JASPER HØIBY - Fellow Creatures
Edition Records EDN 1075
JASPER HØIBY double bass, composer; MARK LOCKHEART saxophone; LAURA JURD trumpet; WILL BARRY piano; CORRIE DICK drums
As I have the strangely unnerving task of reviewing incredibly accomplished musicians who happen to be friends and colleagues of mine, I have had to be really clear about my responses, so as not to over-superlativise, or under-critique what’s going on for me on this highly recommended album.
These are simply some of my favourite players emerging from my favourite school within UK jazz. Mark is the senior partner here, and it is his gravitas and his and Jasper’s confident rapport that sets the pace and timbre of the setting for the bristling musicianship of the other three, albeit their contributions are overflowing with initiative.
It goes without saying that a review is useless without some comparisons …and the comparison I can most usefully make on this ‘grower’ of an album, is with the ECM stable of the 1980s-90s, when textures, spaces and dialogues formed the approach to the material, which drew upon European, and Latin American folk music, rather than the trappings of post-bop jazz.
If there is a criticism of the ECM explosion of atmospheres, it is that we’re not necessarily taking a melodic development or an harmonic route through the music – in this respect ‘Fellow Creatures’ is largely similar, until the last third of the album, where a richer, jazz-referenced chromatic language is present both compositionally and improvisationally.
To say that the music owes much of its success to the sublime skills of the improvisers is not to ‘criticise’ the simplicity of the material, so much as characterize its idiom. Here also lies a hint as to the exciting possibilities of a live show – as those of you who recently made it to King’s Place may attest. The compositions are all about subtle twists on our lyrical and metrical expectations, unfolded over series of repetitions, sometimes minimalist, sometimes distilled to a folk-like purity, and containing early or redirected cadences, and imbued with open intervals of fourths and fifths, rather than chromatically-based post-bop tensions, as do emerge subtly in the last three tracks.
The frontline improvisations are largely dialogues or exchanges, utilising a great range of tonal and textural inflections, from Laura Jurd’s Batchelor-influenced palette of early jazz inflections through to quasi-classical tonal purity and melodic accuity, to Mark Lockheart’s well-informed and dramatic language of barks and splutters, swirls and prods, angular swoops and intense builds.
It is the continuous willingness and integration of the improvising voices that makes this album unusually welcome in a contemporary scene much dogged by health & safety, hygiene, tribute and regulation. There is genuine risk and communication here, as in Will Barry’s and Corrie Dick’s dialogue on ‘World Of Contradictions’…even if sometimes this means the developmental possibilities of the compositional structures remain a little circular, as in ‘Little Song For Mankind’, or simply unison, as in ‘Before’.
Corrie Dick is both youthfully exuberant, and uncannily mature in his responsive dynamics and originality in utilizing unusual roles for the available timbres and resonances around the kit – he provides substance without swallowing space, texture without pushing his own agenda, detail and intensity in spades.
This is a great sounding album, recorded in Copenhagen and produced by the leader, Jasper Høiby , who’s double bass sounds simply gorgeous throughout, as does everyone, and for me, his best work comes in his response to the more developed progression of ‘Suddenly, Everyone’, rather than the perhaps overly fussy detail of his bass line on ‘Song For The Bees’.
Høiby is a great asset on the ‘creative’ scene in the UK. His presence and track record here already help shine a light on the health and vibrancy of it. His writing employs returning characteristics common to his work in other settings (such as with ‘Phronesis’); and there are indications here of a level of development entering his writing - a welcome structural third dimension, to my mind.
This album can go on in the car, in the kitchen, with friends round, and in solitary listening mode; which makes it unusual among many of its contemporaries. Its freshness and the suffusion of it with spontaneity are its strengths.
Reviewed by Julian Nicholas
Edition Records EDN 1075
JASPER HØIBY double bass, composer; MARK LOCKHEART saxophone; LAURA JURD trumpet; WILL BARRY piano; CORRIE DICK drums
As I have the strangely unnerving task of reviewing incredibly accomplished musicians who happen to be friends and colleagues of mine, I have had to be really clear about my responses, so as not to over-superlativise, or under-critique what’s going on for me on this highly recommended album.
These are simply some of my favourite players emerging from my favourite school within UK jazz. Mark is the senior partner here, and it is his gravitas and his and Jasper’s confident rapport that sets the pace and timbre of the setting for the bristling musicianship of the other three, albeit their contributions are overflowing with initiative.
It goes without saying that a review is useless without some comparisons …and the comparison I can most usefully make on this ‘grower’ of an album, is with the ECM stable of the 1980s-90s, when textures, spaces and dialogues formed the approach to the material, which drew upon European, and Latin American folk music, rather than the trappings of post-bop jazz.
If there is a criticism of the ECM explosion of atmospheres, it is that we’re not necessarily taking a melodic development or an harmonic route through the music – in this respect ‘Fellow Creatures’ is largely similar, until the last third of the album, where a richer, jazz-referenced chromatic language is present both compositionally and improvisationally.
To say that the music owes much of its success to the sublime skills of the improvisers is not to ‘criticise’ the simplicity of the material, so much as characterize its idiom. Here also lies a hint as to the exciting possibilities of a live show – as those of you who recently made it to King’s Place may attest. The compositions are all about subtle twists on our lyrical and metrical expectations, unfolded over series of repetitions, sometimes minimalist, sometimes distilled to a folk-like purity, and containing early or redirected cadences, and imbued with open intervals of fourths and fifths, rather than chromatically-based post-bop tensions, as do emerge subtly in the last three tracks.
The frontline improvisations are largely dialogues or exchanges, utilising a great range of tonal and textural inflections, from Laura Jurd’s Batchelor-influenced palette of early jazz inflections through to quasi-classical tonal purity and melodic accuity, to Mark Lockheart’s well-informed and dramatic language of barks and splutters, swirls and prods, angular swoops and intense builds.
It is the continuous willingness and integration of the improvising voices that makes this album unusually welcome in a contemporary scene much dogged by health & safety, hygiene, tribute and regulation. There is genuine risk and communication here, as in Will Barry’s and Corrie Dick’s dialogue on ‘World Of Contradictions’…even if sometimes this means the developmental possibilities of the compositional structures remain a little circular, as in ‘Little Song For Mankind’, or simply unison, as in ‘Before’.
Corrie Dick is both youthfully exuberant, and uncannily mature in his responsive dynamics and originality in utilizing unusual roles for the available timbres and resonances around the kit – he provides substance without swallowing space, texture without pushing his own agenda, detail and intensity in spades.
This is a great sounding album, recorded in Copenhagen and produced by the leader, Jasper Høiby , who’s double bass sounds simply gorgeous throughout, as does everyone, and for me, his best work comes in his response to the more developed progression of ‘Suddenly, Everyone’, rather than the perhaps overly fussy detail of his bass line on ‘Song For The Bees’.
Høiby is a great asset on the ‘creative’ scene in the UK. His presence and track record here already help shine a light on the health and vibrancy of it. His writing employs returning characteristics common to his work in other settings (such as with ‘Phronesis’); and there are indications here of a level of development entering his writing - a welcome structural third dimension, to my mind.
This album can go on in the car, in the kitchen, with friends round, and in solitary listening mode; which makes it unusual among many of its contemporaries. Its freshness and the suffusion of it with spontaneity are its strengths.
Reviewed by Julian Nicholas
