New Music From Resavoir, Jérémie Mathes
Resavoir
Escalator
(International Anthem)
Chicago trumpeter and composer Will Miller has stayed busy as a session musician, arranger and touring artist in the band Whitney, but he also has his own project Resavoir, which he has been gradually developing over the last few years mostly under wraps as his “bedroom jazz” ensemble.
Resavoir’s debut for the International Anthem label, Escalator, is a spirited, promising debut—a digital double-single with two varied versions of the title track.
“Escalator” grows quickly from a sample of a piano vamp, which seems to then be duplicated and enhanced electronically, giving it a timbre similar to that of an electric piano. Branches sprout from the keyboard riff, as driving drum patterns compete with it to provide guidelines to push things forward.
The first version of “Escalator” is a demo version recorded in 2014 that is a bit of a tease, where its relatively short running time (under three minutes) and irresistible groove leave the listener wanting more. Wills McKenna on tenor saxophone dives right in with confident fluttering, and Miller’s trumpet parts are treated using a harmonizer run through a MIDI keyboard, providing sharp and shiny tones.
Vocalist and keyboardist Akenya Seymour adds some wordless vocals to the mix, atop the rhythm section of bassist Lane Beckstrom and drummer Peter Manheim, and the track’s momentum, jazz-rock fusion and electronic elements bring to mind the fellow Chicago band Tortoise.
The song’s potential is more fully explored on the 10-minute live version, recorded at Co-Prosperity Sphere in Chicago last summer. Drummer Jeremy Cunningham’s kinetic energy relentlessly fuels the track, with swift hi-hat taps and a steady yet forcefully rolling power that gets more furious and charged as things progress.
The familiar keyboard vamp sample experiences variations throughout the rendition, with gentle warping and pitch-shifting at occasions, and eventually towards the end of the number, the jazz changes evolve into a variation of “My Favorite Things.”
Seymour takes the spotlight for a longer scat-singing solo, playfully weaving patterns with staccato consonants and smooth vowels and soaring into the stratosphere as the band feeds off the collective energy on this striking debut.
Jérémie Mathes
In[Core]Wat[t]
(Unfathomless)
For the last decade, the Belgian label Unfathomless has released albums that are aural reflections of particular geographical locations around the world, and while field recordings serve as the building blocks for these sound collages, they go beyond being merely ambient, passive documentation.
Album number 53 in the series is In[Core]Wat[t] by Jérémie Mathes, who was originally based in France but has lived in Cambodia for the last three years, and it is based upon recordings made in and around Buddhist temples and pagodas in that country as an observer collecting “raw elements and hidden sonic matter,” as Mathes described it.
Mathes’ recordings—woven into a single 40-minute track—linger in one location at a time, with his artistic choices involving what is amplified and magnified among layered sounds with an altered timeline.
They’re bristling with activity, with a dense melding of natural sounds, such as bird chirps and insect noises, and both intentional and unintentional human activity, from the ringing sounds of singing bowls to soft murmurs and movements.
Materials such as stones and metal reveal their sonic qualities, but part of the time, it’s a storm of unknown pieces making a rumbling din of soft sounds—perhaps like the realization of the chaos of survival among insects and organisms in the ground that’s not apparent without a close look.
At times, there’s an eerie, almost mystical haze to the album, while things like a car horn or abrupt noises—a poke of a sonic cotton swab in the ear—bring the listener back to reality. But is it reality?
While the field recordings are real, the presentation is not an accurate representation of what one exactly hears in a temple, but that’s part of the point. The concept of “ecstatic truth” as described by filmmaker Werner Herzog comes to mind, where the artist has a poetic vision of truth—Herzog’s documentaries sometimes include fictional elements, and his fictional films sometimes include moments of piercing reality.
In[Core]Wat[t] is a fascinating and engrossing listen that can be simultaneously soothing and uneasy, as the poetic sonic representation of a location strives to unlock a complex, ecstatic truth beyond the apparent truth.