Saturday, July 28, 2007

Louis Sclavis, Napoli's Walls, ECM

Classical in nature and, yet, I have been listening to a lot of Albert Ayler lately and thinking that a big element in what made him memorable was his ability to make his instrument remind at whiles of the human voice; ditto this, but on a group rather than individual level. They also employ real voices in some spots, filtered through electronics, and hard to separate from the instrument-created voices.

I don't remember why I didn't like this much when I bought it. There's a diversity of music, avant-garde jazz and classical, Italian folk, Spanish-like quitar, fusion; it's even operatic in places, all from a quartet, albeit one that plays a heck of a lot of instruments. Some interludes remind me of (much bigger) Pink Martini. Sclavis is consistently memorable on his clarinets.

If someone asked me for an example of modern third stream jazz, this would be a good one.

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