Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Kit Downes and Tom Challenger: Vyamanikal

3

Kit Downes and Tom Challenger: Vyamanikal

By

View read count
Kit Downes and Tom Challenger: Vyamanikal
Five churches, five church organs and a saxophone or two: the instrumentation to be found on Vyamanikal, the British duo of Kit Downes and Tom Challenger's follow-up to Wedding Music (Loop Collective, 2013).

Downes (ENEMY, Tricko, Troyka) and Challenger (Brass Mask, Ma, Dice Factory) recorded Vyamanikal during a 2015 residency at Aldeburgh Music. The venue was established by composer Benjamin Britten in the 1960s in a disused Victorian maltings in the Suffolk village of Snape and is now one of the UK's premiere centers for music. The recordings don't come from the venue itself, however, but from churches around the area.

The churches—All Saints, Darsham; Holy Trinity, Blytheburgh; St Michael, Framlingham; St Edmond, Bromeswell; St John, Snape—are all to be found in Suffolk, one of England's most beautiful and ancient counties. They are crucial to the music not only because they provide the organs which Downes plays: they are instruments themselves. Their unique acoustics and the found sounds (if that's the right term) from their structures and churchyards are just as much a part of these improvisations as Challenger's saxophones. The bird song on "Maar-ikar" is in perfect sympathy with the music, even the sound of footsteps (if that's what it is) suits the mood and pace of the piece.

At times, the tracks on Wedding Music were doomy, dark and a little scary. Vyamanikal's music is gentler, calmer, less dramatic—although there is still occasional tension: for example in Downes' organ playing on "Sa," a stark contrast to Challenger's plaintive saxophone on the same track. But mostly this is meditative music, as Downes has said. The tempos are slow, the interplay between sax and organ is relaxed, some of Downes' organ chords seem to sustain forever. Music for the heart and soul.

Track Listing

Apicha; Bdhak; Sa; Vistri; Jyotir; Maar-ikar; Nya-aya.

Personnel

Kit Downes
keyboards

Kit Downes: organs; Tom Challenger: saxophones.

Album information

Title: Vyamanikal | Year Released: 2016 | Record Label: Slip Imprint

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT



Kit Downes Concerts


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.