Something of a very zen spiritual jazz event
“There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew,” wrote theorist of the global village Marshall McLuhan. Listening feels like participation, like a community, playing a McLuhan like role thanks to the very humane work of this Scandinavian grouping that succeeds in tearing down walls and the barriers that divide.
The Thing’s ferocious sax icon Mats Gustafsson and adventurous trumpeter Goran Kajfeš are perhaps the best known of the players here tasked with paying tribute to world-jazz explorer Don Cherry. Crucially reedist Christer Bothén – among the players – worked with Cherry in the Sweden of the 1970s and taps into that creative engine at the heart of this sound. Cherry changed jazz forever with Ornette Coleman on The Shape of Jazz To Come in the annus mirabilis of 1959, an extraordinary year that also saw the release not only of Kind of Blue but Time Out and Mingus Ah Um, albums that in their very different ways still remain influential today.
And via the medium of recorded sound freed from a distant studio and released today the message whether McLuhan-esque or not of the ensemble’s sound swirl bowing down to global voyager Cherry draws on a big melting pot of instrumentation including bass clarinet, tenor sax, trumpet, synth, congas and berimbau. Marianne N´Lemwo is a guest on karignan – an African percussion instrument made from a metal slotted tube that is scraped or struck with a long rod. The medium, in the sense of method, most preferred of all wrapped in rhythm, is freedom.
The ensemble draw out an earthy transformative essence
Tunes on this Studio Ingrid, Stockholm recording include Kajfeš’ moving dirge ‘Father and Son’ with the Zetterbergian bass lines a blazing beacon of enchantment and enlightenment, Christer Bothén’s ‘Right Here, Right Now’, collective improvisation and a new treatment of Cherry’s Eternal Now (1974) epic, ‘Love Train.’ Bothén – now in his eighties – was on that very recording which still gives you goosebumps and the fully altered reaction to it that the ensemble deliver powerfully ignites a powder keg of raw fervour.
All in all it’s exhilarating, full of chunky riffs, a very open feel and fresh ways into what Cherry’s music still means to lovers of the sound today so creatively explored and meaningfully doted upon through a spell of mystical intensity.
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