Swiss pianist Stefan Aeby and his trio’s third outing, their first on the German label Intakt, is a largely low-key affair that, to me, reflects the current holding-its-breath mood of much of the Western world.
The Trio’s Utopia was one of my favorite recordings of a couple of years ago, and stamped Aeby’s style firmly in my consciousness. “Graceful sonic art” is the way Florian Keller describes that style in this album’s liner notes, and it’s an apt choice of words. The music is atmospheric and yet focused, often weighty in theme but light in execution.
This trio is truly an integrated unit, with bassist André Pousaz and drummer Michi Stulz contributing every bit as much to the performance as Aeby. To be sure, it’s Aeby’s name in the composition credits with the exception of one track, Stulz’s album-ending “The Wheel,” but the performances are as unitary as the deeds of the Trinity.
Pousaz in particular takes a role that is every bit as up-front as the pianist leader’s. The title work “To The Light” for example, begins with a lengthy introductory section in which Pousaz’s arco bass leads the way, as Aeby and Stulz create layers of rhythmic, pulsing noise on prepared piano and clattering cymbals. He takes the lead again in the intro to “Knabautsch,” plucking a slinky, bluesy melody over the stuttering five-beat rhythm laid down by Aeby and Stulz. And he plays an impressively sustained arco drone behind Aeby’s somber chording on the portentous opening track “Stalden.”
The mood overall is pensive, occasionally somber, as reflected by tempos that are frequently slow and sometimes even slow down within a piece. “Hmmm” again features Pousaz on arco bass playing the questing melody as Aeby explores dark chordal structures and Pousaz flits across the cymbals and skins. Piano and bass twine a tentative line around each other on the vaguely Eastern “Shi,” and play the bass line in unison on the lightly swinging “Iuk” as Stulz’s brushes lay out Morse code on the snare, before the whole tune takes a long, slow fall down an ever-darker melodic hole from which you’re never sure they’ll return.
They do return, eventually, bringing us to the message emphasized by Stulz’s “The Wheel” on the last track that everything comes back around to the light eventually. The three play a long passage in rhythmic unison on this one, after which the drummer gets to strut his stuff – always as subtly as the rest of the playing on this quietly gripping album.
I continue to find the music of Stefan Aeby Trio and its exploration of the intersection of jazz and modernism immensely appealing. It’s cerebral yet never cold, subtle but intricate, masterful but not showy. To the Light is a grower.
(Intakt, 2016)
