Singing Icons brings together – though remotely – two highly exceptional and innovative, and, obviously, in-demand drummers-percussionists – Spanish, Barcelona-based Vasco Trilla, known for his bands Phicus, Fish Wool, Nobject and his duo with Portuguese trumpeter Luís Vicente, and his hero, American poet-dancer-nature mystic Ra Kalam Bob Moses, known for his collaborations with such legends as Charles Mingus, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Keith Jarrett, Pat Metheny and Paul Bley, among many others.
The album was recorded in 2021 with Trilla in Spain and Moses in Boston. Trilla and Moses created each a solo album and then sent them to the other for overdubs. This back-and-forth process happened throughout 2021 until Singing Icons felt finished. It became a most generous double album of about 85 minutes and 16 «conversations without speech» of percussion sages, offered as a limited edition of 150 cassettes, double discs plus a download option.
Trilla and Moses sound like soul brothers, even though Moses is a generation older than Trilla, and there is no way to know that Singing Icons was not recorded in the same room, at the same time. The opening piece, «Horolgion», is titled after the Greek Book of Hours or what was referred to as the hour-teller which provided the fixed portions of the Divine Service or the daily cycle of services as used by the Eastern Orthodox. Its clock chimes abound and are surrounded by bowed double bass and skittering percussion and darting metallic sounds. This piece sets the spiritual, shamanic-ritualist atmosphere of this mysterious, stunning album.
Trilla and Moses address more themes of our relationship to time and sound as sound poets or shamanic dancers who are well-versed in the legacies of free jazz great drummers and other spiritual-ecstatic musical traditions. Singing Icons invites the listener to surrender fully to its beautiful, magical spells and songs that flow in and out of real or imagined time. It feels as if Trilla and Moses’ percussive incantations bring much better, healing pulses to our aching globe and our stressful times.
Eyal Hareuveni
Ra Kalam Bob Moses (dr, b, native fl, congas, dumbek, melodica, v, metallic instr.), Vasco Trilla (dr, timpani, flat bells, clock chimes, vibrators, magnetic tape, assorted instruments)
