| Jazz moderne |
This very elitist album is not for everyone; here we are in the realm of conceptual improvised music, which is often captivating live but quite difficult to listen to on CD if you haven’t experienced the live performance firsthand. You’ve been warned: electric guitar, pipe organ, and drums. The result is a meditation on sound and an opportunity for three creative minds to freely venture into a new dimension.
That being said, it’s an exceptional album. The great musicians here let themselves drift into their reveries, their poetry, and their extravagances, making it feel more like a comprehensive work of art than a traditional album. With Breaking the Shell, this triumvirate of improvisational musicians offers something truly new and daring, blending electric guitar and drums with the pipe organ. Sun Chung, founder and producer of Red Hook Records, had already produced three studio albums with Cyrille in trio and quartet formations with Frisell. Downes’ ethereal contributions on the organ, well captured in the album Medna Roso (2023), lay the foundation for the complex and expansive soundscape of Breaking the Shell. “This trio is in a deep state of not-knowing, with little idea of what the music could be or become. Hyper-focused yet free. Fluid, and in some ways, admirably fearless,” Chung commented on the recording process.
For those of you with a strong musical background ranging from classical music to rock and jazz, it is still possible to appreciate this album. In this type of project, not only is a good synergy between musicians essential, but finding a suitable venue for this kind of artistic exploration is crucial, far surpassing usual concepts. In this case, the location—an English village church with its beautifully maintained baroque organ—offered a unique environment for the trio to experiment. The organ, with its 27 registers and 1,670 pipes, forced Downes to quickly adapt to its unique characteristics, opening up an infinite range of possibilities. Both the unusual instrumentation and the acoustic properties of the room pushed the trio into a space where attentive listening was key, testing the timbre and harmonic capacities of their instruments. This environment was conducive to invention, and Breaking the Shell stands as a beautifully recorded document of this adventure.
The deeper you go into the album, the more you find yourself in a form of writing that encourages cultural confrontations of all kinds. One could imagine a ballet, video projections, or, in my case, continuing to listen while re-reading Mishima’s poetry. If you’re curious to follow the path of my soul on this subject, you can find the Mishima text.
In the album notes, jazz journalist Philip Watson writes: “This trio embodies a force and a philosophy that transcends its members. Bill Frisell, Kit Downes, and Andrew Cyrille are like a tetrahedron, a triangular pyramid, an equilateral triangle with three dimensions and four faces, the fourth being the creation and contours of the music itself.” Breaking the Shell is a testament to these musicians’ ability to listen, react, and shape moving pieces in real time—the very foundation of jazz, extended to a new dimension. This album is an exciting sonic exploration and a celebration of the infinite possibilities of improvised music.
No need to say more—let’s hope this creation can be presented at many festivals, as it could be just as exciting for classical music festivals as for jazz festivals, which firmly places this album in our “Essentials.”
Thierry De Clemensat
USA correspondent – Paris-Move and ABS magazine
Editor in chief Bayou Blue Radio, Bayou Blue News
PARIS-MOVE, September 9th 2024
Follow PARIS-MOVE on X
::::::::::::::::::::::