Samir Bohringer Quartet: Meta Zero

The Ezz-thetics label's sleeve-design grid and its orange and black colourway is as recognisable a piece of branding as were Reid Miles' sleeves for Blue Note in the 1950s and 1960s (or indeed Impulse!'s orange and black LP spines a little later). It is also a similarly copper-bottomed guarantee of quality. Ezz-thetics does not, of course, have an audience the size of Blue Note's, but that is the way it is for a niche label, or, as in this case, a dual-niche label. Ezz-thetics' two niches are, one, newly recorded albums by left of centre artists and, two, the Revisited series, which reissues important albums from the mid-twentieth century with state-of-the-art sound restoration.

Meta Zero is a new recording and it is a blinder. Samir Böhringer's Zurich-based quartet debuted with the critically acclaimed Prometheus (QFTF) in 2020 and the line-up remains unchanged: Böhringer on drums (and all compositions), with tenor saxophonist Rafael Schilt, guitarist and electronicist Dave Gisler and bassist and electronicist Raphael Walser.

Without diminishing the roles of Schilt and Walser—for the Quartet wheels and turns with the same uncanny connectivity as a murmuration of starlings—the fulcrum of the band is Böhringer and Gisler. Gisler is a special treat. He carries traces of several plectrists* who have come before him (including John McLaughlin, Jimi Hendrix, Eivind Aarset and James Blood Ulmer), but he is entirely his own man, a team player and a compelling soloist. Gisler's own trio twice recorded with the late great American trumpeter Jaimie Branch, first on the live album Zurich Concert (Intakt, 2020), then on the studio set See You Out There (Intakt, 2022). Any guitarist twice blessed by Branch's endorsement is serious business and Gisler here fulfills the lofty expectations. (A review of Branch's landmark Fly Or Die Fly Or Die Fly Or Die ((World War)), released on International Anthem in 2023, can be read here.)

Meta Zero is a mixture of free improvisation and pre-composition, but such is the degree of interaction within the band that it is often hard to tell where the one finishes and the other starts. The spirit of the music is busy, urban and frequently frenetic, and the attitude of the musicians leans into the future. It is not all high-voltage: "Fraktal" is sotto voce and subtle, with Schilt tapping out tones on the pads of his saxophone without blowing through the mouthpiece, and Gisler channeling his inner koto player on "Serious Game." The album ends with another mindful moment, "A Sunset Over A Windy Field," which is joined at the hip with the title track from Miles Davis' In A Silent Way (Columbia, 1969).

The YouTube clip below paints part of the picture even though the recording was made around the time of Prometheus, on which the tune is included. At the time of writing, nothing from Meta Zero itself has surfaced on the platform.

* A recently chanced upon word. More wonderful even than "songstress" or "tunesmith."

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