HASHIMA - The Haywain
Oradek: odrcd526
Igor Mishovic: guitar; Vanja Todorovic: double bass; Alexander Hristic: drums; Srdan Mijalkovic: tenor saxophone; Susana Santos Silva: trumpet (track 1)
Recorded in 2017 by Nicholas Baillard at Digimedia Studios, Serbia
In the liner notes, the band’s influences are listed as John Zorn, Stravinsky, Pink Floyd and Wayne Shorter. If you add to this, their use of Balkan folk melodies, then you’re getting quite close to the experience of listening to this CD – and very exhilarating it is, too. On the opening track, the Belgrade-based quartet is joined by Portuguese avant-garde powerhouse Silva, who bullies, cajoles and otherwise provokes the players and encourages them to heavier and denser sounds; following a delicate statement of a languid dance them, taken from a classical piano piece, the rhythm section resolutely maintain the waltz-time (in a manner not unlike Miles’ band playing circle in the round) while guitar, sax and trumpet create all manner of mayhem around them. The ¾ timing is also apparent in the second track, ‘Iris of the eye’, but here there is not a single repeating rhythmic pulse but the music grows and shrinks as different instruments take the foreground. This piece closes by quoting ‘My Funny Valentine’, initially in an oblique manner and then more obviously.
The first two tracks showcase the mix of styles that the band use while maintaining a clear sense of working in jazz traditions. The album then has the three part ‘The Haywain Triptych’. In this case, the haywain in question is a painting by Bosch (in which the central panel shows a collection of fools cavort on top of a large haywain, representing various forms of sins; the left panel shows the fall of the angels, the creation of eve, and expulsion from Eden; the right panel depict Hell). The allegorical nature of the paintings influence the three sections of this piece. There is also, in these pieces, something of the movement from left to right across the panels; the music develops from lyrical to grooving to intense. The liner notes point out that the word ‘hayvan’ is Serbian indicates a person who behaves in a wild manner; possibly as the hedonistic fools in the central panel are behaving before they find their punishment, or possibly more as the musicians that have contributed to Hashima’s musical sensibility.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
Oradek: odrcd526
Igor Mishovic: guitar; Vanja Todorovic: double bass; Alexander Hristic: drums; Srdan Mijalkovic: tenor saxophone; Susana Santos Silva: trumpet (track 1)
Recorded in 2017 by Nicholas Baillard at Digimedia Studios, Serbia
In the liner notes, the band’s influences are listed as John Zorn, Stravinsky, Pink Floyd and Wayne Shorter. If you add to this, their use of Balkan folk melodies, then you’re getting quite close to the experience of listening to this CD – and very exhilarating it is, too. On the opening track, the Belgrade-based quartet is joined by Portuguese avant-garde powerhouse Silva, who bullies, cajoles and otherwise provokes the players and encourages them to heavier and denser sounds; following a delicate statement of a languid dance them, taken from a classical piano piece, the rhythm section resolutely maintain the waltz-time (in a manner not unlike Miles’ band playing circle in the round) while guitar, sax and trumpet create all manner of mayhem around them. The ¾ timing is also apparent in the second track, ‘Iris of the eye’, but here there is not a single repeating rhythmic pulse but the music grows and shrinks as different instruments take the foreground. This piece closes by quoting ‘My Funny Valentine’, initially in an oblique manner and then more obviously.
The first two tracks showcase the mix of styles that the band use while maintaining a clear sense of working in jazz traditions. The album then has the three part ‘The Haywain Triptych’. In this case, the haywain in question is a painting by Bosch (in which the central panel shows a collection of fools cavort on top of a large haywain, representing various forms of sins; the left panel shows the fall of the angels, the creation of eve, and expulsion from Eden; the right panel depict Hell). The allegorical nature of the paintings influence the three sections of this piece. There is also, in these pieces, something of the movement from left to right across the panels; the music develops from lyrical to grooving to intense. The liner notes point out that the word ‘hayvan’ is Serbian indicates a person who behaves in a wild manner; possibly as the hedonistic fools in the central panel are behaving before they find their punishment, or possibly more as the musicians that have contributed to Hashima’s musical sensibility.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
