What do you expect
from an instrumental line up like that? Guitar, organ drums – a classic organ
trio. Surely, a bit of the old funked-up electric boogaloo is in store? Not
this time kids. This is less predictable, more stripped back, though not
laid-back. It’s intense, angular and unlike recent works by Frisell and Downes.
For a start, the organ isn’t electric; the album was recorded using the Church
organ at St. Luke in The Fields in Greenwich Village, New York.
It opens with an ominous low drone and some delicate tracery of notes on the organ, little more than aural scratches; the drone fades and Frisell steps into the gap whilst Cyrille skirts around the proceedings, adding some propulsive skitterings. Second track, Untitled 23, is all angles from Frisell, ably supported by rolls and crashes and more skittering from the drummer. Frisell’s voice on the guitar rises and stops with a melancholy fall, he questions and probes and Cyrille fills in the colours in between.
Kasel Valles is a wide, dark screen of deep, deep
drones from the organ with brief snatches of a human pulse; Frisell scratches
and claws his notes to the front of the wall of sound. El, with the added cello is more human music. Filigrees of notes
from Frisell slide over Cyrille’s marshalling of the group. The fact that he is
low in the mix seems to set a context within which the others work. Railton’s
cello is restrained but adds depth in a piece that affords more space to the
players than some of the previous tunes.
Southern Body is a piece to fall into; intense and
spare; Cyrille is more muted on this one, rolling his mallets around his drums
whilst Frisell again plays very delicate isolated notes. It’s almost as if it’s
an exercise in seeing who can be the most controlled and the most subdued.
Cyrille is further up in the mix for Sjung
Herte Sjung (Sing Heart Sing), covering the whole drum kit, but again,
eschewing the cymbals. Downes provides a higher toned wash and occasional
flourishes on the organ which leaves Frisell to provide some melodic,
single-note runs under Cyrille for much of the track, such is the drummer’s
prominence.
Two Twins is the first piece on the album that
approximates to an identifiable organ trio groove. Beneath Cyrille’s frantic
drumming and Frisell’s angular voicing a weak, but recognisable, pulse is
present. Cypher is, IMHO, the best on
the album, mainly for the clarity and elegance of Frisell’s playing. Cyrille,
too, is more graceful, his cymbals shiver in between his drum rolls, which are more
like conversational phrases than his continuous soloing on other tracks. Proximity is a Cyrille ballad on which
he plays brushes in support of Frisell’s ringing, but broken, melancholic
lines. It’s a bit further ‘in’ than the rest of the album. Downes adds hope
with an optimist line that has more than a hint of Caledonia about it.
Final track, Este a Szekelyeknel (Evening in
Transylvania), despite being of Hungarian origin has more of a sound and
feel of something from further East, such as an Indonesian Gamelan and a
Japanese Samisen about its sparseness and delicacy.
And there you have it. A short term project, in 2022, for these three before they moved onto other things (Downes, notably, has recorded with Seb Rochford and Norma Winstone, since Breaking The Shell was created). It will at least be a project that pushed Downes and Frisell up against new barriers and it has been a joy to listen to Cyrille, a drummer to whom I haven’t listened much before. Good cover art as well, (Vernal Equinox by Sam Winston). Dave Sayer
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