Courtesy of Tim Stevens and the Music Council of Australia following is Tim's review of
Grace. Tim has also asked that his other review from the same edition be included in order to show that he also writes positive reviews. Tim does not plan to enter the discussion. He's already had his say, he says.
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GraceOehlers & Keevers
Jazzhead HEAD052
Reviewed by Timothy Stevens
This duo recording of original compositions by Jamie Oehlers and Sam Keevers had its origin as a session for broadcast by Jim McLeod’s Jazztrack on ABC Classic FM. It is one of a great many albums to have had such origins, and indeed were it not for the ABC’s program of documenting the work of local artists and presenting it on radio we should be much the poorer for evidence of what goes on here. The translation from radio to CD however is not without its risks.
The cover of this disc credits Mal Stanley with having recorded, edited and mixed the music in a single day. This seems unlikely; my guess would be that the music was recorded in a single day, mixing and editing following at an interval. Here at any rate is where in my opinion the disc suffers, for it is an ambitious plan to record an album of nine original tunes in a day, and there seems to be evidence of a certain struggle.
Grace does have several very fine things about it, first among which is the sound of Jamie Oehlers’s tenor saxophone. Oehlers’s ease with his instrument and his attractive fluency, as well as his unflappable poise playing sometimes very challenging chord changes, make his contribution consistently enjoyable. He has a pleasing and sure rhythmic variety, and the ability to play simple melodic ideas with great charm and feeling. Sam Keevers is sometimes stunningly engaged with Oehlers in terms of ensemble and groove, such as during the saxophone improvisation on Oehlers’s Tomorrow’s Yesterday. I applaud a program of original compositions, although to be honest I don’t consistently applaud the tunes themselves (some are much better than others). And a duo release such as this is a rare, and in many ways a brave, thing.
The album is book-ended by two performances of the same tune: Grace, by Keevers. This composition demonstrates, at the risk of sounding a bit AMEB about it, problems of voice leading and some conspicuously weak parallelism, issues which are not unknown elsewhere in Keevers’s tunes. The second version is subtitled ‘extended version’ and looks to me suspiciously like the first take that was deemed too long for radio. Certainly nothing is gained by hearing it again; there is a particularly disappointing piano solo in the longer version where Keevers stumbles, misplays certain chords, and seems almost to lose his place. But without it the CD would only be 47 minutes long, which many people these days consider to be too short.
Other selections also show roughness that might have been alleviated by an ability to spend more time on them. Keevers’s tune Milton Nascimento features another halting piano solo, and Still, which seems to be a free improvisation, lacks focus and direction. The piano here is greatly over-pedalled, too. Given the elegance of Oehlers’s sound and the obvious empathy these two musicians have for one another, it seems a shame that their work here might not have been augmented by at least another day’s recording before it went to CD.
The Edge of Today: A Mapping of the Melbourne Sound
Rob Burke Jazzhead HEAD059
Reviewed by Timothy Stevens
Even given the chance that one might take issue with Rob Burke’s cartography, his urge to map the Melbourne sound is laudable. Musicians who are prepared to think in such terms of the particularity of local scenes and idioms still seem fairly thin on the ground, despite the growing availability of documentary and scholarly (to say nothing of audible) evidence that the jazz diaspora has involved processes of mutation and discontinuity, and that this has been an overwhelmingly positive thing.
Burke has assembled and manages a terrific ensemble featuring no less than five guitarists, namely Doug de Vries, Slava Grigoryan, Stephen Magnusson, Geoff Hughes, and Peter Petrucci, as well as Nick Haywood (bass) and Tony Floyd (drums). Variations to personnel between tracks constitute one of the album’s great strengths, with instrumentation ranging between two and eight players. Burke has solicited compositions from within the group (Magnusson, Petrucci, Hughes and de Vries contribute one each), provided four of his own tunes, and completed the set with Paulinho da Viola’s ‘Choro Negro’ and Astor Piazzola’s ‘Café 1930’ from L’Histoire du Tango. It’s an unexpected and complicated project, but it’s a hugely satisfying one.
The manner in which musicians and material meet is very thoughtful and gives the record considerable depth, in my opinion. To take a single example, Burke performs Hughes’s exceptional composition Same Time Same Face with Hughes, Petrucci, Magnusson, Haywood, and Floyd. Hughes is a tremendous composer, no matter how few people know it, and this strangely formed piece is an astonishing experience. From a long vamp at the outset, through a rubato section situated in another key, we are brought back into time and eventually to the first melodic statement, about four minutes in. Five iterations of the melody take place before Magnusson’s improvisation commences. At this point, the piece has already lasted six minutes. It never outstays its welcome; on the contrary, the quality of the composition itself, as well as the beautifully integrated playing of the band, make it consistently engaging. For me, this is easily the standout track.
Elsewhere however there is much to admire. The inclusion on Grigoryan’s recommendation of the Piazzola, the exquisite diminuendo and dissolution at the end of the album (in the final moments of Magnusson’s Together Alone), the juxtaposition of improvisatory voices and timbres, and the breathtaking colour and sympathy of Tony Floyd’s drumming, are all very impressive.
In Burke’s own playing there are still moments of rhythmic and harmonic instability, and there remain some explicit references to John Coltrane that can be a little tiresome. Whereas Burke’s exegesis of his mapping doesn’t seem overly sophisticated at a theoretical level, I wonder how much of that kind of thing might fit comfortably on the sleeve of a CD. The earnest liner notes evidently lacked a proofreader (and while speaking of the cover, some of the musicians’ photographs are dreadful). But all in all, Burke’s creativity and humility in generating a project such as this are to be hailed energetically.
