.: interlúdio: Polar Bear – Held in the Tips of Fingers :.

Quando ia escrevendo sobre um som de tempos complexos e classificação desafiadora, que talvez mostrasse um futuro (sonoro) para o jazz, eis que descubro esta resenha:

It is, perhaps, the sound of the future—one of them anyway—and boy, does it work. Basically uncategorisable, Polar Bear reflects the mega-eclectic, post-modern listening tastes of Rochford (who wrote all the tunes) and his colleagues, moving with equal enthusiasm through Björk and Beethoven, Pig Destroyer, Coltrane and his tenor legacy, Monk, Stockhausen and the ghost of Rip Rig & Panic. With some of Kurt Weill’s crudely syncopated, rough edged, fairground-meets-cabaret pit band arranging aesthetic thrown in for good measure.

It is jazz all right, 100% and no mistake, but with bongfuls of left-field electronica and mutant, rocked-up and pfunkified groove spicing the free-improv centred mix. There’s not a lot of concern with harmonic development—hey, the band is led by a drummer, and apart from Jonny Phillips’s guest guitar on “Beartown” there are no chord instruments—but for aberrant and off-centre rhythmic and melodic development you’ve hit the muthalode.

Most excitingly perhaps, Polar Bear has reclaimed the in-the-moment, radical, “out” attitude that jazz pretty much invented, back in the day, and then has progressively lost, at least in some strands, as it has become an increasingly repertory-bound, cautious, and conservative music. Held On The Tips Of Fingers by contrast explodes with passion and exuberance, a hunger for risk and adventure, and full-on and revelling-in-it spontaneity. allaboutjazz

Não, não é o standard-bop do café da manhã; é criativo, improvisativo, e muito interessante. Não é outro estilo onde somou-se jazz; é jazz – tanto que concorreu ao BBC Jazz Award em 2006 – , mas contemporâneo e exploratório. A faixa-título é um primor de beleza e levada cativante. Ousem.

Polar Bear – Held in the Tips of the Fingers (vbr v0)
Sebastian Rochford: drums
Mark Lockheart, Pete Wareham, Ingrid Laubrock: tenor saxophone
Tom Herbert: double bass
Leafcutter John: electronics
Jonny Phillips: guitar
Joe Bentley: trombone
Emma Smith: violin
Hannah Marshall: cello

download – 74MB
01 Was Dreaming You Called You Disappeared I Slept
02 Beartown
03 Fluffy (I Want You)
04 To Touch the Red Brick
05 Held on the Tips of Fingers
06 Argumentative
07 The King Of Aberdeen
08 Your Eyes the Sea
09 Life that Ends Too Soon

Boa audição!
Blue Dog