Enlarge image
Pharoah Sanders (2014)
Photo:
Leon Morris / Redferns via Getty Images
Album of the week:
Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & LSO - »Promises«
“Brrrblbrrblbrrbledidum?
Brrrblbrrblbrrbledidum! ”Sings, speaks, intones… let's say: Pharoah Sanders articulates about in the middle of“ Promises ”- and then mumbles comfortably to himself.
Something freer, more casual, more exhilarating has not been heard for a long time, perhaps most recently as a child when looking at "Sesame Street" in tights and a nicki sweater.
The 80-year-old US saxophonist, a jazz legend who his no less famous colleague Ornette Coleman once described as “probably the best tenor player in the world”, celebrates a late triumph of his skills with this surprising album.
Mainly and primarily through his saxophone, of course, not through his, uh, ad-lib babbling.
It goes without saying.
Album cover of "Promises"
Photo:
Julie Mehretu and Tom Powel Imaging
Sanders owes this career highlight to the British electronic musician Sam Shepherd, who publishes his music under the name Floating Points, a project that at times can include up to 16 musicians.
For “Promises”, however, he recruited the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), which underlay Shepherd's 47-minute composition, divided into nine “movements”, with light woodwinds and strings, a harp here, a spinet there.
In addition, Shepherd uses cautious loops, twittering and space sounds, mostly played on analog synthesizers like the Buchla, which give the floating »Promises« body a fragile, gently swinging structure that the LSO sometimes puffs up a bit too kitschy .
Enlarge image
Musician Shepherd, Sanders in the studio in Los Angeles
Photo: Eric Welles Nystrom
This genre-hybrid structure is filled by Sanders and his tenor saxophone, who gropes into the open space, spins pirouettes in it, sometimes pushes off the walls a little more vehemently and Shepherd's elastic sound bollards and drones.
But that's never as hard, as free jazz, as the former sideman of John Coltrane could, or at least used to be, on groundbreaking, extreme albums such as "Ascension".
But »Promises« is not a craft showcase for exceptional musicians and orchestras, it is a highly emotional, slowly and meditatively unfolding, transcendent spiritual jazz album in the style of the sixties and seventies, translated into the present with modern means of production .
Andreas Borcholte's playlist
Photo:
Christian O. Bruch / laif
Floating Points X Pharoah Sanders X LSO: Movement 4
Dawn Richard: Jacuzzi
Noga Erez: Cipi
Älice: Intro
Eunique: Cut
KOKO, Nina Chuba & Dillistone: 22s
Black Midi: John L
John Grant: Boy From Michigan
Morgan Wade: Don't Cry
Willie Dunn: I Pity The Country
Go to Spotify playlist Go to Apple Music playlist
Shepherd, who humbly and supportively puts his own playing in the service of Sanders, becomes a musical partner and anchorman, like the pianist Lonnie Liston Smith once was on Sanders' milestone "Karma" from 1969, which consisted of only two pieces : the eternal Sanders classic "The Creator Has a Master Plan", 32 minutes long, and the shorter "Colors".
In this dynamic and the tradition of the musical search for meaning, the cathartic reaching up to spiritual help in gloomy times, one can also understand "promises".
As a deeply optimistic "promise" of healing, redemption from physical and mental stress, regardless of whether it is about civil rights, racism, social injustice or pandemic melancholy.
"We are both seekers," says Shepherd, in our 30s, of Sanders, "we are constantly looking for music that can take us to a more sublime place."
For the Briton, who feels as inspired by the French composers Debussy and Messiaen as he is by Bill Evans and Gil Scott-Heron, Sanders describes the saxophone as an extension of his soul, "like it was a megaphone for his soul."
And what about Pharoah Sanders himself?
As usual, he doesn't say much: "People think I don't talk a lot," he said in excerpts from interviews provided by the record company, "while I try to speak through my music."
That's usually a bad musician phrase, but a jazz master is happy to let it go.
Nice to hear his voice again so confidently.
(9.0)
Listened briefly:
Noga Erez - "Kids"
“I've been de-de-de-depressed”, the Israeli pop musician Noga Erez begins her long-awaited second album with the song “Cipi”.
But then it goes on much less tense, grim and political than on her debut, but amazingly playful and Gorillaz-like burlesque.
From grief over the death of their mother-in-law, Erez and partner Rousso created defiantly resilient electropop.
Yoffi!
(7.9)
serpentwithfeet - "Deacon"
With his click clack gospel "Same Size Shoe" he succeeded in creating a queer "Don't Worry, Be Happy" for 2021: US singer Josiah Wise alias serpentwithfeet already started as an R&B innovator in 2018, now he thinks about it with soft beats, Electro sounds, Afro spirit and soul singing on his religious upbringing and celebrating himself as the dean of love.
Sacral like Kolleg * in Arca, but without noise.
Hallelujah!
(8.3)
Lost Girls - »Menneskekollektivet«
Floating, pondering in the disco ether, the Norwegian avant-pop extremist Jenny Hval tries to bring invisible dance bodies and floating spoken texts into harmony and vibration.
"Human collective" means "Menneskekollektivet" translated.
Hval has been one of them for years with the multi-instrumentalist Håvard Volden, now her debut is coming out: Space club music by Mondbasis Alpha 1.
(7.7)
Pixey - "Free To Live In Color"
Like her tragically missing colleague Duffy ("Mercy") once, the young singer, musician and bedroom producer Pixey from Liverpool digs through the retro box very charmingly, albeit in the one with the 90s label: Stone Roses, Kula Shaker, The Verve, Spice Girls.
On their debut EP everything is self-made, including the nostalgic hooks from “Just Move” and “On The Mersey Line”.
(7.0)