COR (Plaist Music)
Christian Lillinger’s Grund
Released January 19, 2018
DownBeat Four-and-a-Half-Stars Review
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=TohGqBXBlco&list=RDAMVMTohGqBXBlco
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/5M7myV9EeID4ns6DGqXenf?si=BP5Ya7FJSjmSflUPyWjWCA
About:
That’s very fine music. Every movement is tasteful, and everything is cooked up on the drums. Razor-sharp. It wasn’t mentioned at the presentation of the SWR jazz prize, but Lillinger’s genius has a Zappalike brass section at its command. Just the vibraphone alone! It’s no secret that the doubling of instruments really has an effect. It’s the sound of the 70s infinitely condensed. Those two saxophonists –with each phrase another one takes centre stage. Lillinger’s GRUND combines the tonal sophistication of a contemporary ensemble with the playing enthusiasm of a jazz band. A real sensation of musical pleasure wins through on those intimate sections, such as the duets and trios; the strings of Robert Landfermann and Jonas Westergaard playing with Achim Kaufmann. Lillinger’s drums are astounding, with the piano almost exhausting in some passages. And the sheer speed of the keys on the second piece (Hiatus). I’m reminded of what Alexander Schubert once produced for Lillinger on the album Aurona Arona. The third piece (Welt am Draht) begins with a keyboard sound. I was surprised to hear that Kaufmann plays a Fender Rhodes with a Ring Modulator on this record, as well as the grand piano. Lillinger allows all of the unhurried evenness he can generate from his caressed cymbals to climax here, while at the same time, Christopher Dell feeds himself into this penetrating soundscape. The fourth track (Kubus) sounds like Zappa again –but in Berlin. Of particular note: the appearance of overlapping structures and crossed tone sequences from the piano and vibraphone in a ludicrous tempo and in a peculiar sound synthesis. It’s exciting to hear on C O R –and especially on the opening track (Cor)-how Lillinger increasingly focuses on a sound. It’s a sound long indebted to the new Berlin jazz, and it lends his music some of the old excitement of fusion. Delius’s saxophone playing on “Narrat” is truly captivating, especially his glissandi and that rough embouchure which lends his saxophone the impetus of a trumpet. It’s wonderful how Kaufmann accompanies it all with full chords and poetic rhythms. And all this over the unerring and earthy grooves of the rhythm section! An extraordinary band. Even as that thought pops into my mind, I can hear the snare cooking it all up again. The wide variety of music meets my expectations of a good album. You’re in the middle of a piece when suddenly your ear gets absorbed by something slower. Sounds appear, but so isolated –tangibly like the way they adorn newly composed music. It’s a choir in a vast stellar orbit. Lillinger’s jazz has composed something new. Thank you. Creative. Can a reverb effect artistically endure across the time it takes to be activated during mixing? That’s anyone’s guess.
Dr. Oliver Schwerdt (musicologist and cultural expert)
Track Listing:
1. COR (Christian Lillinger) 04:49
2. Hiatus (Christian Lillinger) 06:05
3. Welt am Draht (Lnch) (Christian Lillinger) 07:01
4. Kubus (Christian Lillinger) 02:49
5. Carotis (Christian Lillinger) 04:51
6. Dralau (Christian Lillinger) 04:15
7. Narrat (Christian Lillinger) 04:56
8. Plastik (Christian Lillinger) 06:46
9. Katrin (Christian Lillinger) 02:46
Personnel:
Christian Lillinger: drums
Pierre Borel: saxophone
Tobias Delius: saxophone, clarinet
Achim Kaufmann: piano, fender rhodes
Christopher Dell: vibraphone
Robert Landfermann: bass
Jonas Westergaard: bass
Recorded October 5 – 6, 2014, at Kyberg Studio, Oberhaching
Produced by Christian Lillinger
Co-Produced by Johannes Brecht
Recorded by Wolfgang Hoff and Nikolaus Loewe
Katrin recorded live by Martin Ruch
Mixed by Johannes Brecht
Mastered by Zino Mikorey
Cover picture by Nino Halm
Review:
German drummer Christian Lillinger has been attracting plenty of attention for his remarkable skills and vision in recent years—last year he was awarded the prestigious SWR Jazz Prize in his homeland. He leads several distinctive projects, but none has been as consistently satisfying as Grund, a multi-limbed organism that allows him to forge a heady meeting place between absorbing improvisational gambits and wonderfully distended compositional conceits that veer well outside of jazz orthodoxy. Cor is the fourth and most gripping Grund album, where the twinned instrumental pairings help affect a visceral, off-kilter onslaught. Lillinger designs his jagged compositions as episodic devices, constantly shifting the listener’s perception. On the title track, the bassists pluck out a thorny opening theme, while vibraphonist Christopher Dell and saxophonist Pierre Borel trace a serene, looping counter passage that seems to float over the chattery pizz. But then gears shift, and Borel and Dell voice a new theme out of which emerges a typically slaloming, halting solo from saxophonist Tobias Delius. Greek modernist Iannis Xenakis is cited as an influence on “Hiatus,” a knotty conversation between thwacking basses and left-end piano jabs that achieve a teetering grace once the drummer enters and the horns blow distant, long tones. Even when the writing veers toward post-bop, the bifurcated rhythms maintain a tension, as on “Carotis,” when Delius summons his Ben Webster-meets-Archie Shepp vibe, the rhythmic structures so jittery that nothing is quite what it seems.
Peter Margasak (DownBeat)
