Samozaložba
Datum izida: 4. 9. 2020
Produkcija: Simon Moraz
Dolžina albuma: 41.25 min
Zvrst: Jazz-Rock Fusion/Blues
Ocena: 9.5/10
Emil And The Detectives are a band from Styria, Maribor to be exact, and on their new album they’ve gone fully instrumental. Three years ago the sextet dropped their debut “Agora” (RockLine review) and put everyone on notice that the Slovenian music scene had gained one more seriously promising group, which counts for a lot given the track record of Slovenian rock, and roll too, which hardly springs up like mushrooms after rain.
The debut “Agora” was a bold opening move, a sign that this sextet had real potential and plenty of room to keep honing its musical character and artistic identity. So expectations for where the crew would go next were pretty concrete. And sure enough, the new album “Sandcastles” is a record where the band, compared to a more cautiously drawn debut that was still feeling out the musical scene it was landing in, lets loose completely and dives into a full-blooded, free-spirited exploration of the classic days of rock, when the term jazz-rock fusion got hugely popular. Even though “Sandcastles” is instrumental (apart from the closer Hopeless), a few comparisons might help give you a sense of where the story goes, and they fit perfectly when we mention Blood Sweat And Tears, Chicago, maybe even a touch of Steely Dan’s charisma in the more sophisticated parts of the album, or even Pat Metheny Group (especially thanks to some of the soft, supple improvisations on electric piano, like the intro to Tuxedo Man). But one thing is undeniable. On the new album the sextet’s exploring, imaginative world really “flares up” and sparkles, and the solo bursts surprise and thrill you at every turn. “Someone” in the band clearly listened to a lot of Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock and Lyle Mays back in the day, “someone else” to Allan Holdsworth and Frank Zappa, and “someone third” to John Coltrane,… The jokes never run out. In fact, the different characters of the musicians are the foundation for the album’s incredible variety and looseness, defined by the individual players’ idea-driven “excursions”, while the arrangements stay tight and concise, so there are no fragmented, wacky experimental detours (to put it bluntly: no “intellectual whining”) on this record. “Sandcastles” is truly an album you listen to with pleasure. Especially if you’re a demanding listener, but the overall vibe of the album is broad enough to get along with any musical taste. And that’s its big strength.
Even though this is a sextet of highly polished instrumentalists, the name worth singling out is Dejan Pečenko, who serves up breathtakingly layered musical craftsmanship. He never loses the thread, and the keyboardist is in exactly the right place at every moment of this album. Whether he’s building the backdrop for the electric guitar or sax to rule the solos, or taking the improvisational initiative himself. A real wizard. He hints at it already in the opener Waterwalker, which, compared to the rest of the album, is a proper jazz-rock fusion jam and the track with the most twists and turns. Dejan Pečenko is cut from the same cloth as the most distinctive masters of their trade in Slovenia, such as Marko Črnčec, Dejan Berden or the one and only Milko Lazar, of course. Not to short-change the excellence of the other members, but Pečenko is the absolute discovery among them and the driving force on which this band’s music “falls and rises”.
If the opening “Waterwalker” is a moment of absolute abandon where the band blows up in every direction, the follow-up “Camouflage” is its carefully calibrated opposite, with elements of funk, R&B, blues and, above all, jazz sparkling in perfectly measured pastels of sonic landscape. Here the band shows that, with their heart, they can take on a bigger dose of tight, concise arrangement, especially in moments like this later on the album, where more softness and subtlety are called for. In the more richly sophisticated stretches, the excellent working chemistry shines through, the kind you get in a lineup of highly rehearsed top-level virtuoso mischief, and it’s what keeps the gears of this daring piece of fine mechanics turning. A particularly successful track in this respect is “Konvolut”, which in a relatively short running time packs in a lot of punch and coherence as its motifs coexist, and so gives the listener the essence of who this band is and what they do in one place. This is jazz. From head to toe.
A nicely weighty album, incredibly tight and complementary across its six tracks (the seventh and last one differs in style). It never runs out of dynamics or twists, which makes it a joy to listen to. The crew clearly enjoyed themselves in the studio while recording, and you can feel it, as the sextet, heads constantly buried in the group jam, stirs up this colorful fusion stew where the players keep making room for each other to take the lead, which falls to the piano one moment, the guitar the next, then the sax, and so on…
If “Agora” still showed a hint of naivety in places, “Sandcastles” simply doesn’t know the meaning of it. If you were looking for something to nitpick, the only slightly surprising thing is the choice of fade-outs at the end of tracks like the opener Waterwalker and the closing “Hopeless”, which, as a blues rock number with vocals by Rastko Zager, really does stand apart from the album, and the band deliberately stuck it at the tail end. Honestly, a crew of instrumentalists like this doesn’t need a fade-out to wrap up a tune. That’s really the only remark, and it’s not even worth mentioning. You can feel that the songs grew out of group jams at rehearsals and that the band doesn’t spend much time worrying about how to end a track. It’s a truly minor gripe within this review essay, so minor that it’s a waste of time even bringing it up.
Compared to the debut, with “Sandcastles” Emil And the Detectives have taken a thoroughly thrilling creative step up the road of artistic maturing, and the album simply hints that from these solid, quiet musicians we can expect plenty of grand moves on the music scene in the future. Especially top-notch instrumental jazz-rock fusion. The album bursts with fire, heart and devotion to a musical vision, so, if I may be immodest: it’s a strong, diverse, challenging, daring and lavish musical achievement the band can be rightly proud of.
Avtor: Aleš Podbrežnik
Seznam skladb:
1. Waterwalker
2. Camouflage
3. Firewire
4. Jellyfish
5. Konvolut
6. Tuxedo Man
7. Hopeless
Zasedba:
Rastko Zager – bas kitara, vokal na skladbi št. 7
Dejan Pečenko – električni klavir, Hammond orgle
Zdravko Zimič – saksofon
Žarko Jankovič – kitara
Igor Ambrožič – tolkala
Bruno Domiter – bobni
