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I can’t clarify in logical, human phrases my fascination with solo double bass deep tones, and the way such resonant tones preserve my sanity in a unstable and intense atmosphere. Now, it turns into a yearly custom of the Free Jazz Weblog, and listed below are opinions of 16 new (or not so new) principally solo double bass albums. Take your probabilities and chances are you’ll stunning technique to re-calibrate your minds.
Joëlle Léandre’s solo Zurich Live performance was recorded at Taktlos-Competition at Kunstraum Walcheturm in Zürich in March 2022, and, as anticipated, it’s an impressed and stylish efficiency. Léandre performs arco, clearly, together with her astounding bowing methods, but additionally with nice ardour, subversive wit and intelligent irony, highly effective and ecstatic power and poetic, compassionate tenderness.
She is a power of nature and you may sense her once-in-a-lifetime free spirit persona on this live performance. The double bass turns into an elastic materials in her arms, an extension of her physique and soul, and tells imaginative and free-associative tales. There is no such thing as a earthly energy that may cease her spontaneous and intuitive inventive power when she picks her beloved and devoted instrument.
Mark Dresser – Tines of Change (Pyroclastic, 2023)
Mark Dresser just isn’t solely a real grasp of the double bass but additionally a lifelong researcher, innovator and conceptualist of the bull fiddle’s nearly infinite sonic prospects, and a uncommon musician who treats his instrument as an orchestra somewhat than a string instrument. Dresser finds within the double bass orchestras inside orchestras, crosscurrents of harmonic and multiphonic inspiration that interact in charming and entrancingly stunning dialogues.
On Tines of Change, his sixth solo double bass album, Dresser presents a dozen new explorations carried out on unconventional 4 and five-string basses crafted by the Colorado-based bassist and luthier Kent McLagan. The title refers to these basses’ most placing function, an array of steel tines affixed to a secondary bridge. Just like the strings, these tines might be plucked or bowed, providing quite a lot of sounds from the percussive to the ethereal. McLagen additionally embedded hand-wound particular person magnetic pickups into the fingerboard of the bass, one set beneath the nut and the opposite on the octave. These extra pickups permit Dresser to sound as much as three completely different pitches on every string, in addition to amplify refined tones and pitches which may in any other case go unheard in a stay or collaborative setting.
With these progressive double basses, Dresser experiments, sculpts and orchestrates microtonal, produces mushy and unique flute-like sounds, or crafts mysterious polyphonic dialogs with himself. He juggles with suggestive overtones and percussive beats and explores deep harmonic sonorities and multiphonics that evoke the overtone-rich custom of throat singing. Dresser’s sonic imaginative and prescient is all the time compelling and insightful, all the time carried out with impressed musical command, magnificence and class, and, clearly, all the time reveals so many stunning, completely different and distinct voices of the double bass.
Håkon Thelin – Random Partials/ Twinings (Peninsula Audio Data, 2023)
Håkon Thelin – Spektralkompass/Sterbendes Hertz (Peninsula Audio Data, 2023)
Norwegian double bass master-composer-eductor Håkon Thelin calls his new two albums, launched on his newly-founded label Peninsula Audio Data, a label for experimental double bass music, a “seismic change of favor, a bloodbath of parts the place the whole lot however the pure essence has been shaved away”. Thelin’s radical new music focuses on the research and analysis of purely private pursuits in sound and approach, and Thelin means idiosyncratic and idiomatic methods that originate from the instrument itself and push the boundaries, in a method or one other.
Random Partials/Twinings, with the Japanese, Oslo-based pianist Sanae Yoshida, is a methodical, minimalist work (he elaborates on every bit and provides notes and directions on his web site). “Twinnings” relies on two completely different approaches to exploring the aural distinction between pure intonation on the double bass and equal tuning on the piano. Every part of the piece is launched by a 7-note theme from a Norwegian people melody performed on overtones on the double bass and mixed with the unison equal-tuned notes of the piano. Thelin employs a way he has realized from Mark Dresser which turns the intonation of the double bass because it steadily slips away (in micro-intervals) from the equal-tuned piano, and makes the double bass sings suggestive and poetic, otherworldly overtones.
The 43-minute ”Random Partials” is described by Thelin as a “blissful mixture of Alvin Lucier and John Cage”. Its 1-16 harmonic model performs the double bass harmonic partials (simply intonation) with the corresponding “unison” tones on the piano, separately, as a sustained, slowly fading sound. Thelin and Yoshida create a randomly chosen collection of partials till all partials are used, after which the piece ends. This piece has a extra austere,ritualist-meditative environment.
On Spektralkompass/Sterbendes, Hertz Thelin performs two to eight double basses and sine tones and is accompanied by British, Oslo-based sound artist Natasha Barrett who performs logarithmic sine tone glissando on the six “Spektralkompass” items (plus two variations, all clock in about 7:40 minutes). These items are an evolving collection of works exploring spectral qualities in several taking part in methods on the double bass and depend on two sine tones that begin in unison and transfer slowly aside in an extended, steady glissando motion. The double bass strains in all of the works imitate the sine tone glissandi and add numerous sonic phenomena reminiscent of beatings, multiphonics, and an prolonged bowing approach referred to as “spectral part distinction”. Thelin references right here the progressive works and the prolonged methods of double bass pioneer masters reminiscent of Italian Stefano Scodanibbio (particularly his seminal Voyage That By no means Ends, New Albion, 1998) and Fernando Grillo, or Mexican modern composer and double bass participant Rodrigo Mata. These pressing and intensely resonant items are disorienting, main the listener right into a labyrinth of enigmatic and nearly orchestral, voluminous sounds.
The 34-minute “Sterbendes Hertz” for double bass and sine tones “takes feelings that emerged throughout a demanding interval of the corona pandemic, and transforms them into sound”. It displays rising dissonances inside the household and society and buildings which are steadily disintegrating and coming collectively once more. This piece is organized in repeated sections of 30 seconds, and in every part, two unison (or nearly unison) sine tones transfer aside in step-descending or ascending intervals whereas the open strings of the double bass are nearly imperceptibly tuned down or as much as match the sine tones. Thelin recommends listening to this piece with headphones as a result of very low sine tones. That is an unsettling piece that captures faithfully the traumatic period however its cussed supply on a approach out of this emotional maze.
Brandon López – vilevilevilevilevilevilevilevile (Tao varieties, 2023)
The in-demand, New York-based double bass participant Brandon López says that vilevilevilevilevilevilevilevile is “much less about -a thing- than it’s about perceptions of issues, questioning these perceptions, and presumably altering them”. The title refers to López’ “very private and obsessive ideas on what actions are thought of vile and evil and the way arbitrary our choices are to proclaim ‘anathema’ whereas we get on our knees for the president or prime minister, king, queen, the banker, the pope, and reward conflict unquestionably”.
In a dialog with Kurt Gottschalk who wrote the liner notes, López expanded on his debt to the progressive concepts of double bass masters – William Parker’s musicality, Joëlle Léandre’s bowing methods (“she scares the shit outta me”) and Peter Kowald (“he was a kind of gamers who destroyed the conception of what it meant to have a lovely sound”). López follows these masters’ path: “The music that I make is form of the other of what could be thought of stunning. I need to make one thing stunning and beautiful and sophisticated by processes that aren’t thought of right”.
López, like what Léandre all the time advises, performs what he has realized and what he tries to unlearn. He does in order if he’s completely possessed by the urgency and depth of the second, obsessive about complicated and dense concepts, exploring refined timbral territories with commanding and extremely creative approach and boundless energy. López seems like he can do no matter he needs with the double bass – sing, moan, unburden frustrations, take dangers and flirt with hazard and even search sonic salvation. However he refuses to reply Gottschalk if mysticism performs an lively function in his taking part in, because it does in Parker’s taking part in. “There are some issues we don’t ask about”, he says. vilevilevilevilevilevilevilevile could also be one of the stunning solo double bass albums within the least stunning method attainable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7WRpndlYmg
Gonçalo Almeida – Compositions for Double Bass (Cylinder, 2022)
Prolific Portuguese, Rotterdam-based double bass participant Gonçalo Almeida presents 4 compositions for solo double bass. Almeida performs these demanding and sophisticated compositions brilliantly with inspiring command of his instrument.
The primary one “MPK” (Memoriam for Peter Kowald, 2005) by Greek composer-educator Thanos Polymeneas-Liontiris for double bass and stay electronics. This composition celebrates Kowlas as an distinctive human being and was impressed by Kowald’s nice musician’s metaphysical credo for music and life. Polymeneas-Liontiris met Kowald, and, clearly, this assembly knowledgeable and impressed his life and music. Almeida performs this complicated piece with passionate and uncompromising power, as one can count on Kowald would do. The second piece “Stroll” (2007, revised 2020) by Polish interdisciplinary composer Michał Osowski for a double bass solo goals to create a sonic picture of a peaceable and leisured stroll, with sufficient house for episodic improvisations and meditative ideas. This minimalist and extremely resonant drone piece calls for a complete command of its difficult-to-execute progressions.
The third piece “Mangled Counteract” (2022) by fellow Portuguese drummer Pedro Melo Alves for double bass solo, was written particularly for Almeida. It’s primarily based on the irregular repetition of fastened sound occasions, and Alves describes it as a “uncooked method to the idea of damaged steadiness as it’s a secure embracing and considerably ethereal panorama on itself”. Almeida introduces a ritualistic vein to this composition that evokes “everlasting limbo, reduce solely by a melody in misery”. The fourth composition “Ritual Extra or Much less Outlined (2017, revised 2022) by Dutch drummer-composer-visual artist Friso van Wijck (who labored with Almeida within the Bulliphant quintet) for ready double bass, tape and stay electronics, was written for and devoted to Almeida, with recommendation from Almeida. This mysterious, sound-oriented composition employs numerous notational approaches and flirts with summary sounds, noise and the bottom attainable detuned sounds.
Mirco Ballabene – 7 composizioni Improvvisate Per Contrabbasso Solo (Niafunkem, 2023)
The debut solo double bass album of Italian Micro Ballabene dedicates 4 “Composizione improvvisata” to influential double bass masters whose methods, and, clearly, their prolonged methods, impressed Ballabene – Mark Dresser’s double pizzicato, Stefano Scodanibbio’s alternation between peculiar notes and harmonics, Peter Kowald’s power and Joëlle Léandre’s tremolo, and one other one to fellow Italian modern composer Salvatore Sciarrino. Clearly, Bellabene is well-versed within the complicated and difficult work of those progressive musicians, improvisers and composers.
Ballabene makes use of the time period “Composizione improvvisata” as these items, and 5 different items (the sixth one has 4 actions), had been formed over time, by many executions and changes, whereas he was exploring methods, timbral palette and compositional methods, however by no means written as compositions and are nonetheless be at liberty, pressing and open. Moreover, there’s a tendency for every bit to be strongly recognizable from the others, favoring the vertical dimension of the deep excavation, somewhat than the horizontal dimension of the plurality. Bellabene performs with commanding authority and power, impeccable and artistic methods and imaginative sonic imaginative and prescient, all the time prepared to take the double bass to its most excessive and unchartered sonic areas. “Composizione improvvisata n. 5 (per Salvatore Sciarrino)” for ready double bass with coloured plastic toy nails inserted into the strings is a masterful piece and corresponds properly with Sciarrino’s compositions for flute which demanded from its performers an abundance of bizarre and creative sounds. Ballabene is a real hero of the double bass.
Hear and obtain from Bandcamp.
Beliah / Heilbron / Majkowski / Shirley – Bertrand Denzler: Low Strings (Confront, 2023)
Low Strings is the composition of Swiss-French composer-sax participant Bertrand Denzler for a double bass quartet that includes French Sébastien Beliah, Australian Jon Heilbron and Mike Majkowski and Canadian Derek Shirley, recorded at Ausland in Berlin in Marc 2022. Denzler already explored the sonic vary of the double bass in Basse Seule (confront, 2020), a collection of études and items composed for French double bass participant Félicie Bazelaire. Each compositions for the double basses are from 2016.
Low Strings gives two variations of this composition, quantity 4 and three, and each are, clearly, darkish and deep-toned drones specializing in a way of virtually statis, created by a affected person and methodical sustained bowing of the double bass strings that in its flip creates harmonic dynamics. The minimalist and refined variations of this composition, with their profound investigation of the darkish and infrequently dissonant timbral palettes, solely intensify the hypnotic affect of the double basses’ encompassing waves of sluggish resonating vibrations and suggests a way of being out of time and misplaced – willingly – inside the vibrations of the low strings.
Bára Gísladóttir – SILVA (Sono Luminus / ESP-Disk, 2023)
Bára Gísladóttir is an Icelandic, Copenhagen-based modern composer and double bass participant, who principally performs solo her personal music or together with her long-time collaborator and fellow Icelandic bassist Skúli Sverrisson. She describes SILVA as “a piece for processed double bass constructed on the thought of a downward rising forest, dwelling its personal secret lifetime of underground raves and meditative cohesiveness”.
Gísladóttir performs the double bass, processed to numerous levels (with MAX/Stay) and layered right into a mass of noise. She provides that she was intrigued by the considered “one thing that may in any other case naturally develop upwards, in attain for mild and surrounded by air, somewhat being drawn in the wrong way the place darkness and stable type function the supply of gleaming luminosity and breezy environment”. The 57-minute SILVA is a robust and suggestive composition that extends, processes and manipulates the timbral palette of the double bass to new and stunning terrains and transforms the instrument right into a vivid and tangible entity. It additionally displays Gísladóttir’s inclusive sonic imaginative and prescient, experimenting with parts of up to date music, steel, noise, drone, techno, and electronica.
Nils Vermeulen – variations (Aspen Edities, 2023)
variations is the debut solo album of Belgian double bass player-luthier Nils Vermeulen, recognized for his collaborations with Paul Lytton, Seppe Gebruers, William Parker, John Dikeman and Luis Vicente. The flexibility of his work contains free improvisation, jazz and modern music, and his personal teams Kabas and Jukwaa. The title of the album refers back to the saying of French thinker Henri Bergson: “Matter thus resolves itself into numberless vibrations”.
The album was recorded on the empty Ghent Opera in July 2022, the place each word, assault and vibration comes by, together with the creaking of the wood door. The strings Vermeulen makes use of on this recording are impressed by conventional intestine strings, and have decrease stress to let the instrument resonate freely. Vermeulen explores an array of prolonged methods in composed and improvised items, some even depart from or are inclined to nearly mathematical materials, countered by Vermeulen’s extremely intuitive taking part in. He dedicates an imaginative piece to Stefano Scodanibbio and explores multitudes of, clearly, resonating however stunning, dramatic or lyrical and emotional, deep-toned vibrations, all stressing his profound, steady bodily dialog along with his instrument and its new strings.
Bruno Råberg – Look Inside (Orbis, 2023)
Swedish, Boston-based since 1981 double bass player-composer-eductor (he’s a professor at Berklee Faculty of Music) Bruno Råberg releases his first solo album when he’s 68 years outdated. Look Inside is, clearly, an introspective journey that displays his wealth of experiences and research, from investigations of jazz requirements to explorations of Indian and African traditions, and free improvisation to through-composed chamber music. It took Råberg a while till he managed to cease overcompensating for the shortage of collaborators and distill the essence of the music. The music goals to make a composition sound like it’s an improvisation and improvisation like it’s a composition, however all stress a extremely melodic however reserved method and is carried out in a chic and agile eloquence on the double bass. The album is launched on Råberg’s Orbis label.
Råberg let his instrument sing just like the African kalimba on “Kansala” and hyperlinks it to a lovely interpretation of Miles Davis’ traditional “Nardis”. “Chennai Memory” displays on Råberg’s learning of South Indian classical music, along with his suggesting unique, sinuous violin-like strains, percussive rhythms, and vivid harmonies. Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s iconic “Prelude to a Kiss” and George Gershwin’s “My Man’s Gone Now” receives touching, lyrical readings. The free improvise “Gyrating Spheres” is the one piece the place Råberg dares to be ‘out’ with just a few prolonged percussive methods. Råberg closes this mild album with a meditative tone with “Ode to Spring” and “Stillness –Epilogue”.
Vinicius Cajado – LUNA (Urchin, 2023)
The double bass taking part in of Brazilian, Vienna-based Vinicius Cajado was already praised by Joëlle Léandre, with whom he not too long ago carried out in a double bass duet. LUNA is Cajado’s sophomore solo double bass album, impressed by a well-known quote by John Cage: “I’ve by no means listened to a sound with out liking it”. It incorporates a 26-minute piece for an unprepared double bass participant that meditates on Cage’s Zen Buddhism-tinged abstraction of sounds and nothingness and seeks to be “submerged in sound till you get up”. Cajado does so with a commanding, possessed-in-the-moment efficiency. He lets the sounds of the double bass information him in an natural but additionally unpredictable method, however assembles these sounds right into a poetic narrative, and with a coloration palette and vocabulary of his personal.
Manu Mayr – Sequenz I – Burning Fuel for Solo Acoustic Double Bass (why Keith Dropped The S, 2023)
Italian experimental composer Luciano Berio’s Sequenzas might be characterised as extraordinarily tough solo works, which propelled instrumental and efficiency prospects ahead, and in reality, codified new technical requirements within the space of up to date and experimental music. Fellow Italian double bass grasp Stefano Scodanibbio tailored Sequenza XIVb for double bass and highlighted its summary rhythmic patterns by creating quite a lot of prolonged methods. Viennese double bass participant Manu Mayr, recognized for his elements within the modern ensemble Studio Dan and experimental bands 5K HD, Kompost 3 and Gabbeh, takes this difficult and iconic modern composition of double bass literature even additional. He makes use of masterfully the double bass physique with intricate plugging and bowing and creates a multilayered and multi-faceted sounding interpretation, and suggests its sturdy sense of formal construction inside the nuanced improvised elements. To offer an up to date edge to this composition, he added the title Burning Fuel, referring to his gas-powered water heater that may be heard within the background, and as an indication of his dismay on the “loopy capitalist free power market” costs. Nonetheless, taking part in acoustic music offers him, and us – the listeners – some – and even some extra form of short-term aid.
Devin Ray Hoff – Music for Bass Cats (Self Launched, 2023)
The final album right here is performed on electrical bass however by New York-based double bass participant Devin Ray Hoff, recognized for his elements within the Nels Cline Singers and his collaborations with Marc Ribot, Steve Bernstein, Sharon Van Etten and Julia Holter. Hoff likes to remain at house as a lot as attainable along with his two favourite monsters – the fantastic cats, Liebchen and Dee Dee Ramone. This single Music for Bass Cats is devoted to those felines, who apparently like Hoff taking part in bass for them. “Liebchen” is a playful Fender fretless bass music, augmented with samples, whereas “Dee Dee” is a extra meditative and lyrical soundscape that expands the sonic vary of the electrical bass with results and samples.
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