It bathes the listener in soundscapes that are as soothing as being immersed in a bathtub of warm water.
Clonmell Jazz Social – CJS011CD
Harry Christelis (guitar and effects); Christos Stylianides (trumpet and effects); Andrea Di Biase (double bass and synth); Dave Storey (drums)
Recorded 15-17 December 2024 Lightship 95, London
In 1983, when Miles Davis recruited Robert Irving III – his first specialist keyboard player for over a decade – he was asked what Irving’s role was. ‘You’re not supposed to hear him,’ said Miles, ‘you’re supposed to feel him.’ The music on this album feels rather like that. It’s evocative; atmospheric, ethereal. It bathes the listener in soundscapes that are as soothing as being immersed in a bathtub of warm water.
It’s quite fitting that this album was recorded at Lightship 95, a floating recording studio on London’s River Thames, because many of the sounds and textures on this album seem to float, or ebb and flow, like a gently rolling tide.
London guitarist Harry Christelis cites a number of inspirations for the sounds on this recording, including Miles Davis, the synth/pop band Talk Talk, and ECM jazz artists. The quartet of musicians who made this recording are in harmony in more than one sense of the word; no one gets in the way of another, they all play with great sensitivity, and the instruments blend seamlessly. I don’t know what you would call the music presented here: Ambient Jazz?
The opening number, ‘Blues Of The Birds’ is also the album’s longest tune at a little over nine minutes in length (there are eleven more tunes, and the album’s total running time is an hour). It’s a haunting number, anchored by Andrea Di Biases’s three-note bass vamp and Dave Storey’s slow, military drum beat. Swathes of electronic sounds envelop the listener, along with delicate guitar figures and the plaintive sound of Christos Stylianides’ trumpet, swamped in reverb. Fluttering sounds, like a flock of birds taking off inflight, rise and fall throughout the number.
For this listener, it evoked the poignant sound of Miles Davis’s thirty-two-minute homage to Duke Ellington, ‘He Loved Him Madly,’ from the 1974 album Get Up With It, and the icy soundscapes created by trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær, an ex-ECM artist. This track pretty much sets the template for much of the music on this album. ‘A Sense Of Parrot’ is both soothing and unsettling, with its funeral bass riff, tinkling cymbals, graceful guitar lines and scuffling sounds.
‘Wood Dalling’ – named after a Norfolk village where the song was composed – has trumpet and guitar soaring towards the skies together, delicate guitar picking and a lovely melodic bass solo by Di Biase.
Other music includes ‘Short Fiction,’ a musical interlude just over a minute in length, which has Christelis’s gentle guitar picking playing over a synthesised drone. ‘Sotsirhc’ showcases the mournful sound of Stylianides’ trumpet, while the ballad ‘A Second Song For You,’ is a tender guitar/bass duet. ‘And So We March On’ is a mellow solo guitar piece, lasting four minutes. ‘Djembe’ combines tumbling percussive sounds with a busy bass line, spacy guitar and eerie electronic sounds.
There’s a ghostly, gossamer sound and feel to ‘How Old Are You?’
For this listener, one of the best tracks is the curiously titled ‘We Whittled A Spoon.’ (whittle means to carve or cut). It starts off as a slow, atmospheric piece, featuring guitar and trumpet, before transforming into an assertive jazz-rock piece, as Storey lays down a heavy rock beat, laced with splashing cymbals and explosive fills, as Stylianides’ crying trumpet and forceful flurries soar to the heavens. There’s an energy and excitement to the sound that is absent from the rest of the music, and this fine album would have been even better with a few more numbers like this.
