Bud Shank: Holiday in Brazil
Impex Records
This album is a hidden gem, for two reasons. One, Bud Shank wouldn’t be anyone’s guess as a choice for an audiophile vinyl reissue. Second, you wouldn’t think of Bud Shank as a pioneer of bossa nova, but this 1959 album, featuring orchestrations and playing by guitarist Laurindo Almeida, is a musical delight, and certainly a precursor to the bossa nova craze that followed. Holiday in Brazil is understated, quiet, and sparse, but as satisfying as any Brazilian-influenced album you’ll ever hear.
Originally released on World Pacific Records, Holiday in Brazil (also issued as Brazilliance, Vol. 2), gets the full Impex vinyl reissue treatment: mastered from the original analog tape by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering, pressed on AAA 180-gram vinyl at Record Technology, with deluxe packaging. In addition to Shank on alto sax and flute and Almeida on nylon-string guitar (he also did the orchestrations) the album features Gary Peacock on bass and Chuck Flores playing drums and percussion. The liner notes show that it was engineered by Dayton Howe. Was this the legendary Bones Howe? Yes, it was!
The overall sound is sweet and smooth. The small group ensemble places Shank on the left, Almeida on the right, and Peacock and Flores in the middle. Don’t expect to hear a “soundstage” or layered depth; this in an old-school jazz recording, and the bass and drums are very much in the background, though present, with little imaging to the drums.
That’s OK. The sound is super-clean and detailed, and though the musicians play quietly most of the time, the dynamics can startle when Almeida vigorously rakes the strings, and during “Mood Antigua,” there’s a solo spot where Flores hits the tablas hard and it’s a jump in your seat moment. The beauty of this recording is in the tonality and dynamics of the instruments. Because the album is so sparse instrumentally, it’s easy to hear every nuance of Bud Shank’s vibrato and Laurindo Almeida’s fingerings.
The album offers a variety of musical moods, from the proto-bossa nova of “I Didn’t Know What Time it Was,” to the ravishing chord melody intro to “Little Girl Blue,” and the energetic need-to-get up-and-dance “Choro in ‘A’.” “Lonely” is a sweetly expressive ballad.
Not every audiophile reissue has to be a hoary old retread. My compliments to Impex Records for reintroducing this album for us to rediscover.
Paulo Almeida: Love in Motion
Dox Records
In listening to jazz albums lately, it occurs to me that it’s getting harder and harder to write about their sound. Not because my hearing isn’t what it used to be, or that I’m running out of non-cliched descriptors, though both are true. It’s because I find that the recording quality of jazz albums has gotten so good overall that I kind of take it for granted now. (Overly processed and compressed and EQ’d pop recordings are another story.)
Which is great, as the music can simply shine through, as is the case with Paulo Almeida’s Love in Motion. Drummer/percussionist/vocalist Almeida grew up in Brazil, and his approach reflects that – he uses the drum kit as much as a source for tonal colors as for rhythmic drive, though there’s plenty of that here. As Hubone PR’s press release accurately states: “the drums do not simply mark time; they participate in shaping it, responding to breath and phrasing rather than imposing structure.”
Almeida doesn’t do straight swing like many jazz drummers, though he can certainly drive a band (as on “Saci,” the closing track); he shifts and syncopates and punctuates, yet always with a relaxed flow. He’s accompanied by a group of brilliantly intuitive musicians including Lorenzo Vitolo on piano and synthesizers, Josh Schofield on alto and soprano saxophone, Joan Codina playing acoustic bass, Jorge Rossy on vibes, and vocalist Lisette Spinner joining them in the song “Nenhum Talvez.” Together, their ensemble playing is tight. “Winter Morning” has some fantastic piano soloing by Vitolo, and the rest of the band is right there with him in their musical intuition.
The album has a warm, inviting tonality. As you might expect, the drums have excellent weight and authority, especially on the tom toms, and an open cymbal sound. The instruments all have presence and character, from the luscious acoustic piano to the richness of the alto and soprano sax, which sounds like a real instrument in space and not some wispy thing. The acoustic bass is sonorous but not overbearing – the bowed intro to “Lembranças do Boi” is gorgeous. So it the tone of Schofield’s soprano sax on “Resilience.” Vitolo has a beautiful touch, as evidenced by the flowing waterfall-like intro to “Um Sopro.” Jorge Rossy’s vibes are clear and crisp, with that dreamy tremolo that makes the instrument such a pleasure to listen to. Love in Motion isn’t your typical by-the-numbers swing date. It’s a breathing, pulsing, organic, and very impressive musical and rhythmic statement from a drummer with a distinctive voice.
Jakob Dreyer: Roots and Things
Fresh Sound Records
Here’s another excellent jazz recording, in a different sonic way. This quartet with Jakob Dreyer on acoustic bass, Tivon Prescott playing tenor sax and Kenn Salters on drums is rounded out by Sasha Berliner playing vibraphone, which takes the place of the usual piano or guitar to provide chordal and harmonic structure. As a result, the overall ensemble sound is lighter and airier, like some of the classic recordings with Milt Jackson or Gary Burton.
The sound is spacious. Every instrument has room to “breathe” and stand alone in the aural space, with outstanding tonality and dynamics. The snare drum has real “snap” and drive, the vibes are heard with a satisfying combination of clarity, body and the attack of the mallets on the bars, with a wide yet not exaggerated stereo spread. Dreyer’s bass is articulate and authoritative without being overbearing. The saxophone has that lush, creamy quality that makes the instrument so satisfying to listen to when it’s well recorded.
The musicianship is incredible, each player a master of his or her instrument. All but one of the songs, “With a Song In My Heart,” was written by Dreyer, who is a confident, understated presence, stepping out when it’s time for a solo, as on “Follower,” or the title track. Sasha Berliner has a vibe voice of her own, soloing with marvelous inventiveness and knowing when to lay back and comp with adept intuition. Kenn Salters is the perfect drummer for this date, melding with the music. With a quartet of this nature, a lot of the spotlight falls on saxophonist Prescott, who has a seemingly endless reserve of improvisatory ideas, and a deep, satisfying tone. Roots and Things (a bassist hits a lot of root notes) ranges from the airy samba of “Hold On” to the uptempo “Fight or Flight,” and the funky-laid-back groove of “Big Apple.” The title track has an appealing floating above the clouds quality, not your usual boring fusion-filler-funk track.
All in all, this is an album of musical dexterity and satisfying communication between the players. And the closing track, “Choral Diner,” features four overdubbed bowed basses by Jakob Dreyer that is totally different than anything else on Roots and Things. It makes me wonder what might be coming next from this talented and intriguing artist.
Tim Eriksen and Peter Irvine: Absence and her sister
Soundkeeper Recordings
The word that comes to mind for me for this recording is “purity.” Purity of expression, purity of sound, free from unnecessary adornment. Tim Eriksen and Peter Irvine have created an album of folk-influenced music, blending influences as varied as Indian, Irish, Americana, film music (the two have collaborated on two movie soundtracks), and other less-definable sounds. Absence and her sister is a collection of traditional songs of New England as well as new compositions, and the entire album has a timeless quality that makes the music seem like it simply is, rather than a collection of songs on an album. Hard to describe but plain to hear.
The music is sparse, centered upon Eriksen’s clear voice and a variety of mostly acoustic fretted instruments, and Irvine’s percussion. Eriksen plays a number of instruments including guitars, bajo sexto, and maybe others I can’t readily identify. Irvine is adept on the drum kit and percussion including frame drum and glockenspiel, and he also contributes backing vocals. At times, Eriksen simply sings unaccompanied, and the music is always spare, uncluttered.
Soundkeeper Recordings is headed by recording engineer Barry Diament, who favors a minimalist recording approach. You can read our interviews with him in Issue 223 and Issue 224. His aim is for natural-sounding recordings, using just a couple of mics with a minimum of processing and dynamic limitation. He records in PCM at 24-bit/192 kHz, finding PCM to be more realistic than DSD.
As Diament noted in one of our interviews, “I've always felt that dynamics are one of the last frontiers of getting to our goal of a recording and a system that totally gets out of the way and brings you to the performance,” an attitude that goes back to his days as a recording engineer for Atlantic Records. It’s true here – while most of the album is performed somewhere between soft and moderate, every now and then a vocal line or a strum or a whistled line will just jump out, like the percussion thwack on “Boston.”
Tim Eriksen and Peter Irvine during the recording of the album.
It certainly sounds like it on Absence and her sister. The term “lifelike” has been overused, but this is one of the most real-sounding recordings I’ve ever heard. It really does sound like you’re eavesdropping on the performers. There is a credible sense of spaciousness, but neither washed in reverb nor with instruments panned hard left or right. The tonal balance is so right that you just don’t think about it. The acoustic guitar sounds, literally, full-bodied, just like it is in real life, with superb harmonic extension and transient attack. Tim Eriksen favors drones and one-and two-note figures on the low strings, along with really in-the-pocket strumming. Peter Irvine is like someone with a Vulcan mind meld in his accompaniment.
To make the recording, Diament used a matched pair of Earthworks QTC-40 microphones. He feels they “just get out of the way and sound (to me) like whatever happens in their presence.” The mics are separated by a baffle he designed and placed about 15 to 16 inches apart. A Metric Halo ULN-8 is used as a mic preamp and DAC, at 24-bit/192 kHz to ,aif format. Nordost TYR 2 cables connect the mics to the ULN-8. Linkwitz LX521 speakers are used for mastering.
The feeling of the album for me is: elemental. I could pick a favorite song or two, and in fact I have one, the closing track “Aber Dodje Donke” with Eriksen’s haunting singing, the whistling that really does sound like someone’s standing in the room, and his minor-key arpeggiated guitar, but I think listeners will simply like the way the album just flows from song to song.
This is one of the most “non-recording”-like recordings I’ve ever heard. That’s about the best complement I could give.
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