Polar Waters (Ubuntu)
Joshua Jaswon Octet
Released June 2, 2023
Jazzwise Top 50 Albums of the Year 2023
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nU-O32qpzQtq7pQ0PlgK6n7upg9aoDbE8
Spotify:
About:
The Joshua Jaswon Octet is a Berlin-based contemporary jazz ensemble, featuring a broad cross-section of young musicians from Europe’s leading jazz scenes. Lead by the London-born saxophonist and composer, the ensemble released its debut album Silent Sea in October 2020, which was selected by BBC Music as one of the best jazz recordings of 2020/21 and received 4 and 5 star reviews across the UK and international media.
Following this release and in beginning to write new music for the octet, Jaswon wanted the compositional method to somehow relate more strongly to creative processes and approaches that had been informed and influenced by science and the natural world. These early ideas lead to encountering the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH) and the three Science-Poetry (SciPo) anthologies. SciPo explores the creative common ground between science and poetry and Jaswon was hugely interested in collaborating with some of these writers to create a new body of work that traversed the borders between poetry, science and music.
Track Listing:
1. Swimming in Winter 06:42
2. Deception Island 06:17
3. Landfill 08:28
4. Lost in a Dream 06:06
5. Seasick Part I: Gannets 09:02
6. Seasick Part II: Swirl and Gather 03:42
7. Seasick Part III: Breaking Down 00:55
8. Seasick Part IV: Immortal Particles 02:48
9. Seasick Part V: Bright Polar Waters 03:56
10. Karner Blue 08:04
11. Swimming in Winter Reprise 03:33
12. Enigma 06:13
Personnel:
Anna Serierse: vocals
Joshua Jaswon: alto and soprano saxophone
Marc Doffey: tenor and soprano saxophone
Jan Kaiser: trumpet and flugelhorn
Andrej Ugoljew: trombone
Johannes Mann: electric guitar
Sidney Werner: double bass
Aarón Castrillo: drums
Recorded by Michael Ungerer at Blackbird Music Studio 2022
Assistant recording engineer Thomas Schöttl
Mixed by Michael Ungerer Tontechnik
Mastered by Michael MacDonald AlgoRhythms Mastering
Illustrations by Cécile Bidault
Design by Rumney Design
Produced by Aarón Castrillo and Joshua Jaswon
Executive Producer: Martin Hummel
Review:
It’s refreshing to hear this band, led by British-born, Berlin-based Jaswon, that has both created a very distinct and individual tonal palette, and can sustain it across an album. Partly it’s the lighter touch of a group that has no keyboard, using a guitar in the ensemble chordal role. But it’s also the clever and complete integration of young Dutch singer Anna Serierse into the ensemble. Whether she’s clearly illuminating the lyric poetry of Elsa Hammond, Catherine Faulds, Claire Cox and Carrie Etter, or contributing a wordless melodic line to the ensemble, the arrangements cleverly mirror the timbre of her voice. That’s not to say the tracks lack variety, and ‘Seasick Part 1’, for example, swells from a solo bass excursion to the full band plus voice before ushering in the tenor of Marc Doffey. Yet this seems completely consistent with the entirely contrasting texture of Jaswon’s solo soprano weaving in and out of Serierse’s wordless vocal, accompanied by handclaps, in the opening ‘Swimming in Winter’. Jaswon is particularly effective when he writes using motific structures that repeat, exemplified here by ‘Landfill’, where the entire ensemble chips in on a short phrase that repeats and transposes, and which is then never far away in the melodic development of long solos from Ugoljew and Jaswon. The shape of the entire album has clearly been thought about, and there’s a melancholy reprise of ‘Swimming in Winter’ towards the end, leading to the closing ‘Enigma’ with both words and music by Jaswon. It bears repeated listening and there’s always something more to discover.
Alyn Shipton (Jazzwise)
