Truth

Following the release of their latest studio album Versions Of The Truth in September 2020, the band were preparing to start the album’s live campaign, when like so many other artists their plans were put on hold by the continuing global pandemic.

The Triumph of Time and Truth is, paradoxically, both Handel's first and last oratorio. He originally composed this allegory on the transience of beauty and worldly pleasure (with only four singers, a chamber orchestra and an Italian text) for his patron, a Roman cardinal, in 1707 when he was just 22. By 1758 the work had become an English oratorio with five soloists, full orchestra and choir. This release, which followed 1998 performances at the Aston Magna Festival in Massachusetts, presents the 1707 original version, but with the arias in Italian and the recitatives translated into English.

There is a searching, yearning quality to Naked Truth, and a raw beauty and vulnerability in Avishai Cohen’s trumpet sound on his most improvisational ECM recording to date. Very much music-of-the moment, found and shaped in the course of a remarkable recording session in the South of France, Naked Truth takes the form of an extemporaneous suite. For most of its length the Israeli trumpeter painstakingly leads the way, closely shadowed by his long-time comrades – pianist Yonathan Avishai, bassist Barak Mori and drummer Ziv Ravitz - who share an intuitive understanding, hyper alert to the music’s subtly-changing emphases. At the album’s conclusion, Cohen recites “Departure”, a poem by Zelda Schneurson Mishkovsky, whose themes of renunciation, acceptance and letting go seem optimally-attuned to the mood of the music. Naked Truth was recorded at Studios La Buissonne in Pernes-les-Fontaines, in September 2021, and produced by Manfred Eicher.

Perhaps one of the best Motown tributes ever done, "Policy of Truth" finds Depeche Mode embracing the same sort of late-'60s slow groove that made songs like "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" such a winner, only retooled to the band's own ends. With a sharp, stabbing beat leading the way, David Gahan's delivery of a sharp Martin Gore lyric of emotional betrayal is accompanied by deep, funky synth bass, subtle guitars, and mysterious drones and horn section-styled keyboard backing…