl of cream that pales into sepia drink.
<< Heinz Holliger: Schneewittchen (ECM 1715/16 NS)
>> Mat Maneri: Trinity (ECM 1719)
Anouar Brahem
The Astounding Eyes Of Rita
Anouar Brahem oud
Klaus Gesing bass clarinet
Björn Meyer bass
Khaled Yassine darbouka, bendir
Recorded October 2008 at Artesuono Studio, Udine
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Between Rita and my eyes
There is a rifle
And whoever knows Rita
Kneels and prays
To the divinity in those honey-colored eyes
–Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008)
Anouar Brahem’s The Astounding Eyes Of Rita belongs right next to Tomasz Stanko’s Dark Eyes in that sparsely populated category of great ocular titles. Its blend of oud, bass clarinet, bass guitar, and hand drums nests firmly in an outer skin that welcomes all hemispheres into its audible signature. As one of the world’s greatest living masters of the oud, Brahem has thoroughly absorbed its many lives and draws upon them at a plectrum’s touch. Yet he has also done a phenomenal thing, revitalizing the instrument’s musical possibilities through and beyond the very traditions that inform it. Rita represents a mode of composition (all the music here is his own) that he has come to favor: namely, sitting with his oud and letting it sing to him until moved to capture on paper a glint in its endless melodic river. From such seeds he has nurtured a cohesive eight-part program that pools the talents of percussionist Khaled Yassine (playing here mainly the darbouka, or goblet drum), bass clarinetist Klaus Gesing (heard previously on Norma Winstone’s Distances), and electric bassist Björn Meyer (of Nik Bärtsch’s popular Ronin outfit): four as one, joined at the fulcrum like a card twice folded.
Meyer is an especially creative addition. His snaking incense smoke adds a touch of groove to the album’s bookends (“The Lover Of Beirut” and “For No Apparent Reason”) while also emboldening the most personal reflections (e.g., “Waking State”) with due attention and insight. He is nowhere so integrated, however, than in the engaging “Dance With Waves.” Because of him, an otherwise translucent veil thickens into full-blown tapestry, splashed with burnt sienna and vermillion. These are waves internal, drawn not on water but in blood, spoken in the signs of love.
Yassine is another revelation. He reads into every action of his fellow musicians as if it were a dance, painting his entrances carefully as light breaking cloud. Fans of Omar Faruk Tekbilek are sure to feel at home in the way percussion and oud converse throughout Rita, most notably in the title track and in the more absorbent “Al Birwa.” Gesing, for his part, airs his feathers dry in the warm air of “Galilee Mon Amour” and gilds “Stopover At Djibouti” with lilting filigree.
Brahem, however, is the sun of this particular galaxy. His exciting use of harmonics, as in “Stopover At Djibouti,” adds notable color to an already evocative style, weaving through bustling crowds even as he paints them. We can practically feel his mind working and reworking every stone beneath their feet until it offers safest passage. Inspired as much by everyday life as by the dreams that warp it, he focuses on the spaces between the strings, shaping the air that whispers through them into full-fledged texts. His plucking brings a diacritical edge to their base forms, glyphic and real.
(To hear samples of The Astounding Eyes Of Rita, click here.)
Cyminology
As Ney
Cymin Samawatie vocals
Benedikt Jahnel piano
Ralf Schwarz double-bass
Ketan Bhatti drums, percussion
Recorded April 2008 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher
My whole being is a dark chant
which will carry you
perpetuating you
to the dawn of eternal growths and blossoming
in this chant I sighed you sighed
in this chant
I grafted you to the tree to the water to the fire
–Forugh Farrokhzād (1935-1967)
When the title track of As Ney wraps around your heart, there’s almost no need for words. Piano and voice are locked, cymbals raining down in a sprinkle of fairy dust at the periphery of a magic circle. The feelings seek us out, like the bass that coats the band’s delicate tensions with gold. Incantations become translucent, inserting coins into an offering box that resonates with song. Spinning that song is Cymin Samawatie, vocalist and leader of the group Cyminology, which makes its ECM debut here. Samawatie draws on her Iranian heritage and the poetic tradition it embraces, touching vital pressure points at the 13th (Rumi) and 14th (Hafiz) centuries, while also building her own. Another vivid influence is Forugh Farrokhzād, the iconoclastic poet and filmmaker of Iran whose overtly female-centered voice forever transformed the face of Persian verse.
All of this she splashes through the prism of a fresh trio of improvisers. Vital to the group’s sound is Benedikt Jahnel. The Berlin-based pianist is a welcome addition to the ECM fold, having more recently released the groundbreaking Equilibrium, and brings that same open approach to the rhythms of Samawatie’s ruminant canto style. New Delhi-born drummer Ketan Bhatti is even more linguistically inclined, taking inspiration from the text and the moment in equal measure. Completing the circle is bassist Ralf Schwarz, the keystone of this sonic archway.
What begins in “Niyaayesh” as dry land is, by the final “Ashkhaa,” a raindrop turned ocean. Every lap of wave becomes an ephemeral scale on the earth’s thirsty skin, a wish fulfilled through its disappearance. The road to getting there is riddled with dreams, some clock-like (“As Ssafar”), others halting (“Sendegi”), and still others brooding (“Por se ssedaa”). At their core is the triptych “Kalaam/Dassthaa/Delbasstegi,” which dovetails forces in rich synergy, every word the rib of a fan between which the instruments are sketches of webbing, amorphous yet firm. The keyhole into each new section opens by breath.
Despite the woven textuality of As Ney, “Naagofte” is Cyminology at its purest. Its aquatic wordless vocals nonetheless convey a story, a rite of passage from sober to possessed and back again. The melody is life, such that when words flip their pages toward the end in guise of morning light, they simultaneously caress the dead. Such border-crossing power is Samawatie’s forte. Without her, the shadows overwhelm. Why follow your eyes, she seems to ask. Let the echo be your footpath.
Between Sound and Space: ECM Records and Beyond 