BRIGITTE BERAHA - Lucid Dreamers
Let Me Out Records: LMO CD001
Brigitte Berha: voice, electronics, singing bowl; George Crowley: tenor saxophone, clarinet, electronics; Alcyona Mick: piano; Tim Giles: drums, percussion, electronics.
Recorded 15th January 2020 by Alex Bonney at Iklectik
One of the most interesting vocalists on the contemporary jazz scene, Beraha’s clear delivery of lyrics, such as Troup and Worth’s ‘Meaning of the Blues’ that opens this set, is matched by her vocal gymnastics and use of electronics to layer and mutate her singing. On this set, she has ideal foils for her experimentation in Crowley and Mick, with Giles providing explosive bursts and subtle shifts in rhythm. Indeed, the musicians gel so well with her vision for the tunes that the depth of experimentation and ingenuity with which she twists her voice can often seem natural – if, by natural, I mean that odd logic that brings order to events in dreams. The link between her music and the worlds encountered in dreams, with all their twisted logic, frightening details and madcap delights, has been present in Beraha’s lyrics and tunes for many years. In the late 2000’s, she released ‘Flying Dreams’ – a different set of players but similar fearlessness in the ways that her voice becomes in instrument that competes with and compliments the others in the group. For instance, her wordless duetting with Crowley on ‘Pandora’s Box’, free of the electronic effects on the other tracks, is exuberant and feels like birds soaring and swooping at sunset.
The first piece segues into ‘Orderly Ruin’ which has a sort of march pattern that the players resist until the gently murmuring piano closes the piece. This leads into ‘Disorderly Ruin’, with Beraha’s confessional lyrics (‘I Wonder / If I detached myself from this chain of events / Could I be / Behind a sudden disorderly ruin…’) accompanied by Crowley bubbling a conversational sax and Giles working his kit in bursts of interruption, until Mick comes in to provide a rumbling piano that inceases in intensity drawing the drums with it to a point where the music fades into Cowley’s sax line and Beraha closes the song with a melancholy lament.
The title track blends Mick’s echoing piano with Beraha’s singing bowl to ominous effect. In this piece, Beraha’s vocalisations perfectly mix with sax and percussion to create haunting, atmospheric landscape that is her hallmark and at which she excels. The gentleness of the composition could be misconstrued as ‘ambient’ but it conveys an energy and sense of trepidation that is anything but relaxing or soporific and can send chills down the spine. In a sense, this brings the set back to the opening track, where Beraha’s interpretation of the ‘Meaning of the Blues’ has the stately ennui of, say, Miles’ version, but which carries with it the fears and worries that beset these particular years.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
Let Me Out Records: LMO CD001
Brigitte Berha: voice, electronics, singing bowl; George Crowley: tenor saxophone, clarinet, electronics; Alcyona Mick: piano; Tim Giles: drums, percussion, electronics.
Recorded 15th January 2020 by Alex Bonney at Iklectik
One of the most interesting vocalists on the contemporary jazz scene, Beraha’s clear delivery of lyrics, such as Troup and Worth’s ‘Meaning of the Blues’ that opens this set, is matched by her vocal gymnastics and use of electronics to layer and mutate her singing. On this set, she has ideal foils for her experimentation in Crowley and Mick, with Giles providing explosive bursts and subtle shifts in rhythm. Indeed, the musicians gel so well with her vision for the tunes that the depth of experimentation and ingenuity with which she twists her voice can often seem natural – if, by natural, I mean that odd logic that brings order to events in dreams. The link between her music and the worlds encountered in dreams, with all their twisted logic, frightening details and madcap delights, has been present in Beraha’s lyrics and tunes for many years. In the late 2000’s, she released ‘Flying Dreams’ – a different set of players but similar fearlessness in the ways that her voice becomes in instrument that competes with and compliments the others in the group. For instance, her wordless duetting with Crowley on ‘Pandora’s Box’, free of the electronic effects on the other tracks, is exuberant and feels like birds soaring and swooping at sunset.
The first piece segues into ‘Orderly Ruin’ which has a sort of march pattern that the players resist until the gently murmuring piano closes the piece. This leads into ‘Disorderly Ruin’, with Beraha’s confessional lyrics (‘I Wonder / If I detached myself from this chain of events / Could I be / Behind a sudden disorderly ruin…’) accompanied by Crowley bubbling a conversational sax and Giles working his kit in bursts of interruption, until Mick comes in to provide a rumbling piano that inceases in intensity drawing the drums with it to a point where the music fades into Cowley’s sax line and Beraha closes the song with a melancholy lament.
The title track blends Mick’s echoing piano with Beraha’s singing bowl to ominous effect. In this piece, Beraha’s vocalisations perfectly mix with sax and percussion to create haunting, atmospheric landscape that is her hallmark and at which she excels. The gentleness of the composition could be misconstrued as ‘ambient’ but it conveys an energy and sense of trepidation that is anything but relaxing or soporific and can send chills down the spine. In a sense, this brings the set back to the opening track, where Beraha’s interpretation of the ‘Meaning of the Blues’ has the stately ennui of, say, Miles’ version, but which carries with it the fears and worries that beset these particular years.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
