Reviews

Red Kite, Popludium, Babel ****

26 February 20262 Mins read

The Babel label renaissance that began with Riversphere last year continues at pace with this dreamy multi-faceted driving keys, guitar and trumpet spearheaded Red Kite release.

Years ago in 2012 I interviewed the Austrian guitarist Hannes Riepler who is part of Red Kite. The cat in the hat on the brand new Popludium album cover, above, he asked me – we were sitting in Cafe Oto in Dalston having a cup of coffee – if I had heard of a Danish pianist called Esben Tjalve.

To my shame I hadn’t. Since then I have remembered Hannes’ enthusiasm and bumping into him a few times down the years remembered his recommendation about Royal Academy of Music and Guildhall educated jazzer, Tjalve.

Now back living again in Denmark, Tjalve surrounds himself here with a very international line-up including his fellow Dane & old mucker the great Avishai Cohen inspired Phronesis double bassist Jasper Hølby, Italian trumpeter Fulvio Sigurta and French drummer Marc Michel, a head I’ve heard a few times play alongside another guitar ace – Tom Ollendorff.

On his website Tjalve explains a bit more about the project:

“Red Kite plays acoustic modern jazz with some electronic elements that help create a cinematic undertone in the music. The moods vary from cinematic noir ballads to groovy car chase scenarios, creating a cinematic universe reminiscent of Miles Davis and Arve Henriksen .”
– Esben Tjalve

Tjalve is also on the recent April Records Human Being Human release featuring Chris Cheek, Being, playing the very lovely tunes of bassist Torben Bjørnskov.

The Popludium tunes aren’t typically AABA neither do they correspond to some sort of fake version of American jazz reheated in a test tube of nostalgia with a roomful of yuppies in mind as target audience a phenomenon that sometimes occurs if things become a little too smug.

The way things develop on ‘Two Worlds’ certainly is noir-ish. On this piece what Hølby does opens the whole thing out. So listening in real time you get a sense of a panorama which means you can think beyond the music to a world the band has created.

Tjalve with Sigurta and other musicians at the online Jazzahead held during the Covid years.

Adding “ludium” as a suffix as in the title means something, but forget a prefix and rid yourself of the perilous “ludicrous”, like adding a notion of play from the latin verb “ludere”. Pop I think is more of the sense of “people” as in “populus” rather than “pop music” because obviously what the band plays isn’t pop music at all. So what I understand from the title is “people play”.

Simples? Not so fast buster, that may not be the meaning at all. There are no notes of explanation so I look forward to finding out more on this.

Keyboardist and composer Esben Tjalve. Photo: publicity shot

Tom Spargo writing in Jazzwise however uncovered some more nuggets recently gleaned from the horse’s mouth by interviewing Tjalve. He explains to Spargo the European nature of the band and reflects upon this thus: “I think there’s a little bit of a tendency in all these different scenes in Europe to focus too much on the American scene. So it’s great to keep this interaction between different hubs in Europe as well. The whole thing with London is that it’s got a lot of different kinds of music that meld together – jazz, pop, rock, beats.”

It’s an intelligent sound without ramming sophistication down your throat. Trumpet sort of leads some of the time. But the writing means that isn’t always obviously the case and the band doesn’t resort to doing head-solo-head. Certainly worth your time exploring and finding out what makes it tick for yourself. It’s inspiring listening.