Traction is described as a free improvisation generating action and the force to propel body and sound on a tangential route to collective musical structure and discovery. It brings together two ad-hoc collaborations – first, Australian, Stockholm-based vocal artist Casey Moir and German cellist Elisabeth Coudoux as a duo and later a quartet of Moir and  Coudoux with Swedish alto sax player Marcus Wärnheim and French trumpeter Jérôme Fouquet. The album was recorded at Feedback Studio in Aarhus during SHARE Festival in July 2021 and is released by Moir’s label, HearHere Records.

The first four pieces present Moir, who also employs effect pedals, with Coudoux, both continued to perform as a duo after this ad-hoc meeting. Both are experienced and resourceful improvisers who are not shy of taking risks or visiting eccentric and extreme sonic territories. Their dynamic is immediate and organic, intimate but playful and stimulating, moving freely between the dramatic and almost operatic to the sensual, and highlighting their rich sonic imagination.

The last four pieces are played by the ad-hoc quartet. They begin and conclude with more urgent and powerful dynamics that exhaust the resourcefulness of Moir, Coudoux, Wärnheim and Fouquet and suggest a tense and intense atmosphere. But later the dynamic morph and stress the poetic, individual vocabularies of these gifted improvisers in «Reaction» and «Impaction», and in the last piece «Calefaction», even chant together a gibberish incantation.

Eyal Hareuveni

Casey Moir (v, effect pedals), Elisabeth Coudoux (c), Marcus Wärnheim (as), Jérôme Fouquet (tp)