Label: ZKP RTV Slovenija
Release date: July 1, 2016
Production: Igor Matkovič
Genre: Jazz
Rating: 10/10
Composer, producer, pianist, but first and foremost the established Slovenian jazz trumpeter Igor Matkovič is back with a new album, after a string of different musical projects and collaborations. Among other things, we remember him as part of the horn section (for a short while) of the revived Slovenian music legends Mladi levi.
This time he’s not going it alone, as he did on “Sonic Motion” (2012), which means the new album “State Of KU” is also a new musical story and a new chapter in Matkovič’s career. Igor completely shook up the lineup for this one. For his freshly born quintet, he brought in the extremely experienced and prolific Milko Lazar on electric piano, classical piano and all other keyboard feats, the musically multilayered, well-seasoned master of guitar finesse Jani Moder, the versatile and colorful bass improviser Jošt Drašler, and one of the most talented drummers of the younger generation in Slovenia, Bojan Krhlanko.
So you’d expect some flirting with “electricity,” even rock, maybe a transition toward avant-garde approaches or (at least the foundations of) jazz fusion. In short, the wide and hard-to-tame cumulus of musical backgrounds the individual members of the quintet come from was a real challenge for Igor. Would players with such enormously broad musical horizons even click with each other, and find the smallest common denominator in the search for a musical dialogue? And in the end, the most interesting question remains. What would come out of it? What kind of music would get made?
“State of KU” hits a perfect balance of expression and sound within the quintet. The building blocks create a one-of-a-kind musical experience, ruled by a constantly respectful language of symbiosis, of idea-driven expressive communication, acceptance and contemplation.
The new experience carried Igor further than the traditional jazz frameworks. Even the opening Rewind catches you off guard with a simple rhythmic key, and even more so once Moder’s electric guitar chimes in. Milko Lazar delivers just a simple motif at the start, which, with its neoclassical touch, is really the foundation of the composition’s solid format, and Igor’s trumpet nestles into that motif very quickly and skillfully. What’s interesting is that the musicians measure out their moves with great feeling, calmly, unpretentiously, with no eruptions spraying seas of machine-gunned notes across the improvisational structures. Most of the time the trumpet and electric piano are caught in a kind of “trip-oid” trance, which, in the glow of spontaneous mutual awareness, or chemistry, if you like, conjures up a mystical backdrop at moments. The music develops spontaneously, reacting to unexpected turns, yet the fascinating thing is that within this spontaneity the musicians never lose the focus of their sensitive mutual awareness. It’s precisely in these moments, where the melody develops slowly, with a character of gradual layering and blending of long-held tones, that the rhythm line finds tons of room to fill the available space with its kinetics, space that keeps opening up on the album for Drašler and Krhlanko. In Circle, Drašler also deftly works in a violin bow, which he plays on the double bass, giving this moment of the album a character of its own and deepening the conjured mystique even further. Circle, the second part of the piece Spontaneous Conversations Part I, is typified by the multilayered stacking of sound elements, and over the basic motif the band slowly builds an extremely rich sonic backdrop, only to give it up again in the closing section with incredible softness. That’s just one proof of the refined feel with which the musicians approach the execution of the material on “State of KU.”
This quintet is far from having said its last word. You can feel on the album that they could reach for an even bigger dose of experimentation, one that might lead toward avant-garde and jazz-fusion approaches. Let’s hope they stick together for another album or two, because armed with incredible talent and experience, the quintet delivers excellent starting points for development, and could well surprise even the most demanding jazz gourmets in the future. Let’s let them surprise us.
At times, the quintet’s approach, on which the development of improvisations is based, mostly exploratory melodies on the trumpet that clearly break away from the established forms of the old jazz school, recalls the innovations Miles Davis reached for in the days of his jazz pioneering. And in the interactions with the electric piano, the quintet now and then gives off a sense of flirting with the electric era of Davis’s work. Still, through all of it, Igor Matkovič Quintet don’t lose control for a second and keep a clear motivic focus across the whole album.
So let’s stay a while in the utterly unique world of jazz that “State of KU” creates, listenable, delicate, subtle and very special. It’s a record that stuns with the incredibly patient and singular dialogue between the instruments of a jazz body like no other, called Igor Matkovič Quintet.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. Rewind
2. Spontaneus Conversation: Part I
Talu:
3. – I. Opening
4. – II . Circle
5. Krhlanko’s Chant
6. Ode to Ephemeral Lake
7. Spontaneus Conversation: Part II
Silent Struggle of a Young Son:
8. – I . Anticipation
9. – II . Window
10. Moment in Solo
11. Seven
Lineup:
Igor Matkovič – trumpet
Milko Lazar – “Rhodes” electric piano, piano
Jani Moder – guitar
Jošt Drašler – bass guitar
Bojan Krhlanko – drums
