Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Bambi Pang Pang featuring Andrew Cyrille: Drop your plans

8

Bambi Pang Pang featuring Andrew Cyrille: Drop your plans

By

View read count
Bambi Pang Pang featuring Andrew Cyrille: Drop your plans
In many aspects of life, bringing someone in from outside can provide a new perspective on things. This is also true in music where a guest musician can transform or enrich the established language of a closed unit. In the case of Belgian group Bambi Pang Pang, the inclusion of free jazz drummer Andrew Cyrille opens a vista where the exploration of emotions becomes the key ingredient in experiments with form. Drop your plans is the name of the album and it encourages contemplation.

Free jazz is often associated with a certain form of catharsis where tension is built and released through a massive wall of sound. However, free jazz is as much about silence as it is about the excess of sound and no one incarnates this paradox more beautifully than Andrew Cyrille. He is perhaps the ballad-player par excellence, with a unique understanding of every emotional shade of his instrument. His rhythms can be percussive explosions of energy, but also silent whispers from cymbals. His language, at its most beautiful and soft-spoken, comes to the fore on "Bottle of Drums" where the rustling of sticks and the silent beat on the drums make calm music.

Together with pianist Seppe Gebruers, saxophonist Viktor Perdieus and bassist Laurens Smet, Cyrille creates what you might call free ballads. Gentle wonders of sound, as in the title track where Gebruers' hands barely touch the keys and Smit accentuates the beat slowly. It is a composition so delicate it feels like a piece of china on the edge of a table. Perdieus blows his horn with delicate timbre and a lyrical sense of phrasing and it is mostly on the rhythmically vibrant "Dr. Licks" and the intense "Ready Set" that he lets completely go and plays full of fire.

The members of the group show how much a free jazz approach can bring to the art of the ballad. The music is cliché-free, melodic and emotional and can be enjoyed with both head and heart.

Track Listing

Isme; Fuks; Frases; Sum; Threescore and Fourteen; Dr. Licks; Bottle of Drums; Border/Grens; Ready Set; Drop your plans; Isme.

Personnel

Seppe Gebruers: piano; Laurens Smet: bass; Viktor Perdieus: saxophones; Andrew Cyrille: drums.

Album information

Title: Drop your plans | Year Released: 2015 | Record Label: El Negocito Records

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

Near

More

Tramonto
John Taylor
Ki
Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii
Duality Pt: 02
Dom Franks' Strayhorn
The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.