Hilarious Disasters: Unnatural Root

You can take the gal out of Ukraine, but you cannot take Ukraine out of the gal. Kateryna Ziabliuk may pursue her music in Poland these days,  but with Unnatural Root, the debut album of her group Hilarious Disasters, Ziabliuk draws deeply from her Ukrainian traditions. The Kyiv-born pianist, composer and journalist—she co-founded the jazz portal Meloport—also infuses these original compositions with influences from her time in Italy and Poland. Spanish and Italian literary figures, whose wildly different styles mirror the music's expansive contours, add another layer of inspiration.

Recorded live at Opus Jazz Club, Budapest, in March 2024, the album crackles with energy. Field recordings pepper the set: strains of old folk songs and ritual chants from Ukraine's ethnically diverse regions of Bukovina, Transcarpathia and Lviv's surroundings serving as launching pads and guiding stars for the quintet's explorations.

  On "Nichka Petrivochka," kaleidoscopic colors sweep between tight orchestration and free-jazz romp as an elderly songstress relays the song to Ziabliuk, who carries forward the lilting atmosphere on piano and vocals. The folkloric transition is less literal on "Try Zhury," where Lukasz Jankowski on sopilka—an end-blown flute—and tenor saxophonist Alex Clov convey the melancholy spirit of a heart-wrenching lament. Joyous are the swirling melodies and heady rhythms of "Coda—Kryvy Tanec,"  with double bassist Filip Botor and drummer Piotr Szalajko motoring feverishly. Taken together, these three tunes reveal folk music's deep, empathetic soul.

 There is, however, a lot more under Hilarious Disasters' hood. The three-part disassembled suite "Corto Cortese... " takes its inspiration from Hugo Pratt's comic book of the same name. Corto Maltese, a roguish sailor-adventurer, is the son of an English sailor from Cornwall and an Andalusian-Russian witch and prostitute. With no fate-line on his palm, he carves his own destiny, pursuing historical adventures of sometimes hallucinatory character. Appropriately, Ziabliuk's episodic "Corto Cortese... " compositions are as tumultuous as they are absorbing—birthed from skronking saxophone and free-jazz squall before passing to blues-based swing. In Ziabliuk's passionate soloing, there are echoes of Thelonious Monk's rhythmic dance and Sun Ra's splashy, blues-laced angles.

 "Nido (Lorca)" arrives like sunrise after a nocturnal storm. Bowed bass, softly lowing legato saxophone lines and wordless vocal combine to a meditative effect.  Ziabliuk's interpretation of Federico Garcia Lorca's poem is a curiously lulling, dirge-like liturgy. Normal order—if there is such a thing in Hilarious Disaster's vocabulary—is restored on "Le Fragole"—a 15-minute adventure full of urgent metronomic riffs, bustling rhythms and keening saxophones. Just when the roadmap seems clear, Ziabliuk slips in a musical sleight-of-hand with a chamber-esque flute-cum- xylophone passage—a surprising recalibration. It precedes a feisty quintet response, led by Ziabliuk's rhythmically churning pianism.

With equal doses of discipline and liberty, Hilarious Disasters delivers an exhilarating debut of constantly unfolding surprise.