DJANGO BATES & THE FRANKFURT RADIO BIG BAND - Saluting Sgt. Pepper
Edition Records EDN 1094
Django Bates: keyboard, backing vocals, arranger, conductor.
Stuart Hall: electric guitar, acoustic guitar, lap steel, electric sitar, violin.
Eggs Laid by Tigers: Martin Ullits Dahl: lead vocals; Jonas Westergaard: bass, vocals; Peter Brunn: drums, vocals
Frankfurt Radio Big Band: Heinz-Dieter Sauerborn: soprano sax, flute, clarinet; Oliver Leicht: alto sax, flute, clarinet, alto clarinet; Tony Lakatos: tenor sax, flute; Steffen Weber: tenor sax, alto flute, bass clarinet; Rainer Heute: baritone sax, bass sax, bass clarinet, contra alto clarinet; Frank Wellert: trumpet; Thomas Vogel: trumpet; Martin Auer: trumpet, flugelhorn; Axel Schlosser: trumpet, flugelhorn; Günter Bollmann: trombone; Peter Feil: trombone; Christian Jaksjø: trombone; Jan Schreiner: bass trombone; Martin Scales: electric guitar.
Recorded: October 2016, Hörfunkstudio II, Hessischer Rundfunk , Frankfurt.
The Frankfurt Radio Big Band has a fearsome reputation for their innovation, imagination and experimentation. They regularly develop dozens of projects each year and invite world-famous jazz stars to work with them. You need to have an odd view of the world to feel that the ‘Sergeant Pepper’ album could be reimagined in its entirety, even if it is intended as a respectful celebration of this year’s anniversary. So, it was an obvious choice that to such an odd-ball project you recruit someone who cut their teeth in the odd-ball world of Loose Tubes. What Bates does with his compositions here is to walk the tricky tightrope of playing those aspects of the tunes that people know and love, while also pulling apart and rebuilding pretty much everything behind them. As he says in the liner notes, “I held to the original structures and keys: each song has good vibrations that millions have grown up with and, for all I know, these sounds and key relationships may have become a common memory that is passed through our genes to each new generation. Before interweaving my colours, rhythms, and illustrations I transcribed every bar through my own ear… it felt essential to build on a personal reading of the album. When you listen repeatedly, in detail, you hear layer upon layer of work, all the way down to half hidden subterranean shadows of experiments, which become over-written by the final needs of each song.” I quote this in full because Bates really has mined those ‘half hidden subterranean shadows’ to build his orchestrations. This works spectacularly well in the places where Bates, Lakatos, Scales, Sauerborn, or Hall solo, because in these interstitial moments they pull out the potential of each piece and create something new and revealing. The challenge is always to maintain this air of novelty within pieces that are part of ‘the genes of each new generation’.
I’ll interrupt this review with a confession that might seem a bit shocking, perhaps this needs to be whispered… I’ve never been a fan of The Beatles. From this starting point, I often find that ‘covers’ of Beatles songs often slip into parody, with the melodies coming across as ridden with clichés and missing much of the more imaginative twists and turns that are hidden in the playing and composition. The gamble this recording makes is to have the vocals sung by people other than Paul, John, George and Ringo. Taking on the role of delivering the vocals could be seen as fool-hardy, because the timbre of the voices on the original was as much as part of the recording as the music or words. By having Eggs Laid by Tigers sing these songs, Bates has created an interesting palimpsest of the originals. There is enough respect for the original delivery of the words to not upset the die-hard fan while also providing a jolting difference in vocal style to give one pause for thought. For me, this pause was sufficient to draw attention to the background without distracting from the words, feelings and tunes of the original pieces.
What I believe George Martin would appreciate from Bates’ approach is the close reading he gave to the music, and the way in which he has constructed a jazz suite from this – this is quite different from the mixture of rhythm and blues, Indian raga and classically-inflected orchestration on the original version but there is an integrity and honesty in the composition that mixes respect with an ambitious reworking of well-known tunes.
You can catch this remarkable band live at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club on 4th - 9th September, 2017.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
Edition Records EDN 1094
Django Bates: keyboard, backing vocals, arranger, conductor.
Stuart Hall: electric guitar, acoustic guitar, lap steel, electric sitar, violin.
Eggs Laid by Tigers: Martin Ullits Dahl: lead vocals; Jonas Westergaard: bass, vocals; Peter Brunn: drums, vocals
Frankfurt Radio Big Band: Heinz-Dieter Sauerborn: soprano sax, flute, clarinet; Oliver Leicht: alto sax, flute, clarinet, alto clarinet; Tony Lakatos: tenor sax, flute; Steffen Weber: tenor sax, alto flute, bass clarinet; Rainer Heute: baritone sax, bass sax, bass clarinet, contra alto clarinet; Frank Wellert: trumpet; Thomas Vogel: trumpet; Martin Auer: trumpet, flugelhorn; Axel Schlosser: trumpet, flugelhorn; Günter Bollmann: trombone; Peter Feil: trombone; Christian Jaksjø: trombone; Jan Schreiner: bass trombone; Martin Scales: electric guitar.
Recorded: October 2016, Hörfunkstudio II, Hessischer Rundfunk , Frankfurt.
The Frankfurt Radio Big Band has a fearsome reputation for their innovation, imagination and experimentation. They regularly develop dozens of projects each year and invite world-famous jazz stars to work with them. You need to have an odd view of the world to feel that the ‘Sergeant Pepper’ album could be reimagined in its entirety, even if it is intended as a respectful celebration of this year’s anniversary. So, it was an obvious choice that to such an odd-ball project you recruit someone who cut their teeth in the odd-ball world of Loose Tubes. What Bates does with his compositions here is to walk the tricky tightrope of playing those aspects of the tunes that people know and love, while also pulling apart and rebuilding pretty much everything behind them. As he says in the liner notes, “I held to the original structures and keys: each song has good vibrations that millions have grown up with and, for all I know, these sounds and key relationships may have become a common memory that is passed through our genes to each new generation. Before interweaving my colours, rhythms, and illustrations I transcribed every bar through my own ear… it felt essential to build on a personal reading of the album. When you listen repeatedly, in detail, you hear layer upon layer of work, all the way down to half hidden subterranean shadows of experiments, which become over-written by the final needs of each song.” I quote this in full because Bates really has mined those ‘half hidden subterranean shadows’ to build his orchestrations. This works spectacularly well in the places where Bates, Lakatos, Scales, Sauerborn, or Hall solo, because in these interstitial moments they pull out the potential of each piece and create something new and revealing. The challenge is always to maintain this air of novelty within pieces that are part of ‘the genes of each new generation’.
I’ll interrupt this review with a confession that might seem a bit shocking, perhaps this needs to be whispered… I’ve never been a fan of The Beatles. From this starting point, I often find that ‘covers’ of Beatles songs often slip into parody, with the melodies coming across as ridden with clichés and missing much of the more imaginative twists and turns that are hidden in the playing and composition. The gamble this recording makes is to have the vocals sung by people other than Paul, John, George and Ringo. Taking on the role of delivering the vocals could be seen as fool-hardy, because the timbre of the voices on the original was as much as part of the recording as the music or words. By having Eggs Laid by Tigers sing these songs, Bates has created an interesting palimpsest of the originals. There is enough respect for the original delivery of the words to not upset the die-hard fan while also providing a jolting difference in vocal style to give one pause for thought. For me, this pause was sufficient to draw attention to the background without distracting from the words, feelings and tunes of the original pieces.
What I believe George Martin would appreciate from Bates’ approach is the close reading he gave to the music, and the way in which he has constructed a jazz suite from this – this is quite different from the mixture of rhythm and blues, Indian raga and classically-inflected orchestration on the original version but there is an integrity and honesty in the composition that mixes respect with an ambitious reworking of well-known tunes.
You can catch this remarkable band live at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club on 4th - 9th September, 2017.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
