Spin Marvel is the brainchild of British drummer
Martin France, here joined by an all-star crew of celebrated Norwegian
trumpeter and electronic music pioneer Nils Petter Molvaer, bassist Tim Harries
(formerly of Bill Bruford's Earthworks), Norwegian electronic sculptor Terje
Evensen and remix maestro Emre Ramazanoglu. Together they create spacious and
dramatic soundscapes of profound intensity on the startlingly original
Infolding, blending aspects of free jazz, ambient music and electronica in
provocative ways.
From the
serene to the unsettling, this latest Spin Marvel project morphs into a myriad
of moods and melodies over the course of six dynamic tracks.
"Canonical" opens with an airy ambient touch before exploding into
free jazz tumult paced by Harries' throbbing fuzz bass and France's powerful
traversing of the kit, with Molvaer's highly processed cathartic wail layered
over the top. "Tuesday's Blues" opens with spacious trumpet before
gradually evolving into an in-the-moment adventure anchored by Harries'
hellacious fuzz bass and France's interactive, Elvin Jones-inspired swing beat.
"Two Hill Town" has Molvaer creating half-time trumpet melodies that
float dreamily over France's simmering pulse before the proceedings heat up to
a turbulent boil. "Leap Second" makes dramatic use of silence and
echo, with Molvaer's haunting trumpet tones resounding over France's subtle
brushwork before the piece builds to an intense crescendo. The 16-minute
"Same Hand Swiss Double Pug" opens as a kind of ambient bolero before
France bursts into a Buddy Rich styled flurry on the snare drum midway thru,
triggering a change in mood that culminates in a freewheeling collective
improv. And the collection closes on a haunting and kinetic note with the
echo-laden "Minus Two," Emre's lone drumming showcase.
France,
a veteran drummer on the U.K. jazz scene who played in the cooperative group
First House and the big band Loose Tubes during the '80s and later worked with
Iain Bellamy and Django Bates in the '90s, has performed and recorded with some
of the world's great musicians including Kenny Wheeler, John Taylor, Lee
Konitz, Dave Holland, Arild Andersen, Ralph Towner and Marc Johnson. Currently
a Professor of Jazz (Drums/Percussion) at the Royal Academy of Music in London,
he applies his considerable skills and musical touch to the kit in the more
open-ended environment of his Spin Marvel projects. "The use of openness
and space is a very important part of what we do," he says. "And
creating something from this place allows the musician to feel free and
uninhibited and move it in a direction they want to express. I have known Nils
for many years and was always hoping that an opportunity would arise to somehow
get him involved with Spin Marvel". Nils commented, "To play with
such wonderful gifted and open minded musicians was a true pleasure".
Emre, a
ubiquitous London session drummer and in-demand
producer-programmer-engineer-remix artist, brings a visionary vibe to this
latest project. "Infolding was my first time working with Spin
Marvel," he says. "I was a huge fan of the earlier records and was
hugely excited to get involved. It's a very honest record despite the heavy
processing. It's all live takes with no edits or overdubs.
Infolding
began as a single day of live recording with France, Molvaer, Harries and
Evensen before Emre came onboard. "It was recorded live in a four hour
session for the BBC," explains France. "Sometime after the recording
I sat and listened to the takes and selected the performances to form a
programme to fit the BBC R3 running time. We were all very happy with the session
and how the music was sounding so I forwarded the master files to producer Emre
Ramazanoglu, who then worked with the music and produced it for us.
"Martin
asked if I would be interested in trying to take the sound on from where it had
got to at the end of this session," says Emre. "We didn't really plan
this next stage at all but it was understood that we both wanted to keep the
unedited live takes and bring out the intensity of the performance as much as
possible. I spent a few hours with Martin and Tim on the first mix to check
that they were into the approach I was taking and then I mixed the rest myself,
trying to establish a coherent atmosphere for the record whilst letting the
music and performances lead the way."
Emre
explains his modus operandi on Infolding: "I tend to mold my mixing style
to the project at hand and on this one I just was led to that kind of dramatic,
spacey sound by immersing myself in the mix and creating as much of a
performance there as I could. I mixed these tracks really quite intensely and
stuck with my first reaction and the decisions that I made from it. I
intensively used convolution processing to get different instruments modulating
each other and a lot of interactive compression and effect processing to shape
the individual voices into larger, dense blocks of sound in which the
boundaries between the instruments are blurred perhaps.
A
dynamic and inventive collaboration between potent musical forces, Infolding
breaks all the rules while leading the way for new possibilities in
music-making.
TRACKS:
1.
Canonical
2.
Tuesday's Blues
3. Two
Hill Town
4. Leap
Second
5. Same
Hand Swiss Double Pug
6. Minus
Two
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