Unashamedly sentimental – how can this series of charming harmonica and guitar duets from this Dutch duo be otherwise when it begins with ‘Moon River’?
But, while wary of schmaltz – *reader – spoiler alert – there isn’t any* – I was hooked in really enough to stay with the album by the lovely take on Enrico Pieranunzi’s ‘Je Ne Sais Quoi’ where mouth organ player Deurloo is touchingly Toots Thielemans-like.
Toots and Django of course are probably our most favourite, famous, jazz Belgians.
If you know the emotion of the music to Midnight Cowboy then this part of the album particularly is a match.
Recorded with a minimum of artifice – the clue I suppose is in the title “Unfiltered” – tunes also include a few from guitarist Anton Goudsmit notably ‘Droplul’. His style is quite close to the Swede Ulf Wakenius.
What else? I loved the inclusion of a treatment of Bill Frisell’s 1980s era In Line piece ‘Throughout’. The version here has some of the best soloing from Deurloo on the whole album. Who is she? The 60 year old studied saxophone at the Amsterdam Conservatory while, at the same time, teaching herself to play the harmonica. She’s recorded and performed all over the world and with musicians such as the great Steve Gadd, Han Bennink and the Willem Breuker Kollektief. Check out a characterful album of hers that came out the year before Corona called Riverbeast [it’s even better] Gadding about and also with Scherr and the reliably superb Kevin Hays.
Deurloo has performed in recent years too with the Brussels Jazz Orchestra, pianist Gwilym Simcock and guitarist Mike Walker of The Impossible Gentlemen. I liked most of what is on Unfiltered mainly for mood and a kind of translatable nostalgia that doesn’t grate.
The guitar accompaniment is sympathetic. OK, the corny ‘MIC’ I can do without. But everything else choice wise is absolutely fine. Two wonderful players then humbly captured surrounded by a bundle of material that sits well together whether written in recent years or far older lost in a kind of misty blue that somehow finds a focus.
