OM - Willisau (2010)

Intakt Records: Intakt CD 170

http://www.intaktrec.ch/170-a.htm

* Urs Leimgruber: Soprano and Tenor Saxophone
* Christy Doran: Electric Guitar, Devices
* Bobby Burri: Double-Bass, Devices
* Fredy Studer: Drums, Percussion

Recorded live for Swiss Radio DRS by Martin Pearson
at Jazzfestival Willisau, Switzerland, August 27, 2008.

Urs Leimgruber

http://www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk/mleimgr.html

Reviews
~~~~~~~
By Nic Jones

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=36551

The Swiss improvised music scene is often unfairly overlooked. Whilst the
efforts of other musicians from western European countriesΓΓé¼ΓÇ¥principally perhaps
Germany and HollandΓΓé¼ΓÇ¥have long since staked a claim to international attention,
the same isn't true of Switzerland, at least until now. This isn't to suggest
that the music on OM's Willisau has any kind of nationalistic aspirations, but
there is something singularly compelling about it. Recorded live for Swiss Radio
DRS, at the festival that gives the disc its title, this is a program that
covers aspects of the free as well as dealing in mutant funk and a strain of
musical Dadaism.

For all the ground covered here it's not difficult to see how the program might
have been spontaneously conceived as a single entity. The discontinuities
between one part and the nextΓΓé¼ΓÇ¥exemplified most graphically by the break between
"Part I" and "Part II"ΓΓé¼ΓÇ¥somehow cohere into a unified whole, the substance of
which is set by the musical personalities of the players involved. Because of
this, the fractious nature of Urs Leimgruber's tenor sax on "Part IV" is not so
much accompanied as it is complemented by Christy Doran's guitar shredding,
within that feel of mutant funk. This is one of those touches that ensure a
sense of fun; something not readily apparent in a lot of the music with which
this program might cohabit, and an integral part of the proceedings.

The stealth and small sounds of "Part V" are in marked contrast with this, but
that point about the ground covered comes into its own. The established mood
carries over into "Part VI," but the music is marked not only by restraint, but
by an obviously shared sense of dynamics. Coherence isn't sacrificed on "Part
IX" either, where the devices that both Doran and bassist Bobby Burri are
credited with come into play. Indeed, the augmentation of the basic
reeds-guitar-bass-drums quartet that OM represents also amounts to a willful
subversion of anything that lineup might imply. As a result, time is not so much
suspended as dispensed with, acknowledging a denial of the potency of the
fleeting moment.

There can be resolution, however. On "Part XI" the passing moments drip with the
potency of group interplayΓΓé¼ΓÇ¥all refined, even while that funk reemerges, with the
music's flow, such as it is; a mere fancy, before the delights of abstraction
prove all too seductive in the closing "Part XII."

More:
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http://www.intaktrec.ch/rev170-a.htm