Drawing on diverse musical sources and the talents of a superb group of musicians, the music on “Phonetics” is greater than the sum of its parts. Insightful performances of saxophonist Mark Turner, violist Oene Van Geel, bassist Mark Helias, and percussionist Emile Biayenda are presented in first-rate audio quality, with excellent low-level detail (breathiness from the saxophone mouthpiece, the faint scraping of the viola bow), fast response in the double-bass low notes, and a deep soundstage for the drum set.
– Mark Werlin, NativeDSD & AllAboutJazz
Paris-based pianist-keyboardist-composer Delbecq counts among his inspirations Cowell, Cage, Ligeti, Aka pygmy song, Balkan dance, Abdullah Ibrahim, Cecil Taylor, Steve Lacy, Miles, Monk, Ornette, and colleagues such as Steve Argüelles and Marc Ducret. He has developed an unmistakable yet richly varied musical idiom. Intellectually intriguing, emotionally evocative, palpably elegant, Phonetics presents an artist at the height of his imaginative and synthesizing powers. The audiophile recording and subtle 5.0 mix burnish the music’s lunar intensity.
The idea for this international band involved some educated hunches, says Delbecq: “I wanted to provoke an encounter between musicians I knew from different scenes, Europe meets North America meets Africa [Emile Biayenda is Cameroonian and leads the percussion ensemble Les Tambours de Brazza]. When I started writing I had a sound in mind… a very open but very rhythmic way of playing…and different directions I wanted us to explore collectively. The mixed timbres of tenor and viola were in a sense the key to the group.” Prepared piano is also featured on several tracks: “I wanted to leave space for the guys to improvise, and accompanying with prepared sounds allows the music to sound very open harmonically, while it places me on a different axis in the rhythmic web. It also allows the mind to escape the piano in some way, and this can lead to rare blends, such as with viola playing pizzicato.”
Critic Bill Shoemaker notes of Delbecq’s previous Songlines album, the solo piano record Nu-turn, that his “affinity for African and Asian folk music and his Paul Bley-derived lyricism and floating pulse constantly dovetail about one another. This accentuates the exotic, mysterious qualities of his music,” with its fugutive harmonies and eddying polyrhythms. Expanding these moods and concepts in a five-way dialogue demanded an unusual degree of concentration and intuitive understanding from everyone involved – particularly as each piece has its own specific underlying structures, as well as its own potential for “mutation” of these points of departure. “I change the tools for each piece, and each piece is trying for a different character in the playing for each person….On ‘Multikulta’ it’s a strict rhythmic fabric that patterns the composed material, but I was interested in letting the bass and drums spontaneously mutate the form of it during Oene’s soloing. ‘Au Louvre’ is an actual mutation of ‘Maat,’ one of the pieces I wrote in 1990 for the collective group Kartet. Each phrase of the theme begins at a different point in the bass line’s cycle, kind of in the African way, and out of this Emile constructs these rhythmic micro-forms, which sets the bass line in motion along several different axes, a bit as if one were turning an actual object round in one’s hands to view it better or explain it. The downbeat or accenting is not an imposed hierarchy – you’ll see that Emile never really plays the crash cymbal as the marker of a rhythmic hierarchy, that’s so elegant!”
On “4MalW” (a hushed yet astringent tribute to his mentor Mal Waldron), Delbecq sampled the band at rehearsals: “I would then be able to trigger these scraps of memory as the piece unfolded. What I love about samples is that they play tricks on your memory, they move the relationship we have with what is played or is going to be played somewhere else.”
Benoît Delbecq, Piano & Sampler
Mark Turner, Tenor Saxophone
Oene van Geel, Viola
Mark Helias, Bass
Emile Biayenda, Drums
Tracklist
Please note that the below previews are loaded as 44.1 kHz / 16 bit.Total time: 00:53:34
Additional information
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SKU | SGLSA15522 |
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Recording Engineer | Thierry Balasse |
Recording Location | Recorded in 24/96 and mixed in analogue to stereo and 5.0 DSD, November 9-12, 2003, at La Muse en Circuit, Paris. Mastered by Dawn Frank, Sony SACD Project, Boulder. |
Release Date | November 21, 2024 |
Press reviews
HRaudio.net
The lengthy closing piece “Au Louvre” recapitulates the elements that have recurred throughout the set, long unison lines, intricate rhythmic patterns, multi-part arrangements. Belgian violist Oene Van Geel’s bravura solo, which draws on classical technique (scales, arpeggios, double-stops), Arabic melodic phrases and bent-note microtonality, is both an individualistic statement and a contribution to the overall, integrative goal of the project…Phonetics has first-rate audio quality, with excellent low level detail (breathiness from the saxophone mouthpiece, the faint scraping of the viola bow), fast response in the double-bass low notes and a deep soundstage for the drum set.
All About Jazz
What a wonderful band that pianist Benoit Delbecq has put together! This finely synchonized unit creates an exceptional ensemble sound with its dark, moody tones and circuitous melodies, playing music that sounds as if it were conceived in a cave, in murky shadows and cool and dry air. An unusual timbral mix—viola and tenor saxophone—sets the sound apart, along with drummer Emile Biayenda’s distinctive rhythms…A very new and exciting sound, even to ears that have traveled widely.
All About Jazz
It is, in fact, Delbecq’s light touch, both as a performer and composer, that gives the entire recording its direction. ‘Pointe de la Courte Dune’ may have a captivating African-inflected rhythm and a theme that seems to mine Gyorgi Ligeti territory at times with its close harmony and oddly appealing dissonance, but there’s a certain indefinable ethereality that leaves the composition hanging in the air, never quite grounded. ‘4MalW’ is a pensive tribute to Mal Waldron, starting with van Geel’s plaintive viola a capella, but resolving into a diffuse trio, with Delbecq and Helias gradually leading towards a more defined but subtle rhythm and Turner’s oblique yet lyrical melody. “Elsewhere rhythm plays a more defined role, with ‘Yompa’ based around a propulsive African-based rhythm but, again, with a more peculiar yet compelling theme leading into an outré solo from Delbecq that may have Cecil Taylor as precedence, minus the ham-fisted histrionics. “Part of what makes Phonetics so peculiar yet appealing is an abstrusity that manages to avoid sharp edges. Delbecq may use dissonance to great effect, but his touch is so gentle that it never jars, while Biayenda eschews unsettling crashes. The result, when combined with Helias’ woody sound and the intriguing blend of viola and saxophone, is a recording that has an unusually atmospheric intensity; Phonetics seems all about paradox and is all the richer for it.
Jazz Times
Pianist Benoit Delbecq claims a wide range of unusual influences, both musical and extramusical. One of the odder sources he has mentioned is Oulipo, the French-speaking literary movement that creates works using constrained writing techniques, and Delbecq’s latest CD sounds like a musical offshoot of it. The pianist finds dazzling creativity through the careful use of set rules and layered, complicated structures. Delbecq wanted to explore his multilayered, shifting-meter tunes on Phonetics with many accents. To that end, he collected African drummer Emile Biayenda, Americans Marc Helias (bass) and Mark Turner (sax) and Dutch viola player Oene van Geel, and the pianist elicits a satisfying, rich and remarkably controlled sound out of the group. The redoubtable bounce and light touch of Biayenda (a terrific recruit) along with earthy bass work from Helias make striking contrast with long, legato and nearly classical lines from Turner and van Geel. Delbecq jumps between the two camps, with a percussive touch on a semiprepared piano or unison lines with Turner and van Geel.
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