Music is a strange thing nowaday. The
music business has been exploded, so there are myriads of little
labels publishing more or less good music. But it's hard to find out
a musician that has a vision, as some of the people I interviewed in
this blog during the past years. In this period of time in which I
haven't written a single word, I sometimes received some material, but
most of it was retro-garde. Music that reminds of the jazz of the
past, music good for dinner clubs. I also did, with my camera, the
cover for the album of a jazz pianist who is releasing this album of
songs, everyone with a proper singer, but it's an album that is far
from the lands and the temperatures of Complete Communion, so you
won't find a review here.
But this album is different. It was
sent to me a couple of days ago by the label itself, and the first
thing that intrigued me is that Paolo Sorge, responsible for the
project and leader of the trio, played in 2006 with Butch Morris. Mr
Morris is a musician I love, and I thought it was well worth a
listening. And in fact, it is. Paolo Sorge is a musician born in
Catania in 1968. He is both a guitarist and a composer, and his work
is well known in Italy and Europe. His collaborations feature the
likes of Stefano Maltese, Michel Godard, Guido Mazzon, Butch Morris,
Ab Baars, Keith Tippett, Don Byron, Elliott Sharp and many others. In
2004 he founded with drummer Francesco Cusa the label Improvvisatore
Involontario, that is also the base for an artistic movement who
provides the world of improvised music with many interesting artists.
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| Paolo Sorge |
The trio featured in the album Triplain
is completed by bassist Gabriele Evangelista and drummer Francesco
Cusa. Gabriele, after graduating, played with orchestras and chamber
groups doing classical music. After that period he discovered
improvisation and studied with Scott Colley and Salvatore Bonafede.
Since 2010 he is part of the Enrico Rava quintet known as Enrico Rava
Tribe. Cusa, co-founder of the Bassesfere collective, is very active
in the field of music for films, theatre dance and visual arts. He
collaborates with many bands and groups, leaving a deep trace in the
world of improvised music during this period. So, if you think that
this trio is made up of three personalities, two more avant-oriented,
and one more classically-trained, you can have, even without a single
listening, an idea of the music you will find in this record.
Triplain is a record made of vibrant
sounds and nice textures. It passes from the irony of Divergenze, the
opening track, to the volatile quality surrounding the solid groove
of Ciclosfera, where the atmosphere is more dense. In the middle, you
have more whispered pieces like Floating, or Idea 2 where drums, not
bass, are responsible for the groove, the nice guitar climaxes of
Slonimskys Domino, the syncopations of Triplain, the melancholy
barely hidden through the textures of TreDueNove.
How can we call this music? For sure as
'post-avantgarde', since the musicians involved put their own styles
together in order to obtain a sound that is carrying with it
different experiences all grown in our countries since the
affirmation of improvised music as an European language. His limits
is that it talks to itself and to the history of European improvised
music nowadays, in a period of nostalgia – but I would say
'riflusso' in my own native language, that is slightly different –
in which no one is crying or screaming, and everybody obeys. Can
music be part of the oppression or it has to be part of the revolt?
But this record, anyway, is worth a listening.
Line Up: Paolo Sorge guitar and compositions, Gabriele Evangelista double bass, Francesco Cusa drums - Tracklist: Divergenze, Floating, Idea Due, Ciclosfera, Slonimskys Domino, Triplain, TreDueNove
