Nye skiver og bøker


flere skiver og bøker...

Våre podkaster


flere podkaster ...

Skiver du bør ha


flere anbefalte skiver...

Våre beste klipp


flere filmer...

Ledere og debattinnlegg


flere debattinnlegg...

På skive

DAN WEISS

«Unclassified Affections»
PI RECORDINGS, PI108

American, Brooklyn-based drummer-composer Dan Weiss has a new quartet featuring trumpeter Peter Evans, vibes player Patricia Brennan (both in their first recording with Weiss), and long-time soul mate guitarist Miles Okazaki, which makes full use of its unique instrumental combination. The quartet’s debut album, Unclassified Affections, and its opening pieces are titled after a passage in the Virginia Woolf novel To the Lighthouse («He was not ‘in love’ of course; it was one of those unclassified affections of which there are so many»). Other pieces use phrases from works of authors Charles Dickens, Herman Melville, and George Orwell.

These literary references reflect Weiss’ newly-found love of reading classic novels and rethinking composition as a layered, subtle, and polyrhythmic-like kind of storytelling, where different melodic lines, contrapuntal interaction, harmony, and dissonance tell the intricate story. Therefore, Unclassified Affections can be experienced as an eight-chapter labyrinthine mystery, with every piece unveiling more of the mystery, which is characterized by a haunting tenderness that happens in some magical realm.

Weiss’ carefully structured compositions were penned specifically for Evans, Brennan, and Okazaki and exhaust their inventive, improvisational qualities, but as a master rhythmic architect, Weiss always keeps the flow of the spontaneous energy. The music opts for spacious textures, and Brennan’s gentle, resonant vibes playing with Okazaki’s introspective guitar lines stress that kind of wide, open space, while Weiss’ precise drumming directs the four-voiced Rashomon-like mystery and shifts the narrative. This mystery even reaches the shore of West Africa (check «Plusgood»), and like any good mystery, it demands repeated readings to collect all the nuanced clues hidden in its inventive story, and leaves parts of the mystery for the coming sequels.

Eyal Hareuveni

Peter Evans (trumpet), Patricia Brennan (vibraphone), Miles Okazaki (guitar), Dan Weiss (drums)