Life Of (ECM)
Steve Tibbetts
Released May 18, 2018
DownBeat Five-Star Review
YouTube: https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mGEACw175qLoYyE6ZbL6pg1i3rGcYDKeE
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/6dYkIcKYqvb8lNB3FD1dAC?si=Q2kedTNVRfKjqAkejRCviQ
About:
One-of-a-kind guitarist and record-maker Steve Tibbetts has an association with ECM dating back to 1981, with his body of work reflecting that of an artist following his own winding, questing path. The BBC has described his music as “an atmospheric brew… brilliant, individual.” Life Of, his ninth album for the label, serves as something of a sequel to his previous ECM release, Natural Causes, which JazzTimes called “music to get lost in.” Like the earlier album, Life Of showcases the richness of his Martin 12-string acoustic guitar, along with his gamelan-like piano and artfully deployed field samples of Balinese gongs; the sonic picture also incorporates the sensitive percussion of long-time musical partner Marc Anderson and the almost subliminal cello drones of Michelle Kinney. Tibbetts, though rooted in the American Midwest, has made multiple expeditions to Southeast Asia, including Bali and Nepal; not only the sounds but the spirits of those places are woven into his musical DNA as much as the expressive inspiration of artists from guitarist Bill Connors to sarangi master Sultan Khan. Life Of has a contemplative shimmer like a reflecting pool, with most of the album’s pieces titled after friends and family, living and past.
After the long break following Tibbetts’ 1994 ECM release The Fall of Us All – a period that saw him collaborate with the likes of Norwegian Hardanger fiddle player Knut Hamre and Tibetan Buddhist nun Chöying Drolma – the guitarist has returned to a consistent production schedule for the label in the 21st century. He has released an album via ECM every eight years, with Life Of preceded by the similarly acoustic-oriented Natural Causes (2010) and the fiery, electric A Man About a Horse (2002). These impressionistic, densely layered creations led Jazziz magazine to note about the guitarist-producer’s style of evocative abstraction: “He seems more interested in radiant sound paintings than… linear structures. The forest is more intriguing to him than the trees.”
Tibbetts says the difference between making Natural Causes and Life Of is that he’s “a better piano player now,” adding: “I labor over these records to perhaps an insane degree, but that’s not about achieving any kind of instrumental perfection. So many things in our culture are over-produced now, sanded down to a kind of flawless metallic gleam. I’ve gone more organic as the years have gone on. I want the records to have a human, handcrafted quality.”
As with Natural Causes, Tibbetts mixed the record in the concert hall of Macalester College, near where he lives in Minnesota. “I take all my gear down to the hall and play the tracks back in the room’s acoustic, capturing the room tone and mixing it that way. I set up two pairs of mics: one pair in the center of the hall, one pair in the back. It allows the hall’s ambience to settle around the piano and percussion, and the room’s natural acoustics help the guitar settle into the piano. It’s a more labor-intensive process, and the effect is perhaps subtle to most ears. But it feels more organic to me, adding some reality to the sound. I suppose it’s like a bay leaf in a soup – it has an intangible effect that adds to the experience.”
The album’s key tone generator is Tibbetts’ 12-string guitar, the Martin D-12-20 he got from his father in the late ’70s. He has long incorporated into his playing string bends and vibrato inspired by jazz guitarist Bill Connors and blues-rocker Harvey Mandel, as well as the vocal ideal that Sultan Khan achieved with his bowed sarangi. “That Martin guitar is now, almost a half-century old, with the frets almost worn flat – and I keep the strings old and kind of dead, something I got from Leo Kottke,” he explains. “So, the instrument has a mellow, aged sound, with its own peculiar internal resonance – like it has a small concert hall inside it. I try to bring out that quality by stringing the guitar in double courses, the four lower strings paired in unisons rather than octaves. You really have to physically engage with the strings of this guitar, while also being careful that your touch doesn’t de-tune the strings. But setting it up that way makes it so I can play with the resonant qualities of the wood, drawing out overtones and getting the single string lines to ‘sing’ – which is what I loved about the sound of Sultan Khan, the way he could fill the room like a voice.”
Tibbetts plays the piano as kind of virtual gamelan, using the keyboard like a row of gongs and letting it cycle through the structure of a piece. The layers of his guitar and piano interact with the actual gongs and other metallophones Tibbetts sampled in Bali and that he triggers via another 12-string guitar equipped with a MIDI interface. Such tracks as “Life of Mir” also include the subtly placed cello lines of Kinney (who also appeared on Tibbetts’ 1989 ECM disc, Big Map Idea). Then there is the ever-sympathetic percussion of Anderson, who has played on all of Tibbetts’ ECM albums. “Working with Marc is like working with my own hands,” the guitarist says. “I don’t have to tell my hands to find the fretboard – they just do. It’s the same with Marc, after 40 years. I don’t have to ask him to do anything in particular. On his own, he always finds the right drum, the right approach.”
About the sound and sensibility of his two most recent albums, Tibbetts says: “I suppose nostalgia inevitably creeps into life at middle age, so it’s fitting that these two records are more about quiet, acoustic reflection and less about shredding on electric guitar, as with A Man About a Horse and The Fall of Us All.” The titles for 10 of the songs on Life Of refer to loved ones or even a person Tibbetts might have observed closely over time while at work in a local coffee shop – “Life of Emily,” “Life of Joel,” “Life of Someone” and so on. This lends abstract music a personal element, even if the titles came independently of the musical inspiration. This is especially so in the scene-setting opener “Bloodwork,” the title of which relates to Tibbetts going through an intense medical procedure to help his sick sister. He says: “It’s simultaneously a very personal word and a very clinical word, which I suppose echoes the experience.”
As for the long, if consistent, gaps between albums, Tibbetts concludes: “I’m not churning out a tremendous amount of music, it’s true. But I think my listeners trust me. When I take the time to put something together over a long period and am finally satisfied with it, I think they will be, too.”
Track Listing:
1. Bloodwork (Steve Tibbetts) 1:39
2. Life of Emily (Steve Tibbetts) 2:13
3. Life of Someone (Steve Tibbetts) 2:30
4. Life of Mir (Steve Tibbetts) 5:51
5. Life of Lowell (Steve Tibbetts) 3:28
6. Life of Joel (Steve Tibbetts) 4:15
7. Life of Alice (Steve Tibbetts) 3:33
8. Life of Dot (Steve Tibbetts) 4:21
9. Life of Carol (Steve Tibbetts) 3:02
10. Life of Joan (Steve Tibbetts) 4:28
11. Life of El (Steve Tibbetts) 3:31
12. End Again (Steve Tibbetts) 2:43
13. Start Again (Steve Tibbetts) 9:06
Personnel:
Steve Tibbetts: guitar, piano
Marc Anderson: percussion, handpan
Michelle Kinney: cello, drones
Recorded in 2016, at Dave Ray Avenue St. Paul, Minnesota
Producer: Steve Tibbetts
Engineers: Steve Tibbetts and Greg Reierson
Mastered by Greg Reierson
Cover Photo: Andrea Galvani
Design: Sascha Kleis
Review:
Because there’s so much atmosphere in Steve Tibbetts’ music—the reverb-laden guitar, ghostly piano chords, quiet washes of percussion—it can be easy to assume that atmosphere is all he’s got. After all, the guitarist is not one for big, brash melodies or deeply funky grooves, nor do his tunes offer anything like the easily decoded structure of pop songcraft. And when the narrative is hard to follow, it’s all too tempting to assume there isn’t one at all. With Life Of, his 10th solo album, Tibbetts makes it easier to follow the thread by presenting a series of sonic portraits, each one offered as a “Life Of.” It’s not storytelling in any conventional sense, but it does lend a certain specificity to the mood and vocabulary of each piece. “Life Of Emily,” for example, opens with Tibbetts playing in a sliding, vocalized style that, along with Marc Anderson’s hand percussion, evokes the sound of Indian classical music. But about 13 seconds in, the drone beneath those soothingly serpentine lines drops a minor third, and the mood shifts. Although Tibbetts continues to play slippery, string-bending filigrees, the rhythmic pulse quietly has become more insistent. It’s drama, but of a sort so subtle it easily can be missed without close listening. Pay close attention, though, and Life Of reveals a world of sonic surprises. With “Life Of Mir,” it’s relentlessly shifting harmony and splashes of Michelle Kinney’s cello; with “Life Of Dot,” it’s harmonics pulled from bent strings to give each note unique flavor; with “Life Of Alice,” it’s the intertwining rhythms of finger-picked guitar, sampled gamelan and piano. It might be less than an hour long, but Life Of will provide years of deep and rewarding listening.
J.D. Considine (DownBeat)
