Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Andreas Willers / Urs Leimgruber: Pale White Shout

17

Andreas Willers / Urs Leimgruber: Pale White Shout

By

View read count
Track review of "Face to Face III"

Andreas Willers / Urs Leimgruber: Pale White Shout
Guitarist Andreas Willers (Germany) and saxophonist Urs Leimgruber (Switzerland) are among Europe's most prominent improvisers and free-thinkers. On this outing their experimental metrics are quite rangy and focused, offering the antithesis to a madcap free-form blowing session. The duo alternates between controlled thematic buildups and subdued encounters with polytonal dialogues along with certain parts that elicit notions of exotic birds communicating in a tropical rain forest. Add some bizarre tirades and coiled flurries —abetted by Willers' wily electric guitar effects and distortion techniques—the musicians' merge a divide and conquer modus operandi with humor and playful exchanges.

"Face to Face III" is the lengthiest track, clocking in at 10 ½ minutes. Here, the duo opens with a simple conversation, gravitated by Willers' grunge-like single note lines, spanning the upper and lower registers. Along with some death metal style drones and Leimgruber's vibrato-tinted lines, they ascend towards a doomsday-framed outlook, cycling through a mesmeric and climactic free jazz exposition. But they gradually temper the flows amid a horde of crisscrossing motifs that summon a variety of contrasting ideas and emotive aspects, amped by the saxophonist's meticulously crafted, and rather mercurial tenor sax statements. Nonetheless, the artists generate a whole lot of depth via multihued textural components and vastly interesting concepts that often lead to explosive cadenzas and a myriad of fascinating subplots.

Track Listing

Personnel

Andreas Willers: electric guitar; Urs Leimgruber: soprano & tenor saxophones.

Album information

Title: Pale White Shout | Year Released: 2016 | Record Label: Jazzwerkstatt

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.