Artist: Pierre Favre DrumSights
Album: Now
Genre: Free Jazz, Percussion Music
Label: Intakt Records
Year Of Release: 2016
Quality: FLAC (tracks)
Tracklist:
Again 7:58
Brushes Flock 7:25
Roasting Syncope 2:02
Dance Of The Feline 8:28
Sycamore 0:52
Along 2:24
Pow Wow 5:45
Painted Face 1:34
Tramping 7:31
Woolly Jumper 1:46
Nuevel 1:27
Games 9:35
Antonio Sanchez’ acclaimed drum score for last year’s Birdman movie has alerted a wider audience up to how expressive all-percussion music can be. This album features a dozen pieces composed by the 79-year-old Swiss percussion marvel Pierre Favre for his DrumSights quartet. Favre made an ECM album called Singing Drums in 1984, and he still leads groups that layer multiple rhythms with a warmth and vocal-toned naturalness that hides their astonishing complexity. Brushes-dominated pieces are ruthlessly badgered by bass-drum booms and woody tappings; deep fusions of conga and tom-tom rhythms ring and chime with metallic upper sounds; rubbery, racing-heart rhythms are pursued by thundering hooves; and there are byzantine conversations on taxing meters like the 5-6-5-5 pattern of the brittle, chattery Pow Wow. Every track has character, but the almost 10-minute Games (originally written for the African djembe), a mix of soft and hard sounds, martial, sensuous, relaxed or breakneck grooves, could be a sampler for the whole remarkable venture.
by John Fordham
