Christopher White contributed this review.
Amigo Musik is proving to be an excellent source for intriguing music from Northern Europe, principally Sweden. Let me refer you to two recent GMR reviews: Jeanette Lindström’s Walk and the self-titled disk by the jazz duo Bobo Stenson/Lennart Åberg. I’ve noticed that a number of the Amigo Musik releases, including the eponymous Peaux disk, credit financial support from The Swedish National Council for Culture. For those of us in the United States, such governmental support for the arts, especially funding that enables adventurous musicians to record, is a wonderment we can only dream about.
Oddjob is a jazz quintet consisting of Daniel Karlsson on piano and Wurlitzer organ, Per Johansson on saxes, Goran Kajfe on trumpet, Janne Robertson on drums and Peter Forss on bass. Genre classification has always been something I find problematic; not so much the broad general labels like “jazz” or “rock” which can serve useful marketing or filing purposes, but the endless hyphenations and sub-genres that various theorists, critics, and purists love to argue over. Oddjob have their own sound and on Koyo perform all original material that is certainly jazz of some kind. For want of any better reference point think of the melodic, atmospheric side of the Miles Davis fusion outings from the mid-Seventies or various of the artists who might have played with or were influenced by Davis’ outings of that era. Dave Holland, Wayne Shorter and Jack DeJohnette all come to mind.
Koyo is the sort of disk that makes me want to fly to Stockholm, find out where Oddjob is playing, and book a table near the stage for every night they’re booked. Eight tunes clocking in at just over 45 minutes makes this a disk that I tend to put on endless repeat. The tunes segue almost seamlessly from one to the next. Each of the players get their moments in the spotlight, but the great strength of Koyo is the way Oddjob meshes so effortlessly as an ensemble. Every time it hits the seventh track, “Return of the Party Animal,” I find myself foot-tappin’ and head-bobbin’ and wishing I had another few hours worth of material to enjoy.
Peaux is a different kind of jazz. Or maybe they’re a “new music” chamber ensemble. Peaux is an all percussion quartet whose members are John Eriksson, Pelle Jacobsson, Karl Thorsson and Christoffer Thorsell. Their extremely minimal packaging offers little information beyond the absolute basics. Exact instrumentation is not provided. Kalimba, marimba, vibraphone, and steel drums can be recognized sometimes in melodic roles, although they manage to make you hear the tonality, not just the beat, of the drums and cymbals as well.
Certain pieces, like the opener “3-1”, are atmospheric and draw on minimalism like certain of the compositions of Steve Reich. This is followed by “Kaleidoscope”, beginning as a much more frenetic and edgy piece that then moves between poles in both dynamic and tempo with a lot of tension throughout. The third track, “Head full of Stars” is back in Reichian territory, then “Listen Darling (they’re playing our song)” is playful and music box-like.
Every time I’ve had this CD on, someone — usually my partner and fellow GMR writer Barbara Truex — asks what I’m listening to and expresses admiration. And I concur. Peaux defies easy categorization, but seems to fit nicely into most of the accidental mixes that get created with our five-CD changer. At the moment they’re comfortably spiraling around with Oddjob’s Koyo, some female Finnish yoiking in the Sami tradition, and a pair of disks featuring the fiddles and nyklharpa that are “in the tradition” if not purely traditional. They’ve also cohabited nicely with the aforementioned Miles Davis and Steve Reich, as well as with the Ry Cooder & V.M. Bhatt disc A Meeting by the River.
Every time I hear Peaux my esteem increases. This is one of those great discoveries that make writing for Green Man such a blessing.
(Amigo Musik, 2003 and 2002)
