Ecm 1581

Fasil, based on an idea by guitarist Marc Sinan and author Marc Schiffer, tells of the life of Aisha, the great love and youngest wife of the prophet Mohammed, in the course of an inspired song cycle. The improvisations take as their inspirational starting point fragments of Koran recitations recorded by Marc Sinan in Turkey. Together with Julia Hulsmann’s songs they form an Ottoman suite, a Fasil. Highlights in this transcultural project include exceptional performances by Sinan himself, and by Yelena Kuljic in the role of Aisha. The singer was recently described by the Frankfurter Rundschau as “the most thrilling new voice in the current jazz scene.”

Berlin-based DJs and composers Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer - two of the best-known names in contemporary electronica - share their admiration for music on ECM in a unique double-album of specially-created “sound-structures”. Their project “Re: ECM” will bring the label’s music to a new listenership. It is certain to be one of the most talked-about albums of the season. Using original ECM recordings as a starting point, Villalobos and Loderbauer create new music that bridges several worlds, including ECM’s world of space-conscious improvisation and composition and the worlds of ambient electronics and minimal techno.

This laconic yet lasting statement from Terje Rypdal marked the Norwegian guitarist’s third ECM appearance as composer and leader. Its crucible continues to yield an enticing tincture of prog-rock and classical stylings for the weary musical mind. The reverberant French horn that animates “Silver Bird Is Heading For The Sun” betrays nothing of its cooption by a punchy g/d/b constituent. Floating on a well-aged mellotron, it bows out gracefully as Rypdal rolls in like a fuzzed haze.

Khmer is surely the most unusual album ever released by ECM — unusual because the label, which is best known for elevated chamber jazz, presents the solo debut of trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer as a production that plays with modern electronica methods while not eschewing the well-known ECM aesthetic. Molvaer's music is somewhere between scary and majestic, and changes between ominous ambient sounds and hard breakbeats, along which atonal screeching guitars combined with melancholic melodies, create a fascinating melange.

A saxophone workout from '85 by outstanding British player John Surman. While solo sax can be extremely tiring, Surman mixes enough elements of rock, free, blues, and hard bop to keep the songs varied. His aggressive style, especially on baritone, keeps the energy level high.

The second ECM album by Norwegian cooperative group The Source gets back to basics. Since its formation in 1993, when founder-members Trygve Seim, Øyvind Brække and Per Oddvar Johansen were all students at the Trøndelag Conservatory of Music in Trondheim, The Source has been very much a moveable feast, its motto, "No two concerts alike!" The group has embraced the wildest stylistic collisions, working variously with poets and DJs, rai vocalists and rappers, ice hockey players, and conceptual and performance artists. Their collaborators have ranged from rock band Motorpsycho to classical musicians including the Cikada String Quartet (as on their 2000 ECM recording The Source and Different Cikadas). Nonetheless, the overwhelming majority of their performances have been as a quartet, most of their music was written for quartet, and this eponymously titled disc addresses a backlog of much-played material whose appearance on disc is overdue.

Elixir is the first album Danish percussionist Marilyn Mazur has recorded as a leader for ECM in 14 years. It is an interesting number for Mazur, because she has also spent 14 years as a member of saxophonist Jan Garbarek's recording and touring ensembles. He appears on about half of Elixir as Mazur's only collaborator (apart from producer Manfred Eicher). That said, the solo pieces are the first remarkable aspect of this set. When Mazur works alone, her pieces defy everything we think we know about solo percussion recordings: there is a warmth and directness in these proceedings that is songlike rather than merely hypnotic or virtuosic.

Formed in Lucerne, Switzerland, in 1972 and named after Coltrane’s darkly convulsive album, the members of OM were initially inspired as much by the rock of Jimi Hendrix as by the new developments taking place in improvisation. “Electric jazz – free music” was their rallying cry, and they played it loudly. All in their early 20s when the group was launched, the members of OM achieved an early success at the Montreux Festival in 1974 which helped to put them on the map, and brought them to the attention of ECM. Four albums were recorded for ECM’s sister label Japo, between 1975 and 1980: “Kirikuki”, “Rautionaha”, “Om with Dom um Ramao” and “Cerberus”.

This is the third release for ECM from the German-Iranian vocalist, Cymin Samawatie with her band Cyminology with an intriguing and exquisite set that fuses Persian poetry and rhythms with improvisation along with the musicians own diverse influences and cultural background. The music itself is most absorbing with subtle melodies and delicate rhythms rubbing alongside and against the Persian verse. This is a beautiful album that quite rightly defies simple classification, and why not. For the listener with open ears there is much to enjoy.

Lumen Drones is a fascinating and powerful collaboration between Hardanger fiddle master Nils Økland and Per Stainar Lie and Ørjan Haaland, respectively guitarist and drummer with Norwegian ‘post-rock’ group The Low Frequency In Stereo. The participants describe their project as a “psychedelic drone band”, but its stylistic reach is broad and evocative and will trigger many musical associations.