Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Nova Jazz Quintet
Label: Celinka
Released: 2013
Length: 35:11
Rating: 4/5
Celinka’s first swallow, which kicked off this May’s Godi bodi festival, is Nova Jazz Quintet’s debut, called »Flow Of Inertia«. How do you get rigidity running at full throttle, floating? Ask this quartet! Yet another band that shakes up the Slovenian music scene and enriches it artistically, in both expression and ideas.
The Nova Gorica quintet is a crew of open, free-thinking minds. Their debut »Flow Of Inertia« is a vividly colorful musical story. At first it wins you over with a totally unpredictable course of events, so partly with musical spontaneity too – if you like. Then, a moment later, it hits you with its sheer creative restlessness and the supple knack for fusing the seemingly incompatible. And the result? It sets the »inert mass in motion«!
Nova Jazz Quintet are a typical jazz brainchild that grew up on Slovenian soil. But they make their unique approach work incredibly well when they flirt with the melos and rhythmic ideas that come from the Black (African) continent. Plenty of an »arabesque« engraved into a composition is no surprise either (Arabic Fields). There’s no bassist; the bass lines are handled by the tuba.
Vocalist Dano Ličen weaves hip hop lines into his vocal performance too. The band’s jazz fusion first teams up with hip hop effectively right in the opener First Song, while in the closer Spev vrtnic they prove they can also knock on the door of the conformist ears that get by on easier-to-digest songwriting. Besides some slick hip hop wit mid-verse, Spev vrtnic has a contagious hook built on cues from traditional African music melos. It’s a song that, in a suitably edited version, could get plenty of airplay on Slovenian radio stations. Above all, Ličen grabs your attention with a fascinating stance as a performer, especially in tracks like Arabic Fields, where he almost dictates the verses, powerfully felt, and makes sure the song’s anti-war message really lands. A big strength of Nova Jazz Quintet’s musical character is the highly intelligent, sharp and clearly delivered messages of the lyrics, which hit straight on and win you over with their truthfulness. In Protester’s Mind, Ličen turns deliberately »rough« and authoritative, morphing into a rabble-rousing thunderer in the manner of the Black preachers of the civil rights struggle, such as Martin Luther King. So Nova Jazz Quintet carry a note of rebellion. That also fits the wish to get inertia flowing. Toward change.
For the gourmets, though, the real draw is the truly experimental side of the Nova Jazz Quintet story. The most interesting part is the middle of the album, where we tackle the tracks Protester’s Mind and Arabic Fields. While Protester’s Mind is very loose and thoroughly free in its jazz approach, meaning we face an abundance of musical solutions born of free-will exploration and spontaneous development (the track needs several spins to crawl into your ear), Arabic Fields is deliberately »fixed« with an instantly memorable lead phrase. These arranging choices match the core message of both songs. Both tracks also share one thing: a deeply dark, dramatic theatricality, kept soaring by the lead vocalist’s delivery of the verses. In conjuring up an eerie atmosphere, the fully instrumental Afterlife takes the crown on the album, while Elephant Prayer “lifts” the record into a new “radiance of light”, with the band again »teasing« us with the sharpness of its avant-garde approach, building traditional Afro melos into songs whose basic figure and vision come from jazz.
With this debut, Nova Jazz Quintet have definitely laid the cornerstone of a unique musical approach. It’s special, sharp and lucid enough, and provocatively inventive enough for a planned experiment, while also showing that the band has a feel for compact arranging, which can win over the less demanding part of the audience too. Still, Nova Jazz Quintet’s music is absolutely best enjoyed at gigs. That is, live. That’s where the quintet’s free-spirited mindset, musical philosophy and vision pay off to the max. The band has promising prospects ahead, and let’s hope they put out another studio album.
Lineup
Dano Ličen – vocals
Jani Šepetavec – tenor saxophone, guitar
Anže Vrabec – piano
Goran Krmac – tuba
Enos Kugler – drums
Production
Vid Žgajner
Tracklist
1. First Song
2. Climb
3. Protester’s Mind
4. Arabic Fields
5. Afterlife
6. Elephant Prayer
7. Spev vrtnice
