New Release Round-up,
Jazz New Release Round-Up - 25th February 2021
Welcome all to this week’s jazz new release round-up. For your consideration this week, we begin with some ‘thrash-jazz’ from pianist Cameron Graves, who fuses his love of heavy metal with his piano quartet, with a guest spot from Kamasi Washington; it’s an intense and appropriately ‘heavy’ listen, and you can tell Graves had fun putting it together. Keeping it with ivory tinklers, Arne Torvik’s latest record scales back his quintet to a trio for the neatly melodic Northwestern Songs; meanwhile, experimental pop duo Snowpoet’s latest recording seemingly draws equal inspiration from jazz as it does Björk, and finally Saint Petersburg label Rainy Days have a new series that showcases some of the country’s best young jazz talent.
Promotional material for pianist Cameron Grave’s latest record labels it ‘thrash-jazz’, and the allusions to metal are not unfounded; even right from the get-go, the opener ‘Sacred Spheres’ kicks off with a Motörhead-esque double-kick drum beat, though the melodies aren’t nearly as gruff as Lemmy and co.. Graves himself is a self-confessed metalhead, citing the likes of Pantera, Slipknot and even the heady sounds of Swedish progressive metal band Meshuggah as influences. The angular and aggressive riffs heard across the record make this obvious, albeit through the comparatively softer lens of contemporary jazz, with a little fusion thrown in for good measure, plus a guest appearance from saxophonist Kamasi Washington. In a post-Tigran Hamasyan world, the fusion of jazz and the more progressive end of heavy metal may not be such a strange thing, but Graves and his band make a damn good go of it. It’s funny - in the best possible way - hearing a record that owes just as much of its sound to 90s metal as it does 70s fusion.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Available Formats: Vinyl Record, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The trio of piano, bass and drums is one of those tried and true sounds that remains ever-fruitful for many musicians. For pianist Arne Torvik, it was a case of scaling down from his quintet - with which he recorded his 2016 debut Northwestern Sounds - to strip back his ensemble to something a little more austere. Inspired by modern pop music, though hardly emulating any of its sounds, Torvik’s trio use what little components they have to play a memorable selection of the pianist’s own tunes; the neo-soul-esque syncopation of the piano on the opening track ‘Compromises’ stands out as a highlight, as do the icy chords on the closer ‘Iver’.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Joshua Lee - Jazz Content
