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Verneri Pohjola
Lars Danielsson, John Parricelli and Verneri Pohjola: Trio
by Neil Duggan
Château Palmer is a wine estate in Margaux, in south-west France. Those that know about these things rate their wines as among the best anywhere in Bordeaux. If you are going to record a jazz album outside of the recording studio, then a light and airy wood-paneled salon at the château with French windows overlooking the serene estate seems to be an inspired choice. The recording came about as the second part of a project between the German label ACT ...
Continue ReadingSlowly Rolling Camera: Silver Shadow
by Geno Thackara
Apparently you can roll quite a long way in a decade, slowly or not. To jump from Slowly Rolling Camera's self-titled debut (Edition, 2014) to Silver Shadow feels like hearing two different bands entirely. Granted, they switched from vocal songs to all-instrumental pieces along the way, so just about any outfit would sound completely changed. Besides that obvious shift in tone, though, this trio's electro-jazz-hop fusion has also come a long way in itself--and yet to those who might have ...
Continue ReadingSlowly Rolling Camera: Flow
by Geno Thackara
At first glance, it looks like an album they were always destined to make. Natural flow has been one central characteristic of Slowly Rolling Camera since the start. From their beginnings in quasi-trip-hop/jazztronica fusion, through a shift into a picturesque instrumental outfit, they have always been effortlessly fluid and comfortable with a good slow burn. They have seemed to be following a sort of elemental theme as well, with Juniper (Edition, 2018) setting down some earthy roots and Where the ...
Continue ReadingEmma Salokoski with Ilmiliekki: Joulu Joulu Jul
by Anthony Shaw
If you are looking for a novel way of approaching the December 2022 festive season, musically speaking, and are not deterred by a mixture of Nordic languages, then this album may appeal. The songs are sung in Swedish and Finnish, and without any accompanying lyric sheet an English speaker might do well to search for lyrics online. Keen observers of the Nordic jazz scene will know the band behind the album from its prominence in the mid 2000s, following victory ...
Continue ReadingIlmiliekki Quartet: Ilmiliekki Quartet
by Pat Youngspiel
When opener “Three Queens" kicks off seemingly mid-motion, Verneri Pohjola, Tuomo Prättälä, Antti Lötjönen and Olavi Louhivuori—a foursome going by the name of Ilmiliekki Quartet—sound as though they've already been at it for a while. They're all warmed up, in complete sync and have found a common groove at which they're smoothly tugging and pulling in a united front. There is a stumbling notion to how the piano keys fall from one chord into another, constructing cadences and voicings as ...
Continue ReadingEspoo Big Band: Blood Red
by Jack Bowers
If the music on Blood Red, the eleventh album by Finland's world-class Espoo Big Band, sounds more Middle Eastern than Scandinavian, there's a reason for that. It was inspired, writes composer/arranger Mikko Hassinen, by 2006 Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk's book, My Name Is Red, set in sixteenth-century Istanbul. The music “doesn't describe or explain the story or the characters," Hassinen writes. “Rather, it is a reflection of the different feelings evoked by the novel," and its lyric influences are largely ...
Continue ReadingAntti Lotjonen Quintet East: ALQE
by Friedrich Kunzmann
Bassist Antti Lötjönen is anything but a small name in the Finnish jazz cosmos. Holding down the deep frequency spectrum in some of the country's most renowned instrumental outfits, such as the electronica-infused jazz trio 3TM or the acoustic Ilmiliekki Quartet, Lötjönen has established a cunning reputation as a sideman leading up to this, his debut release as a leader with the so-called Quintet East. Accordingly high are the expectations of a musician of his caliber—expectations which are more than ...
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