Blurry
| Blurry | ||||
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| Studio album by Daniel Levin | ||||
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Publication |
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| Label (s) | HatHut Records | |||
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Format (s) |
CD |
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Title (number) |
8th |
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running time |
59:49 |
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| occupation | ||||
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Studio (s) |
Firehouse 12, New Haven |
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Blurry ( English for unclear, blurry ) is a jazz album by Daniel Levin . It was recorded on June 3, 2006 at Firehouse 12 Studio in New Haven, Connecticut , and was released on HatHut Records in December 2007 .
background
After Don't Go It Alone (Riti, 2003) and Some Trees (hatOLOGY, 2006), Blurry is the quartet's third album, which has existed since 2001. After the first album, the trumpeter Dave Ballou was replaced by Nate Wooley ; the other members of the band are Matt Moran (vibraphone) and Joe Morris (double bass). The Eric Dolphy albums Out There (1960, with Ron Carter on cello) and Out to Lunch! (1964) with Bobby Hutcherson (vibraphone) and Freddie Hubbard (trumpet).
Chris May sees the drum-free instrumentation of the music by the cellist Daniel Levin in the tradition of the early experiments of free jazz around 1960 and third stream / cool jazz half a decade earlier. As a composer and arranger, Levin was strongly influenced by Ornette Coleman ; Further role models are the Modern Jazz Quartet and the groups of the drummer Chico Hamilton with the cellists Fred Katz and Nat Gershman , furthermore - especially with regard to the playing of Wooley in the lower registers - the sextet of the clarinetist Benny Goodman from 1940/41 with the Trumpet player Cootie Williams : " Wooleys mute-facilitated vocalizations are uncannily evocative of Williams' trademark growls and smears ". The music critic Stuart Broomer sees further references to music history in the individual tracks on the album , to Bach sonatas in the Ornette Coleman composition Law Years , to alienations of electronic music in Improvisation II and Cannery Row , to the deep lyrics of Middle Eastern music ( Untitled ) as well as in Levin's tremolos on the cello, which sound like Clara Rockmore's theremin playing .
Track list
- Daniel Levin Quartet: Blurry (Hatology 653)
- Law Years (Ornette Coleman) - 6:14
- Improvisation II (Levin, Wooley, Moran, Morris) - 6:51
- 209 Willard Street 10:42
- Cannery Row - 8:31
- Untitled - 8:13
- Relaxin 'With Lee (Charlie Parker) - 5:19
- Sad Song - 6:30
- Blurry - 7:26
All other compositions are by Daniel Levin.
reception
Chris May praised the album in All About Jazz as "an extraordinary record - beautiful, well-proportioned and seductive - from a group that is a silent sensation."
The Free Jazz Collective recorded the album 4½ stars and described it as "highly recommended" ( highly recommended ); With Blurry, the Daniel Levin Quartet is bringing out “an album of extreme aesthetic beauty, full of sadness, melancholy and late evening slowness”. The music flows at a slow pace, only rarely with all four musicians at the same time to support the respective soloist in rotating roles. The album continues the ideas of the previous record and goes one step further in terms of reducing the structures and compositions, thus creating more space for freedom of interaction and emotional forms of expression. "Although the music is built around empty space and a lot of silence, this is music with substance, dramatic power and musical demand." Only Improvisation II and especially the title track with which the album ends lead to rather rough free improvisation, which in contrasts strongly with the intimacy of the other pieces, revealing the dark side beneath the beauty.
Culture Jazz noted that the special feature of this quartet is not only in the atypical instrumentation , but also in the tonal quality, which appears like chamber music . "Even in the heavily improvised and most adventurous passages one preserves the impression of profound calm ( Improvisation II )". With the inclusion of the excellent double bass player Joe Morris in this formation, Daniel Levin freed himself from rhythmic functions and preferred archery to take time to develop ideas by creating very poetic sound spaces. After the previous album Some Trees, this formation is growing more mature with Blurry and has confirmed the peculiarities of its sound universe by finding the right balance of timbres, especially through Matt Moran's remarkable vibraphone playing. In conclusion, the author praises the sound quality of the recording.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b cf. Stuart Broomer, Liner Notes of the album (2007)
- ↑ a b Review of the album (2008) at All About Jazz
- ^ Review of the album (2008) on Free Jazz Blog
- ↑ review of the album at Jazz Culture