María Grand and Camila Nebbia engage in a wary then headlong embrace in the opening moments of their new quintet outing Altered Visions, circling one another and meeting rhapsodically with a bump amid a few piano squibs and swishing bells. The effort marks the debut release of Lilaila Records, a new venture from the tenor saxophonist Grand, who composed the session, her counterpart Nebbia and the pianist Marta Sánchez, who describe Lilaila Records as ‘not just a platform for their music, but a space for artistic expression and mutual support’.
The stringent keys of Sánchez stir some life into Kanoa Mendenhall’s bass by way of accompaniment, then a few rattling drums and rippling cymbals poise the air as Grand commences a lilting vocal which winds a course through life’s attractions and frustrations, personifying such themes as anger and sorrow, compassion and devotion etc. Striving in small ways for personal betterment while the music is firmly rooted in the collective practise of the ensemble, Altered Visions then serves as a fitting celebration of self-reliance and community, those ideals which have been manifested in the birth of their label.
At just over thirty-three minutes in length, the brisk span of ‘Wild Marks’ which is the sole track on Altered Visions was recorded in just a couple of hours as the quintet met up fortuitously at the Academy of Music in Basel, with the piece set down on Altered Visions comprising the second of two takes. Grand and Nebbia share a vibrant tone on their tenor saxophones, with Grand’s playing a little bit brighter and more melodic while Nebbia’s brusque attack settles deftly into a winnowing drone. Sánchez can play patiently, as blocky chords with a staggered sense of swing give way to swirling harmonies, while at other moments her roiling clusters imbue Altered Visions with a propulsive force, helping to pick up the tempo alongside Iago Fernández on the drums.
The saxophones peal downwards in spirals and ribbons and spurt upwards in gushing but breathy blows, and there are melodious stretches where the cymbals continue to add a crashing emphasis as Mendenhall’s bass undergirds the composition, allied to the other players in spirit but doing its own kind of thing, staying resolutely upbeat. Fernández begins to tug at the tempo and as Nebbia’s saxophone hits the height of its squall, at around nine minutes and twenty seconds Grand’s voice reenters but at a higher pitch and with a more strained and agitated tone.
The Swiss native has been a resident of New York City since 2011. Vocally the comparison which feels closest to hand is the Caroline Davis and Wendy Eisenberg record Accept When from earlier this year, especially on the superficially breezy opening track ‘Attention’ where the guitarist and singer Eisenberg tests the limits of conversation, teasing out the perimeter of both ‘me’ and ‘you’.
That’s a matter of timbre however, because here Grand’s singing is much more experimental, combining vocalese with warbling and melisma in a way that stretches towards the freeform theatrics of Fay Victor and Sofia Jernberg. As Sánchez’s piano runs become more frantic and disjointed, the drums take a scattered brush and the bass also darkens, sounding at times almost as though it were being bowed in short and coarse strokes not by a conventional bow but a horsehair brush. Then the piece settles at around thirteen minutes and thirty seconds, with a few reedy runs on the saxophone and calmer vocals as the ensemble fall into a groove.
‘You have come to my house bearing a heavy burden’ Grand sings casually enough, and ‘Pain, who have come to my doorstep, pain who brings me closer to love’. Discussing matters of hearth and home, there’s a liminal quality to Grand’s vocals on Altered Visions which in content and phrasing briefly evoke the Lynchian dream pop of Julee Cruise, but more steadily recall Phil Elverum of the Microphones and Mount Eerie, whose bilabial nasals and plosives give an atmospheric moistness to his plainspoken words. In the same vein there is a bit of e e cummings to the poetry here as Grand extols ‘the clumsy beauty of humanity’, with twinkling keys struggling to stay afloat as Mendenhall’s bass exerts an undertow before tugging back towards the surface.
Born to a Swiss mother and Argentinian father, there is an easy affinity between Grand and the feisty tenor of Nebbia, who is leading the charge of young Argentine improvisers, charting her own course as she mixes solo endeavours and sessions with crossover artists like Samuel Goff and Patrick Shiroishi with small ensemble work alongside such avant-garde mavericks as Han-earl Park, Yorgos Dimitriadis and Angelica Sanchez, with whom she teamed up for the captivating duo album in another land, another dream which arrived on Relative Pitch Records in October.
Marta Sánchez can also boast some of the year’s best jazz records, as her debut trio album Perpetual Void with Chris Tordini and Savannah Harris and the David Murray Quartet outpouring Francesca which also proffered space for Luke Stewart and Russell Carter landed ardently in the spring on Intakt Records. Born and raised in Madrid, for all of these transplants life in the Big Apple with its bustling free jazz scene proves the common thread as the bassist Mendenhall was born in Japan and spent her youth in California before switching coasts, appearing this year on nublues by Joel Ross and Mountains by Micah Thomas, while the drum poet Fernández whose Luzada marked his debut as a leader hails from Galicia, and is the sole member of the quintet to count Basel as his home base.
Tipsily and stargazingly Grand extols a ‘blessed love, blessed fire’ as after the vigour of the middle section the piece slips towards a close. Muffled saxophones skirt the borders of the composition, making space for some limber bass and tinny percussion, and as Grand staggers through her final vocal there is a wind chill and a crackle which evoke the yule season to come. Less histrionics than amateur dramatics, as the ensemble gathers round Grand emphasises love in all of its vertiginous variety, but mostly as a soothing lotion as watery percussion suggests the washing of hands or waves lapping against the shore, stressing too its dark and unwieldy power as Altered Visions swells and limpid keys query the climax.
