WANJA SLAVIN’S LOTUS EATERS - Salvation
Why Play Jazz – RS035
Wanja Slavin: alto saxophone, synthesizer; Tom Arthurs: trumpet (track 1); Philipp Gropper: tenor saxophone; Rainer Bohm: piano, fender rhodes; Andreas Lang: double bass (track 1); Tobias Backhaus: drums;(track 1); Erik Kimestad Pedersen: trumpet (tracks 2-7); Bernhard Meyer: e-bass (tracks 2-4); Nasheet Waits: drums (track 2-4); Petter Eldh: double bass, e-bass, synthesizer (tracks 5-7); Ivars Arutyunyan: drums (track 5-7)
Track 1 recorded March 24th, 2016 by Falko Duczmal at Forest Studios Steinbeck, Germany; Tracks 2-4 recorded September 28th – 29th, 2016 by Marco Birkner at Casa San Francesco Loft Studios, Italy; Track 5-7 recorded January 19th, 2017 by Rainer Robben at AudioCue Tonstudios Berlin, Germany.
Wanja Slavin has become one of the go-to players of the European avant-garde jazz, and you might have approached this set with the expectation that it was akin to the excellent Amok Amor album of last year, in which Eldh also played, and which pushes avant-garde musicianship into new and rewarding directions. This is completely different, and is testament to Slavin’s broad talent that he is equally at home in this combination of three sextets. The CD follows the first Lotus Eaters recording and continues Slavin’s exploration of forms of jazz that, superficially at least, have the texture of a familiar bop inflected style or the tonality of jazz-funk. However, this suggestion rather misses what Slavin and his groups are doing with the music. Track 6 is a version of ‘Moonlight becomes you’ that is very spooky, and working back from this track to the six original pieces in this set, you get the impression that the aim is to deconstruct as subtly as possible some of the standard tropes in jazz music. So, the pieces typically feature horns in counterpoint and nicely swinging bass lines but the ways in which the solos build and develop continually pushes the playing away from the expected and into carefully created alternative directions. The playing is very tight across all three sextets on the CD, and the pieces are well constructed in ways that can disguise their complexity. Across the pieces in this set, the bands continually sound much bigger than a sextet, not just in terms of the bursting crescendos on some of the pieces but also the ways in which the instruments complement and echo each other, making this sound like a much larger ensemble. The rhythms are often hypnotically insistent and the combinations of horns and synthesizers on several of the tracks create a sense of a fugue, with subtle variations on a simple theme played simultaneously by multiple instruments. Slavin has described music as a journey into the interior and away from the world and you get a sense of the spiritual aspects of this perspective in the pieces here.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
Why Play Jazz – RS035
Wanja Slavin: alto saxophone, synthesizer; Tom Arthurs: trumpet (track 1); Philipp Gropper: tenor saxophone; Rainer Bohm: piano, fender rhodes; Andreas Lang: double bass (track 1); Tobias Backhaus: drums;(track 1); Erik Kimestad Pedersen: trumpet (tracks 2-7); Bernhard Meyer: e-bass (tracks 2-4); Nasheet Waits: drums (track 2-4); Petter Eldh: double bass, e-bass, synthesizer (tracks 5-7); Ivars Arutyunyan: drums (track 5-7)
Track 1 recorded March 24th, 2016 by Falko Duczmal at Forest Studios Steinbeck, Germany; Tracks 2-4 recorded September 28th – 29th, 2016 by Marco Birkner at Casa San Francesco Loft Studios, Italy; Track 5-7 recorded January 19th, 2017 by Rainer Robben at AudioCue Tonstudios Berlin, Germany.
Wanja Slavin has become one of the go-to players of the European avant-garde jazz, and you might have approached this set with the expectation that it was akin to the excellent Amok Amor album of last year, in which Eldh also played, and which pushes avant-garde musicianship into new and rewarding directions. This is completely different, and is testament to Slavin’s broad talent that he is equally at home in this combination of three sextets. The CD follows the first Lotus Eaters recording and continues Slavin’s exploration of forms of jazz that, superficially at least, have the texture of a familiar bop inflected style or the tonality of jazz-funk. However, this suggestion rather misses what Slavin and his groups are doing with the music. Track 6 is a version of ‘Moonlight becomes you’ that is very spooky, and working back from this track to the six original pieces in this set, you get the impression that the aim is to deconstruct as subtly as possible some of the standard tropes in jazz music. So, the pieces typically feature horns in counterpoint and nicely swinging bass lines but the ways in which the solos build and develop continually pushes the playing away from the expected and into carefully created alternative directions. The playing is very tight across all three sextets on the CD, and the pieces are well constructed in ways that can disguise their complexity. Across the pieces in this set, the bands continually sound much bigger than a sextet, not just in terms of the bursting crescendos on some of the pieces but also the ways in which the instruments complement and echo each other, making this sound like a much larger ensemble. The rhythms are often hypnotically insistent and the combinations of horns and synthesizers on several of the tracks create a sense of a fugue, with subtle variations on a simple theme played simultaneously by multiple instruments. Slavin has described music as a journey into the interior and away from the world and you get a sense of the spiritual aspects of this perspective in the pieces here.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
