Status: Single
City: Tampere
Country: FI
Signup Date: 1/15/2007
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Sunday, November 30, 2008
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BLACK MOTOR
Vaarat Vastukset
Dreamsheep DS008
The Tampere-based free jazz trio Black Motor travels the same path as Albert Ayler before them in the tumultuous 1960s. Back then, the self-proclaimed Holy Ghost of new jazz was doing "the new thing". These forward-thinking apprentices, who have also studied their past, sound fresh in 2009. Black Motor's music carries a feel of spirituality that is Finnish at heart. The album's title track is actually a chanted hymn composed by bassist Ville Rauhala. Aamen, the most melodic song on the album, starts out like an old negro spiritual before heading "out there".
4/5
Finnish free jazz trio Black Motor’s newest release Vaarat Vastukset might be said to be on a manic-depressive cycle. The opener and the closer with sluggish non-tempo, chimes and bells and howling sax sounds like an ominious ritual which fits very much with the cover image and the name as well. Yet still the other half of the album behaves like it is on a manic fit with rapidfire drums & sax sounding more like conventional free/improv jazz. It’s probably the black part that has made this one a spectacular journey, because this really grew on me unlike many improv stuff which sound good for what it is but don’t reward repeat listens. However acting in self interest, I’ve not featured the ominious closing track – which is one of the highlights of the album – which will hopefully be on this new summer mixtape I’m trying to fix in a couple of days. Out on Valerio Cosi’s Dreamsheep label.
Electronic Voice Phenomenon 16.6.2009
The ominous chimes and wailing saxophone that break the bass drum calm of opener "Yksi Sinulta Puuttuu" adds depth to Black Motor's funeral march cover art. A trail of sorrow and regret lines "Yksi," as the sax recalls the sob-ridden moans of heartbreak of the old world's symbolic regret. The anguish of losing a loved one is a pain that few can ever fathom even as it happens.
These vividly stark wails of brass and jangling tears of percussion, however, don't begin to size up the Finland trio's walk through the remains of 'old' jazz and the skeletal frames of 'new' jazz. Vaarat Vastukset is a mirror to the eras of Western jazz stylings. While "Yksi" provides a downtrodden take on modern abstract jazz, Black Motor pay lipservice to their more traditional--and swinging--influences as the album unravels. "Hard Man Anthem" moves with the street savvy of 1950s Greenwich; "Aamen" with the crafty tempos of Dave Brubeck and Ornette Coleman. Album namesake "Vaarat Vastukset" slithers like Albert Ayler's stint at Slug's Saloon.
The shock of Black Motor may not be the madness of opener "Yksi Sinulta Puuttuu" but rather with the more 'traditional' take on the heyday of jazz. Today's redefined jazz has split the genre into old and young (the old being the likes of Wynton and Bradford Marsalis--or worse, Kenny G; the young being Dreamsheep head Valerio Cosi and other free thinkers such as Paul Flaherty, Greg Kelley, Supersilent, and Toshinori Kondo). Black Motor effectively put the fractured genre back together (thankfully minus the contemporary jazz elements of Kenny G) by pairing the radical with the traditional. The more Black Motor spew into the modern jazz world, the better we'll all be for 'tradition' is broken and longevity for jazz is secured.
Wonderful Wooden Reasons
Black Motor - Vaarat Vastukset
(Dreamsheep DS008)
CD
I’m going to let you all in on a secret about this music reviewing lark. You ready for it? As a reviewer you get to listen to a frankly ridiculous amount of music but it’s rarely the music you want to listen to. I can’t really remember the last time I pulled an album off the shelf because I hadn’t listened to it in a while. As I write this there are two piles of about 40 cds next to me waiting to be played and written about. Not that I’m complaining you understand. Of that 40 odd most will be worthy of several listens as the bands, artists and labels who send to me are a pretty consistent bunch. The point I’m trying to make is that my listening habits are dictated by what I’m sent rather than what I like to a great extent. Now here’s where this becomes apposite to the album in hand. Up to about 4 years ago I listened to a lot of jazz. I fell deeply and profoundly in love with the music for one pure and simple reason. I do not understand it at all! Mystifies me completely. Every twist and turn of a good jazz album, whether by Coltrane, Dolphy, Evan Parker, Cecil Taylor, whomever, takes me by surprise and I love surprises. I don’t get sent much jazz to review at WWR - I think 2 albums in 4 years - but playing on my stereo at the moment is the long awaited third and I am loving it. Finnish trio Black Motor mix an atonal skronk with wonderfully chilled lyrical passages to great effect. Even on first listen there was a comfortable familiarity to the music - which I certainly do not mean in a negative sense - as it felt warm and open. Inviting and yet exotic. Like visiting a new country in the company of your best friend. You don’t know what you’ll find there but you know the company will be good. Opener Yksi Sinulta Puuttuu is for me the weakest track on the album. It’s easily the most atonal and avant-garde piece here and gets the album off to a deceptive start. I think positioned later in the running order would have benefited this track as it really is the odd one out here. It’s blatant disregard of the niceties of established notions of musicality is laudable but at odds with the melodic nature of the other tracks. As fond as I am of a good ruckus it is the remaining 5 tracks that really make Vaarat Vastukset something to behold. The melodies pour from the arrangements and lift the album from any assumptions made during the opening 10 minutes or so. The balance between melody and madness is perfect and has left me gob-smacked meaning that this album has taken up residence on my player. Hugely recommended.
Terrascope Online Reviews
On their latest album Finnish three –piece Black motor, utilise reeds, double bass and percussion to create an equally tense and ritualistic landscape, the music moving between folk experimentation and free jazz whilst containing melody and touches of lightness. Over a rattling percussive backing, the saxophone of Sami Sippola is given license to roam, dancing and prowling between the sounds, the notes swooping and howling with glee, the trio playing as a group each listening to the others. On “Hard man Anthem”, the sax is reminiscent of the work of Didiere Malherbe, the band moving into Be-Bop territory, whilst on the title track bass player Ville Rauhala is given the chance to shine and does so magnificently. Final track, “Vainila” has an ethnic twist a slowly evolving drone underpinning the jazz exploration, with percussionist Simo Laihonen keeping thing interesting whilst demonstrating dexterity and feel in his playing.
Score: 6.5/10 Finland. Jazz. Not exactly a combination that was self-evident when I found this album in my virtual office tray - Scandinavian neighbors Sweden have a far more notable (fusion) history in this field to my knowledge. But at first listen it becomes rather apparent that the colorful bunch that makes up Black Motor isn't all that intelligible, nor is the brand of jazz they bring on Vaarat Vastukset.
While the sax, drums and upright bass are the base of Black Motor's sound, they've expanded their instrumentation with some of the finer weirdling background-fillers such as strings of bells and chimes, flute, chants and mantras. As a whole, this album is one you're not likely to use when you like a jazzy vibe over Sunday brunch; this album is ideal for the late nights, when the level of Jack Daniels drops under it's label and conversations are limited to a few strenuous "yeahs" (or other states of low brain-activity). As such, Vaarat Vastukset works very well for those experienced in the field of mind-altering music, with its lengthy episodes of krautesque jazz explorations.
Now don't get me wrong, if the jazz department of your collection only contains a Miles Davis collection box and a Best Of John Coltrane, this might still push your buttons in the right order. Throughout the album, the experimental jazz approach prevails but still offers mellow resting areas and groovy bits of "drunken rhythms;" one even encounters some parts the listener could hum along with after a few listens. Some of those intermezzos call the soundtrack Baise Moi to mind, or at least the closing four tracks composed by the hand of Jan Varou.
In all, if an experimental three quarters of an hour doesn't scare you off and you can handle your jazz, it is well worth checking out this album. The production is as organic and solid as you'd find it on late sixties- early seventies prog or krautrock albums. I realize that this album can take some effort on the listener's behalf at first, but it gains much in depth once you find your way in Black Motor's sonic universe.
Foxy Digitalis
Given the menacing group name and the cover’s dour processional, I’ve got to say I expected a little more doom and gloom from Black Motor. And while much of the music here does have a chaotic and somewhat sorrowful slant, it is done so in a more refined and traditionally bluesy angle as the unit explores the six original compositions within.
In fact, Black Motor has little to do with Black Sabbath or Motorhead and everything to do with “Yasmina, a Black Woman.” A trio comprised of Sami Sippola, Ville Rauhala and Simo Laihonen, the group pushes the boundaries of post post-fire improvisational discourse on this disc, mixing equal parts AACM, Albert Ayler and Pharaoh Sanders while infusing their sound with a textural, ritualistic approach that manages to carve out their own corner in the free jazz world.
One of the units main strengths is their willingness to pull at will from any number of instruments. Ranging from the expected (tenor sax, double bass, drums, voice) to the underused (bells, gong, bamboo flutes) the group explores an open and fertile dialogue driven by more by mood than mode. Perhaps this is no more clearly visible than on the opening “Yksi Sinulta Puutuu,” whose gentle bamboo flutes begin the album atop clattering chimes and a scraping double-bass. It’s an odd combination of sounds, the flute as smooth and fragile as it is and the bass as grating, but each addition serves to amount into a confusing playfulness underlined by Sippola’s screeching sax utterances.
Elsewhere the group explores more overtly melodic material, as with “Aamen,” whose saxophone line sounds like a military call that walks the line between Ornette Coleman’s momentum and Ayler’s own marching excursions. At times his tone even resembles early Gato Barbieri, raspy and deep but nimble as well as it bounces along atop Rauhala and Laihonen’s explosive rhythmic backing.
On the closing “Vainila,” the group once again highlights their strength for subtly stretching improvisational vocabulary as a snaking bass squeal writhes above a dancing drum rhythm and sax bellow. For a group like this it’s tough to say anything new, and indeed this is hardly a redefinition of the forms they’re working in. But these players have such simpatico and are so well versed in their dialogue that it’s tough not to forget how much fun and how listenable this kind of music can be. It is this ability to intermix the more interesting explorative sound excursions with strong compositional material that positions Black Motor as an important and under-known presence in today’s free jazz community. 8/10 -- Henry Smith (15 April, 2009)
Boomkat.com
From a label that revels in experimental, ear-challenging sounds comes an incredibly 'classic' sounding jazz record, courtesy of Finnish troupe Black Motor, whose music comes across as at once extremely disciplined and well-versed in the conventions of modern swing whilst being experimentally minded enough to appeal to listeners of a more avant-garde predilection. Looking to the reeds, drums and upright bass, the musicianship here is to be admired, sounding equally accomplished on the sprawling, primal oddness of 'Yksi Sinulta Puuttuu' and the more organised and demanding improvisations of 'Aamen'. Recommended.
Norman Records/Resident jazzer Brett, 16.1.2009
It's always nice to start the week off with a bit of chamber jazz. Especially when the chamber's a torture one and it contains a trapped Austrian girl whose mouth has evolved into a plaintively wailing saxophone over the course of many lonely years. Vaarat Vastukset is Black Motors' follow-up to the LP they did a while back on Qbico (look at me pretending I've heard of these before) and it's a pleasantly dour clunk n' scrapealong noodlefest guaranteed to give any listening avants hard-ons. It does brighten up from time to time, taking a more traditional (though still highly freeform) approach to prove they've got the chops to know what the rules are and exactly how they're breaking them.. Although I do always like the idea of punk-jazz played by people with no skill whatsoever. It's a 'recommended' from me, particularly loving the bit towards the end of the first lengthy track where a tribal beat kicks in unexpectedly to form up the chaos.
Vital Weekly/number 665, Week 7 2009
BLACK MOTOR - VAARAT VASTUKSET (CD by Dreamsheep)
But let's have a closer look and start with Black Motor, a freejazz trio from Tampere, Finland, comprised of Sami Sippola (saxophones, voice), Ville Rauhala (double bass/electric bass, voice) and Simo Laihonen (drums, bells, flutes, voice). On another italian label (Qbico) they released last year their first album. Free jazz of the 60s and 70-s is their point of reference. With my limited knowledge of this music I can trace influences of the Art Ensemble as well as Sun Ra, but Pharaoh Sanders and Dewey Redman seem to be more important sources of inspiration. The album opens with a Art Ensemble of Chicago-like piece 'Yksi Sinulta Puuttuu'. Tribal, ritualistic sounding jazz, with bells and non-jazz drumming and busy improvising by the sax. The closing piece 'Vainila' is comparable to the first. It walks along in a Sun Ra-like manner, with flute and sax in a nice duet. Exceptional is their typical voice work here, as if they invited some tibetan monks. In between we find improvisations that are more close to the classic freejazz, deprived of afro- or other ethnic references. In all their improvisations drums and bass lay down an effective rhythm-section for the saxplayer. His playing is on all tracks on the forefront, which is no problem, as he is a capable and charming improvisor with a nice tone. At several moments they reach a high level of concentration and intensity, and the music really takes of, like in 'Aamen' and 'Vaarat Vastukset'. The strong thing of this trio is that they use no make up. Very straight. Very OK.
Norman Records/Mingus Rude
Black Motor: 'S/T' (Qbico) A cursory glance at the players listed suggests the players are of Finnish origin. This trio comprises Tenor & Alto saxaphones, Double Bass and drums. The opening side's 'Love Life' starts out quite 'straight up' as in almost traditional, but soon gets into a 'bop mode' that suggests that by the end of the set it's gonna be an all out assault on the senses..we'll see huh!? In fact the 'swing' of 'Mr Cherry' that opens the flipside surprises me (delusion maybe) for it's lack of hooliganism. By the end piece: 'Dancin on Your Grave' we have a combination of freeform exploration coupled with a Latin percussive beat suite. Very good and probably more so after repeated plays. Seek!
10:35 AM
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