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Stapleton/Bourne & Paula Gardiner Trio on Edition

By Massimo Ricci ⋅ August 25, 2008 ⋅

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Edition Records is a newly born label from Cardiff, founded by pianist and composer Dave Stapleton - a Keith Tippett alumnus - and photographer Tim Dickeson (not unexpectedly, the artwork illustrating the inserts is glorious to say the least). One of the intents is to let people “remember the pleasure of buying an LP, taking it out of the sleeve, staring at the cover and reading every word of the notes”. Of course this practice should ideally walk hand in hand with premium music. The first results, two of which were kindly submitted to this reviewer, appear relatively encouraging.

Dave Stapleton & Matthew Bourne – Dismantling The Waterfall

Constructed around a seventeen-line poem by Julie Tippetts, Dismantling The Waterfall is a mostly crepuscular, often reclusive, not necessarily soothing piano duo by two refined improvisers who aren’t afraid to sound “important” down to the most restrained sections, a quality made manifest by a splendidly detailed recording capturing every instrumental shade. Stapleton and Bourne’s technical sheen accepts no argument, and their designs are not solely matching - they also collide. An artistically healthy kind of quarrel where chord clusters and divergent coincidences are frequently intertwined, then amassed in overhanging auras of uncomfortable resonance despite the abundant presence of atmospheres that, by calling to mind the dusty smell in a museum corridor, strictly bind the program to the long-ago. No hint of modernism or contemporary jazz in fact, the record’s temperament recalling an early vinyl reproducing a sophisticated variety of advanced, if rigorous classical piano music. Think of a sterner version of Chick Corea’s Children’s Songs where many of the “right” notes start following bizarre patterns, fighting for survival in an otherwise conformist harmonic spectrum. The real marvel is that, belligerent fumes and dissimilar hues notwithstanding, the whole still sounds sensitively withdrawn, undertones in a candlelit room.

Paula Gardiner Trio – Hot Lament

Multi-instrumentalist (double bass, acoustic guitar and flute) and composer Paula Gardiner is one of the most prominent figures in the landscape of Welsh jazz, the honorary president of the Women in Jazz institute in Swansea. In Hot Lament, third release as a leader, she’s flanked by Lee Goodall (saxes, flutes, percussion) and Mark O’Connor (drums and percussion). The declared influences comprise major names (Leo Brouwer, Egberto Gismonti, Eberhard Weber to quote some), their inspirational clout rather noticeable along the route. What also transpires is Gardiner’s unambiguous compositional picture, nourished by a superb technique which distinguishes every single piece with meticulous intelligibility - at times excessively so, one would say. Her bass timbre is stylishly rounded, not an out-of-place splinter, everything soberly well-behaved. As she switches to the six strings, futile virtuosity and excessive freedom are undetectable either, the structure of the figurations ever discernible, seemingly preconceived even in the improvised portions. Arrangements featuring interweaving flutes give an inkling of back-to-the-seventies attitude, a recurrent impression in the productions involving Dave Stapleton. All things considered, the record stands a floor below the Stapleton/Bourne duo, principally in terms of poignancy; an additional dose of fervour - an ingredient that Hot Lament definitely lacks - wouldn’t harm. Flawlessly executed, reasonably earnest, but more the perfect screensaver image of a beach at sunset than the actual experience of staring at the same horizon in contemplation, feet caressed by the backwash, inspiring saltiness.

~ Massimo Ricci