Multi-dimensional future-jazz outfit JK GROUP to release a new EP, 'Rising' on La Sape Records. The brainchild of award-winning saxophonist, Joshua Kelly (30/70 collective, PBS Young Elder of Jazz 2019), the band returns to the label with a follow up EP to the mind-bending 2021 release, 'What’s Real?' Where 'What’s Real?' served as a platform for wild experimentation, 'Rising' returns to a more considered and familiar format for the band, offering up 4 cohesive tracks that are deep in conception and expression, at once original and fresh. Conceived after recording an as yet unreleased body of work written whilst undergoing chemotherapy, 'Rising' celebrates bandleader Josh’s survival and eventual recovery from the intense treatment he received for lymphoma in 2020. The band stays true to their honed format of jazz traditions melding with influences from electronica and beyond. Like the first release, 'The Young Ones', 'Rising' sits comfortably in the crossover of raw, live jazz and electronic dance music, whilst also throwing an unexpected curveball to the listener expanding the palate of the bands sound to a pigment never before heard in their music.
Designers are Joachim Florent on double bass, Will Guthrie on drums, Aki Rissanen on piano. This is their debut album together, released by We Jazz Records on 2 Dec. Their music, composed by Joachim Florent, is inspired by geometry and architecture. The music flows as minimalist, postmodern piano trio jazz of the highest calibre, as evidenced by the lead single ‘Moulindjek'. Florent (from Belgium) and Guthrie (from Australia) are based in Nantes, France, and Rissanen (from Finland) also has strong ties to the city. Joachim Florent says: "As a kid I started playing music with the piano and I keep playing it every day, even if pretty poorly, and use it to compose and discover new music. In 2019 I started to write some piano studies that appeared to be pretty geometrical in a way, so I had this idea I could bring some music for the trio that would be inspired by geometry and architecture. In the meantime, I knew that we would improvise as much as possible as Aki and Will are among the most brilliant improvisers I've ever met! So the challenge for me was to write as little as possible but to make the material strong enough to suggest a particular geometric feeling for each tune. I discovered Filip Dujardin's work some ten years ago and I was struck by the power of these impossible architectures looking so familiar and totally surrealist in the meantime. I guess that's how I would love Designers to sound: both familiar and surrealist."
This is a classic jazz quartet of instruments: saxophone, piano, double bass and percussion. My second album, in collaboration with saxophonist Dmitry Semenov, we recorded in the studio under the dome of St. Catherine’s Church on Vasilyevsky Island. The jazz quartet format implies a large space for soloists and opportunities for interaction, and here the musical finds of pianist Ilya Shcheklein and drummer Artyom Teklyuk were clearly manifested. The experience of joint concert playing on St. Petersburg jazz scenes is embodied in this album. Several of my compositions written for the quartet were complemented by interpretations of works by composers from the first half of the 20th century. One of the ideas is the embodiment of musical images by means of acoustic instruments. In search of colors, we followed the traditions of the modern mainstream, but not limited to the stylistics of, for example, hard bop or modal jazz.
“Photo of A Changing World” is a symbol of the fact that it is impossible to see the movement of time in a static image, unless you turns on the imagination. With the help of imagination, a person connects one old photograph with another and feels the dynamics of time. I tried to convey the feeling of this dynamics in music. This album is like recorded in the last century on an audio cassette, which was lost and found only many years later. The genre of the album cannot be described in one word – Latin American jazz and hard rock, free jazz and free improvisation are mixed here. Each genre is a rung on a spiral staircase that we move from the past to the present.
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