LEILA MARTIAL BAA BOX - Warm Canto
Laborie Jazz: LJ48
Leila Martial: voice, glockenspiel, little bottles; Eric Perez: voice, human bass, guitars, percussion; Pierre Tereygeol: voice, acoustic guitar, bass guitar, 12-string guitar, ukelele.
Recorded by Brois Darley at Studio Besca
The opening bars sound somewhat like boots tramping through snow to introduce Martial’s swooping, near yodelling vocalisations. As the track progresses, you realise that the shuffling sounds are the vocal sounds of her band mates. The second has layered vocals, with some repeated plucked strings, which then explodes into pulsing drums and bass. At times the trio introduce sounds made from blowing across the mouths of bottles, or the chimes of glockenspiels or various strummed or plucked guitars. But across all of these sounds, the human voice sung purely or passed through various modulations and effects creates the basic sound.
For the most part, these voices use basic sounds but occasionally Martial introduces words, such as ‘Nuit pygmee’ (track 2) or ‘Forget and be’, track 6 (with the English lyrics printed in the liner notes). In these tunes, Martial’s voice has a tremulous quality that has the emotional intensity of French Torch or Portuguese Fado songs, and the piece veers in and out of middle Eastern or Romany rhythms. She has taken inspiration from vocal traditions from around the world and combines these with her own approach to singing. Martial’s vocal gymnastics and range are reminiscent of Andreas Schaerer (with whom she has shared the bill at the Sudtirol Jazz Festival) and, like him, she has discovered unique and powerful ways of extending our understanding of the ways in which the voice can be used to create new musical sounds. The overdubs, the vocal accompaniment of her band mates and the combinations of instruments create a set of songs that are not easy to pigeon-hole as a particular style but which have an integrity and coherence of their own, creating their own musical genre.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
Laborie Jazz: LJ48
Leila Martial: voice, glockenspiel, little bottles; Eric Perez: voice, human bass, guitars, percussion; Pierre Tereygeol: voice, acoustic guitar, bass guitar, 12-string guitar, ukelele.
Recorded by Brois Darley at Studio Besca
The opening bars sound somewhat like boots tramping through snow to introduce Martial’s swooping, near yodelling vocalisations. As the track progresses, you realise that the shuffling sounds are the vocal sounds of her band mates. The second has layered vocals, with some repeated plucked strings, which then explodes into pulsing drums and bass. At times the trio introduce sounds made from blowing across the mouths of bottles, or the chimes of glockenspiels or various strummed or plucked guitars. But across all of these sounds, the human voice sung purely or passed through various modulations and effects creates the basic sound.
For the most part, these voices use basic sounds but occasionally Martial introduces words, such as ‘Nuit pygmee’ (track 2) or ‘Forget and be’, track 6 (with the English lyrics printed in the liner notes). In these tunes, Martial’s voice has a tremulous quality that has the emotional intensity of French Torch or Portuguese Fado songs, and the piece veers in and out of middle Eastern or Romany rhythms. She has taken inspiration from vocal traditions from around the world and combines these with her own approach to singing. Martial’s vocal gymnastics and range are reminiscent of Andreas Schaerer (with whom she has shared the bill at the Sudtirol Jazz Festival) and, like him, she has discovered unique and powerful ways of extending our understanding of the ways in which the voice can be used to create new musical sounds. The overdubs, the vocal accompaniment of her band mates and the combinations of instruments create a set of songs that are not easy to pigeon-hole as a particular style but which have an integrity and coherence of their own, creating their own musical genre.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
