Over a career now spanning nearly
thirty years, Jamie Saft has established himself as one of the visionaries of
contemporary American music. As a composer, pianist and keyboard innovator, and
collaborator of music icons such as Bad Brains, Beastie Boys, the B-52s,
Donovan, John Adams and John Zorn, he has been fearless in his pursuit of
spiritual elevation through music that both seeks to embrace the whole American
canon, and also transcend it, by seamlessly assimilating genres, traditions,
idioms and timelines.
His collaboration with London based progressive label
RareNoise, now dating back to 2012, reflects this polymathic approach, as can
be gleaned from listening to the array of path-breaking, irreducible recordings
he released with them: among these, one of the most successful was a piano trio
collaboration with jazz giants Steve Swallow and Bobby Previte, The New
Standard.
On Loneliness Road, the follow-up album to that acclaimed
2014 release, the trio of Saft, Swallow and Previte are joined on three tracks
by singer Iggy Pop (who just turned 70).
Saft is quick to point out that Loneliness Road is not
simply a jazz piano trio with Iggy Pop added to three tunes. "It's a deeper
concept of original improvised music that transcends genre," he explained.
"I constructed this music on my initial notions of what music I'd like to
improvise on with these particular musicians. There was no sense of 'genre' in
the conception of that music."
All the elements for Loneliness Road came together in
serendipitous fashion. While the intention of including Iggy Pop in the album
had been discussed very early by Jamie Saft and RareNoise producer Giacomo
Bruzzo. Both understood it was by no means an easy objective to accomplish, and
that it was all down to the music.
Thus Jamie Saft, Steve Swallow and Bobby Previte proceeded
to record the album as a trio June 2016 at Saft's Potterville International
Sound Studio in the Hudson Valley of Upstate New York. Knowing that they would
be recording to tape and cutting lacquer, Previte even brought his 1965 Rogers
Holiday drums to the session, to match the burnished sound of Steve Swallow and
Jamie Saft's deep touch. In his own words: "We obsessed, as we always do,
over the sound of the record, but never over the music itself. How music occurs
always needs to remain a glorious mystery - an unknowable, unreachable,
indefinable and most importantly, unrepeatable, mystery."
Saft adds that "Rather than try to anticipate what Iggy
might add to our tracks and just give him a 'backing track', we instead chose
three fully-realized instrumental tracks from our session that we thought Iggy
might actually enjoy. Through colleague Bill Laswell, whose label M.O.D.
Technologies Giacomo is also involved in and who has produced records for Iggy in
the past, we reached out: fortunately Iggy expressed interest and wanted to
hear the music, which we sent him. Iggy's reaction was swift and decisive - he
quickly said he loved the music and was definitely going to do this project.
What an enormous honor this message was for me!"
Early January 2017, Iggy Pop recorded his three
contributions ('Don't Lose Yourself', 'Loneliness Road' and 'Everyday') in
Miami: "He sent us his very first take of each tune," says Saft.
"He told me he used no music stand or lyric sheet as he was so ready to
record these that the words just spilled out. Iggy said though he did many
takes of each track, the first takes just 'had the juice.' Of course this
perfectly aligned with the first take idea we'd used in producing the album
both musically and sonically. In Previte's own words: "And Iggy - he took
it so seriously. He really heard us."
While The New Standard was recorded as direct-to-2-track
analog by renowned engineer Joe Ferla, Saft enlisted his friend and Grammy
winning producer Christian Castagno to record and co-produce Loneliness Road.
Once again a fully analog path was chosen, and all tracks committed to tape
were first takes.
When asked about the
songwriting process underlying Loneliness Road, Saft says that "Many of
the pieces I wrote for this album show allegiance to the great American song
forms of writers such as Bob Dylan, The Band, Alice Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders,
Jimi Hendrix, Charles Ives, Bill Evans, & Miles Davis. Both Steve Swallow
and Bobby Previte are brilliant orchestrators - each gesture is in the service
of the larger whole. A simple two chord structure such as 'Ten Nights' turns
into a forward lurching swing epic in Bobby's hands. He channels Tony Williams
through massive cymbal techniques. This same brilliance shines through in
'Henbane' with Steve Swallow's deep attention to detail within the classic
swing feel. A rhythm section at this level allows me total freedom as the
primary harmonic voice. I'm always afforded vast open spaces with Steve &
Bobby. This is a rarified situation and I feel extremely fortunate for this
opportunity each time we play."
Loneliness Road is indeed the result of a truly
collaborative effort: "While I did compose all the music for this album,
Steve and Bobby and ultimately Iggy were all able to realize this music with me
at the very highest level. Iggy's lyrics and vocal approach are essential to
each of the three tunes he contributed to. It's as if they were always
there."
TRACKS
1. Ten Nights
2. Little Harbor
3. Bookmaking
4. Don't Lose Yourself (w. Iggy Pop)
5. Henbane
6. Pinkus
7. The Barrier
8. Nainsook
9. Loneliness Road (w. Iggy Pop)
10. Unclouded Moon
11. Gates
12. Everyday (w. Iggy Pop)
No comments:
Post a Comment