GILAD HEKSELMAN - Far Star
Edition: EDN1201
Gilad Hekselman: guitars, keyboards, bass, whistle, tambourine, Body Percussion, voice; Eric Harland: drums; Shai Maestro: keyboards; Ziv Ravitz: drums; Amir Bresler: drums, percussion; Nomok: keyboards; Nathan Schram: viola, violin; Alon Benjamini: drums, percussion; Oren Hardy: bass.
Recorded March 2020 to December 2020 in Tel Aviv and December 2020 to June 2021 in New York. Eric Harland recorded in January 2021 in New York, Ziv Ravitz recorded in September 2020 in France. Recordings mixed by Gilad Hekselman and mastered by Nate Wood.
In the future, we’re going to look back at the impacts of Covid-19 on music in terms of lost revenue, cancelled gigs, and musicians switching to other trades, but also the benefits of creating new ways of working. Hekselman has grasped these new ways of working not only through splicing tunes from material recorded by colleagues in different locations but by teaching himself sound engineering so that he could be the one to do the splicing. This, despite the circumstances of its recording, is an album of intense and infectious optimism. The album opens with a whistled motif that will get stuck in your head for weeks – partly mournful (as befits the tune’s title ‘A long way from home’) but partly jaunty and devil-may-care. A vaguely Baeleric-beat rhythm kicks in and the guitar toys with the whistled melody before taking on a one of Hekselman’s astral guitar lines. His is a way of playing which manages to take the more fluent and engaging elements of jazz-funk guitar playing and marry these with a host of traditional folk styles. The second track ‘Fast Moving Century’ begins with warped electronic sounds over dub-step and trap rhythms which segue into a rattling percussion driven guitar workout. A similar melange of styles is played out in ‘The Headrocker’ (track 7). The next two tracks (‘I didn’t know’ and ‘Far Star’) slow down to ballads, both of which combine Hekselman’s guitar virtuosity with his bandmates’ talent. The closing track ‘Rebirth’ has a Ravitz delivering complicated, double-time rhythms that scintillate beneath Hekselman’s guitar playing in a way that feels as if both are sharing the same experience at the same time in the same place – but the tune is a combination of two separate recordings a few thousand miles apart.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
Edition: EDN1201
Gilad Hekselman: guitars, keyboards, bass, whistle, tambourine, Body Percussion, voice; Eric Harland: drums; Shai Maestro: keyboards; Ziv Ravitz: drums; Amir Bresler: drums, percussion; Nomok: keyboards; Nathan Schram: viola, violin; Alon Benjamini: drums, percussion; Oren Hardy: bass.
Recorded March 2020 to December 2020 in Tel Aviv and December 2020 to June 2021 in New York. Eric Harland recorded in January 2021 in New York, Ziv Ravitz recorded in September 2020 in France. Recordings mixed by Gilad Hekselman and mastered by Nate Wood.
In the future, we’re going to look back at the impacts of Covid-19 on music in terms of lost revenue, cancelled gigs, and musicians switching to other trades, but also the benefits of creating new ways of working. Hekselman has grasped these new ways of working not only through splicing tunes from material recorded by colleagues in different locations but by teaching himself sound engineering so that he could be the one to do the splicing. This, despite the circumstances of its recording, is an album of intense and infectious optimism. The album opens with a whistled motif that will get stuck in your head for weeks – partly mournful (as befits the tune’s title ‘A long way from home’) but partly jaunty and devil-may-care. A vaguely Baeleric-beat rhythm kicks in and the guitar toys with the whistled melody before taking on a one of Hekselman’s astral guitar lines. His is a way of playing which manages to take the more fluent and engaging elements of jazz-funk guitar playing and marry these with a host of traditional folk styles. The second track ‘Fast Moving Century’ begins with warped electronic sounds over dub-step and trap rhythms which segue into a rattling percussion driven guitar workout. A similar melange of styles is played out in ‘The Headrocker’ (track 7). The next two tracks (‘I didn’t know’ and ‘Far Star’) slow down to ballads, both of which combine Hekselman’s guitar virtuosity with his bandmates’ talent. The closing track ‘Rebirth’ has a Ravitz delivering complicated, double-time rhythms that scintillate beneath Hekselman’s guitar playing in a way that feels as if both are sharing the same experience at the same time in the same place – but the tune is a combination of two separate recordings a few thousand miles apart.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
