Record Reviews

POLE ~ RADOM KILOGRAM 029 (Barcode: 5907577284282) ~ POLAND ~ Jazz Recorded: 2012 Released: 2014 This is the debut album by Polish Jazz trio PoleFind albums by this artist, which consists of clarinetists / flautist Michal GorczynskiFind albums by this artist (a member of Mikolaj TrzaskaFind albums by this artist´s quartet IrchaFind albums by this artist), guitarist / bassist / synthesizer player Piotr ZabrodzkiFind albums by this artist and drummer Jan Emil MlynarskiFind albums by this artist. The album presents five original pieces, all credited collectively to the three trio members. The music is mostly spontaneously improvised, with the clarinet stating some minor melodic motifs but most of the time the group improvisation is the name of the game. The clarinet´s sound and the melodic fragments it plays are clearly rooted in Jewish music, albeit more associatively so than deliberately. This of course anchors Pole as one of the ensembles taking part in the contemporary Jewish music renaissance, which is taking place in Poland today. Zabrodzki and Mlynarski are definitely less dominant, playing the role of a rhythm section, which of course in this setting has a completely different meaning than in conventional Jazz. The guitar provides mostly ambient background with no melodic contents, the base pulsations are in charge of the rhythmic progression, and the percussion sits on a separate musical plane, which develops in parallel to what the clarinet and guitar are doing, coming and going seemingly unattached. Overall the trio creates an interesting effect of togetherness, which strangely manages to manifest itself from the disjoined ingredients. It takes a while to get into this music, but in time it emerges as quite interesting amalgam of free improvisation, World Music motifs and rhythms and ambient background, which in most cases works out rather well. The album is rather short, running for just over half an hour, which either means the musicians consider this a complete statement or they ran out of steam. In any case it should be interesting to hear what they have to say next time around.

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