Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Jane Ira Bloom: Mental Weather

130

Jane Ira Bloom: Mental Weather

By

View read count
Jane Ira Bloom: Mental Weather
Jane Ira Bloom is a pixie. An electronicized pixie, to be precise. This is not entirely a musical image, but also a description of her onstage demeanor. Mental Weather's chief quality is one of capering lightness, as the quartet leader's soprano saxophone negotiates the tricky lines set up by the composing half of her brain, navigating around hyperventilating themes that are tightly twinned with the similarly stippling piano and Fender Rhodes of Dawn Clement. The bass and drums of Mark Helias and Matt Wilson are cast in a surprisingly funky role, bringing these airy women down to earth.

This very quartet played a one-nighter at New York's Iridium in late January, 2008, but the turnout was tragically low, imparting a windswept sense of desolation to the normally well-filled club. This is 'cool' music to begin with, so a smattering of ten or fifteen audience members only exacerbated its stark chamber qualities, with few bodies around to soak up the hard edges. Despite these circumstances, Bloom gave a strong performance, with the pieces turning out to be coated with more grit than their sleeker album versions.

On the album, Bloom and Clement often produce a lingering after-ring, whether naturally or through the use of delay effects. Wilson makes effective use of light bell-chimes, gong-bending and soft cymbal strokes, while Helias adopts an extremely tactile feel to his riff-dominated contributions; the title piece features a wonderfully compulsive bass repeat. Bloom stresses that her electronics are 'live', directly affecting her improvisation as each translucent solo unravels. Her applied sounds are never as weeblingly tasteless as those adopted by, for example, Pat Metheny, the extensions and alterations nestling beside the horn's natural timbre, while still transforming its sound into the cry of an alien beast. Her very motion is part of the sound, as she hops from foot to foot, sweeping her horn from microphone to microphone. There's even an image of this blurring action on the album's cover. The sonic effect of this movement is even more pronounced in the live domain. Nevertheless, Bloom's steely precision still has an emotional root. As a bonus, the disc also includes an MP3 file that presents the music as a seamless experience, with a different running order, its aim being to reflect an unfolding concert experience.

Track Listing

A More Beautiful Question; Ready For Anything; Multiple Choice; Mental Weather; Luminous Bridges; Electrochemistry; Cello On The Inside; What To Wear; First Thoughts/This Nearly Was Mine.

Personnel

Jane Ira Bloom
saxophone, soprano

Jane Ira Bloom: soprano saxophone, live electronics; Dawn Clement: piano, Fender Rhodes; Mark Helias: bass; Matt Wilson: drums, percussion.

Album information

Title: Mental Weather | Year Released: 2008 | Record Label: Outline

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.