It’s Christmas eve, and I don’t know what to say. Get yourself some tasty chinese food, maybe?
This winter break brings some humor into our lives - as we form resolutions, plans and aspirations for the new year while also being thoroughly prepared to torch everything and stay home, cooking meal after meal, given the lingering possibility of a few more months in the quarantine limbo. Or maybe not. Maybe the plague will recede and we can resume flying around the world enough times to spike jet fuel prices up once again.
Happy Holidays
La Saboteuse - Yazz Ahmed (Feb 3, 2018)
Experimental jazz is a very loosely defined term that allows inclusion of records like Bitches Brew and Journey of Satchidananda and more accessible, rock-fused ones like The Inner Mounting Flame. Contemporary jazz has tipped further towards a bedrock of progressive music with the likes of collectives like Snarky Puppy and Bad Bad Not Good.
Yazz Ahmed’s album contributes to this jazz-prog-rock cannon in songs like Organ Eternal and Bloom with its tight and driving rhythm section slipping into odd meters. It does so without giving up on the ambitious task of creating atmosphere with its rich textures and harmonies. Among the most noticeable aspects of this album is in fact its choice of drum production, giving La Saboteuse space to breathe as a whole with its rhythmic nuances.
The album is at its best when Ahmed embraces her middle-eastern influences. This is exemplified in Jamil Jamal, showing off its neat groove in the interplay between Naadia Sheriff’s meandering solo and Dudley Philips’s bassline. The slow melodic buildup in The Lost Pearl are a close second.
Given my specific and limited context, I was especially interested in the jazz interpretation of Radiohead’s Bloom that shows up in this album. Ahmed and her band’s rendition of this syncopated electronic track acts as an interesting lens to view the track itself.
The more experimental side of the album hides in its minute-long interludes. While Misophonia hops over a metronomic percussion, in Inspiration Expiration, the vibraphone notes linger on, making way for the drone like horn etudes. In Whirling the vibraphone counterpoints a spiralling horn melody.
The album was released initially as separate units each consisting 3-4 tracks, enforcing not only a tracklist but also specific checkpoints to reflect on how the album functions. The interludes function well as sonic-refrains in that respect.
Yazz Ahmed has mentioned that La Saboteuse was as much about integrating her Arabic roots into her formal universe of jazz as it was about distancing from creative self-doubt by giving it a name, a story and an abstract concept album to work with. The album’s engaging tone and ebb and flow of energy reflects this creative process as it does its mixture of native and acquired aesthetics.