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Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Barcella / Van Herzeele Duo - Monday Sessions Live at El Negocito (El Negocito, 2010) ***½

The cover contains no information, not even the names of the artists on the side, the sixteen page booklet has no words, only pictures. The label is totally obscure. Welcome to free jazz land. The band is Giovanni Barcella on drums and Jeroen Van Herzeele on sax.

The music is free as the wind. Raw, unrelenting, full of energy and intensity. It could go in any direction. And it does : from the wild opening track to the more sensitive gospel-like and Ayleresque second piece, which of course does not stay in sweet-and-nice-territory, but gradually develops into intense playing, with screaming sax and mayhem drumming.

The recipe is known of course, and you get what you can expect. Sure, it is not the most memorable free jazz sax-drums duo, but it sounds so real, so true, so direct, as if you were there, with two guys playing their heart out, laying bare their souls. And that is absolutely fantastic, even if the format is known.

I enjoyed every second of it, and so did the ten people in the audience.


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© stef

1 comments:

Richard Henry said...

They are depicting the type of music through the lack of detail in the album cover. No boundaries, just free jazz. I like the sound of it.