Both the album’s title and the band’s name reflect their approach to making music in which players take the framework of a composition and improvisation around this.
Multikulti Project: MPPA005
Krysztof Kuśmierek: Tenor Saxophone; Patryk Rynkiewicz: Trumpet; Patryk Matwiejczuk: piano; Flavio Gullotta: Double Bass; Stanisław Aleksandrowicz: Drums; Anna Gadt: Voice
Recorded by Krysztof Górski in Audioplanet Studio
Following their debut ‘8 years’, in 2022, Unleashed Cooperation return with a cohesion and shared sense of purpose that speaks of their time spent together. The album was funded by a grant from the West Pomeranian Voivodeship.
I mention this only to note that this region is where Germany and Poland intersect, and this gives an inkling of the improvisation traditions that are at play hear: the anarchic, free-spirited mixture of circus music and folk tunes that you often hear on East European free-jazz and the rhythmic grace of German free-jazz.
Of course, the music isn’t a simple amalgam of these traditions because the players and their compositions draw on so many more influences, but it helped me to get into the structures and sonorities of the pieces.
The compositions are credited to Unleashed Cooperation, although each piece is nominally associated with a specific individual or, for the two ‘Coincidence’ tracks, Rynkiewicz, Kuśmierek and Gadt. There are two improvisations called ‘Coincidence’, that build around Gadt’s vocalisations. And there are two tracks that refer to Mr. Paul’s Dreams which are ‘strange’ (track3), which has an off-kilter, almost circus melody, and ‘beautiful’ (track 5), which is languid and ethereal.
For some tunes, such as the opener ‘String Theory’ there is a clear statement of the theme of piece and this forms the head to which the musicians return from their improvisatory excursions.
At other times, it was difficult to reconcile the creation of the music, for instance on the closing tracks ‘Laura’s Theme’ and ‘Sea’, to specific themes rather than moods that each piece developed. ‘Laura’s Theme’, in particular, has saxophone arguing with Mundt’s wordless vocals to push the piece in different directions, with rippling piano giving the impression of the piece being scattered asunder.
Against a well-disciplined rhythm section, the three lead instruments engage in nicely balanced exchanges and demonstrate distinctive voices in their solos. Both the album’s title and the band’s name reflect their approach to making music in which players take the framework of a composition and improvisation around this.
