«344» is a set of eight untitled free improvisations recorded remotely by French double bass player and percussionist Bruno Duplant and Fender Rhodes player Frédéric Tentelier who are based in France with British reeds player Massimo Magee who was in England. These musicians are known as experimental composers and sound artists but this trio aims to create its own distinct and unified sound, characterized by chamber and patient dynamics that would evoke a 21st-century improvised re-imagining of a classic jazz sound.

The obvious point of reference is, obviously, the seminal chamber jazz sound of the Jimmy Giuffre 3 (with pianist Paul Bley and double bass player Steve Swallow), naturally, without the brilliant compositions of Carla Blay. But this trio brings an enhanced awareness with its own kind of urgency, due to the separate places of the recordings, an obvious result of the Covid-19 restrictions. The trio establishes an immediate intimacy in these loose, expressive and quite melodic improvisations, but Duplant often acts here as an agent provocateur with his free-form bass playing and noisy percussive sounds. He fragments the organic flow of the instant melodies of Tentelier and Magee, intensifies the tension and always adds subversive and unsettling elements to their peaceful and ethereal dynamics. Typical to 21st 21st-century sounds and artistic aesthetics at all, who are often disturbed by excessive information and stressful noises.

Eyal Hareuveni

Bruno Duplant (b, perc), Frédéric Tentelier (Fender Rhodes), Massimo Magee (sopranino s, as, ts, cl)