A Swedish label, Thanatosis Records, and a Chicagoan label, Corbett vs. Dempsey, release the sophomore album of the Berlin-based quartet Das B – Lebanese trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj, German pianist Magda Mayas, her partner, Australian drummer Tony Buck (of The Necks), and fellow Australian double bass player Mike Majowski. The album, Love, is an inspired deconstruction and reconstruction of John Coltrane’s iconic A Love Supreme (Impulse!, 1965), an album that influenced the sonic languages of Kerbaj, Mayas, Buck, and Majowski. The album was recorded at Brief Sand Studios in Berlin in October and November 2022.
Das B. was formed in Berlin in 2015, after the four musicians had collaborated in various constellations before. They created a canopy-like sound world, unfolding naturally and flowing organically, and Das B’s debut album was titled Canopy (топот, 2019).
The four-movemnt, 33-minute of Love (the pieces are titled as «Love» 1-4) subverts the common notion of the tribute or songbook and does not attempt to follow Coltrane’s hymn-like melodies or his classic quartet’s harmonies or rhythms, nor the iconic roles of Coltarne, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones. Das B says about Love: «We are not attempting to recreate the album. Rather, we took the original album’s track timing and instrumental structure, as well as some other technical aspects, like balances and panning, the occurrence of overdubs, and timbral relationships within the original, to create our tribute. This was our process, and our idea was to link our music – free-improv – to its roots in jazz and free jazz».
John Corbett, of Corbett vs. Dempsey, thinks of Love as an adaptation, translation, or a structural cover version. Love, like A Love Supreme, is charged with similar urgent intensity, open sense of time, egalitarian dynamics, great focus on timbres and textures, and a powerful, hypnotic-meditative drive. But only rarely does it correspond with the spiritual-devotional vibe of A Love Supreme, articulated in a much freer form of free improvisation. You can think of Das B’s Love as an inevitable conclusion about the evolution from modal jazz to a higher level of chromaticism and atonality in free jazz, and now, to a more abstract, sound-oriented free improvisation. This thought-provoking version does not induce an epic, deep spiritual experience, but its eloquent and powerful sheets of sound may still bring the listener to a deeper, irreverent realization about music-making.
Corbett, who was fascinated by the way Coltrane produced the through-composed, last section in A Love Supreme, «Psalm», by playing a text, using the words as a prompt for the tones and following the cadences of an unspoken recitation, while the words are there, but not there, thinks that Love adapts a similar approach. «The Coltrane record is there, but not there. Which is as supreme a compliment as a band can pay», he concludes.
Eyal Hareuveni
Mazen Kerbaj (trumpet), Magda Mayas (piano), Mike Majkowski (double bass), Tony Buck (drums)
