Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Jazoo
Label: Celinka
Release: 2013
Runtime: 63:22
Rating: 3/5
Jazoo are an experimental outfit from Slovenj Gradec who have left a notable mark on both the Slovenian and the international scene over the course of their career. The new album »Back From Realitiy« is their second for Celinka and fifth overall. As the telling title already hints, it’s the most experiment-soaked work of the band’s career. Or, in other words, with this album Jazoo head back to the great beyond, a world past reality. Once again, it was recorded entirely live in the studio. Like a concert performance.
The album has five long tracks, and the band pours the most soul into the first and the last, since those are the most steeped in experimentation. The opener Orange Green – a title you could easily pin on some psychedelic band from the late sixties that were »swarming« around the British Isles back then – gives an immediate glimpse into the general musical substance of the new release. The seemingly innocent main piano motif, which forms the backbone of the opening section, is tangled up in countless repetitions. The first part tries to branch it out with a vocal-improvisational insert, which then moves into a longer flute improvisation. With all those repeating motifs, some of the musical forms work by the rules of the genre critics call post-rock. The key is the final section, where layers of woodwinds pile atonally on top of each other and the track reaches total fragmentation, which means it loses its form (the motifs get lost), near-total musical chaos takes over, and the piece »falls apart« in chaos at the end. This track is a quick heads-up that we’re in for a somewhat tougher Jazoo album than you might have expected at first.
Next up is 11/8 (Elven Eight), named after the rhythmic meter that rules the track. This is the point where the opening tension eases off. A composition that, despite its demands and complexity, brings more »order« to the arrangement, and what really works is the weaving in of melodies based on Arabic scales, which of course goes hand in hand with the chosen Eastern-flavored rhythm the track »floats« on. Then comes Far Away From Us, where the rhythm section stretches out vividly, while the horn section (sax, trombone) and warm blankets of keyboards take turns building the melody above it. This is a track where the rhythm section clearly dominates the improvisation. The other instruments only hold the musical structure, into which the drums and bass guitar »crash« with their improvisations. Alone Together is the album’s darkest track, where a long, schizoid flute improvisation demands an especially thick skin from the listener to chew through its complexity.
Quite a few minutes of the album are dominated by one instrument or another, exposed to such a degree (the others don’t even join in at those points) that you don’t feel the whole band playing together. A case in point is Alone Together, where two thirds of the track revolve around the piano, whose ideas and harmonized motifs, often repetitive and built on the slow swapping of a few notes, fail to fully impress. Luckily, in the closing section the saxophones, flute and rhythm section join in and properly fill out and loosen up the minimalist musical frame in which the piano spins for far too long. The band saves the main experiment for the end of the album, in Endless Source, which is built from a strictly experimental, almost avant-garde flood of countless instrumental lines trying to establish order in atonal chaos. The track with the most experimentation is also the album’s most demanding composition, and it asks by far the most attention from the listener, plus nerves of steel, absolute patience and a flexible willingness to revel in »musical wonderland«. Post-rock elements are, of course, still present.
Suma sumarum, the aptly titled »Back From Realitiy« is the most experimental album in the band’s story. It’s definitely a nice and interesting piece of work, since a crew of instrumentalists as seasoned as Jazoo simply can’t hide their musical vision. Still, you’d expect a bit more emphasis on defining a few key motifs that would keep the compositions more compact. As it is, this is an extremely fragmented album that will be strictly to the liking of those of you who are immensely drawn to boundless complexity in music, anchored in the fact of free-spirited experimentation. It’s clear that »Back From Reality« is one of the stages in Jazoo’s musical evolution. The very next album will surely bring a completely different musical face of the band. This time around, the members of Jazoo wanted to make an album with as little rational approach as possible, and with as many in-tune acts as possible of directly transferring ideas born in their heads straight into the language of their instruments.
»Back From Reality« is really a live, concert-style studio album, played »first take« style, which is also the elementary point of musical improvisation, the thing jazz is sworn to. That makes it an honest and strictly authentic piece of music, the kind that only the band’s own musical recipe can cook up, and nobody else’s. So it’s an album that, on longer listens, rewards only the most persistent music gourmands.
Line-up
Dani Hartman – drums, darbuka
Katja Stare – flute, tenor saxophone, vocals, keyboards
Matjaž Mlakar – saxophone (tenor, soprano), clarinet, monotron, vocals
Nejc Haberman – bass guitar
Tomaž Pačnik – piano, keyboards, accordion
Production
Tomaž Pačnik & Jazoo
Tracklist
1. Orange Green
2. Eleven Eight
3. Far Away From Us
4. Alone Together
5. Endless Source
