Label: RareNoise, 2019
Personnel - Lorenzo Feliciati: electric fretted and fretless bass, keyboards, samples and soundesign, electric guitar; Michele Rabbia: drums, electronics + guests - Cuong Vu: trumpet; Andy Sheppard: sax; Rita Marcotulli: piano; Alessandro Gwis: piano; Roy Powell: Hammond organ, Moog, keyboards.
Italian bassist Lorenzo Feliciati teams up with fellow countryman drummer Michele Rabbia on Antikythera, his seventh release on progressive music label RareNoise. The title refers to an ancient Greek mechanism that was used to predict astronomical positions and eclipses. Hence, the music is firmly grounded in lingering automations, many times shaped as soundscapes, with technology and improvisation as inextricable allies. A few tunes feature renowned guest artists clamping their improvisatory ideas into the substrata sculpted by the pair of sound architects. This procedure was of extreme importance, not only to give melodic focus to the setting, but also for timbral diversification.
Things get off to a start with the cinematic theme “Irregular Orbit”, which, full of atmosphere, blooms with ambient droning, electronic trappings, and sparkling cymbal chatters that gain further preponderance as electric bass patterns gradually develop. This piece brings pianist Alessandro Gwis to the forefront, whose intimate maneuvers also show up on the ear-pleasing “Perigee”, in which a percolating guitar soothes the soul.
Rita Marcotulli is another pianist featured on the album, giving her notable contribution on three tunes, two of which melodically fortified by British saxophonist Andy Sheppard. His bright-toned soprano comes to the fore on the hip-hopish “223 Teeth”, straddling on top of a simple bass pedal in seven yet finding room for cascading piano replications and vocal samples, while his breathy tenor playing can be heard for a short time on the smooth “Parapegma”. The textural silkiness of this somewhat sensual piece denotes indisputable tango influences.
Other pieces like “Prochronistic” and “Sidereal”, both featuring the emphatic trumpeter Cuong Vu as a source of light, promote an accessible experimentalism. Cautiously adventurous and noir, the former remains in a perpetual rhythmic state of pendulousness for nearly four minutes before emphasizing the trumpet within a less dense electronic context; the latter, lightly funkified by the bass and beat-oriented, throws the spotlight on Marcotulli’s piano - in its pure and prepared forms - before segueing into a section filled with synth and electric guitar sounds.
Antikythera feels sketchy and sometimes choppily edited, but still provides immersive soundscapes with the right amount of abstraction to please fans of a warped, moderately dark jazz with an inclination for dub and experimental ambient.
Grade B
Favorite Tracks:
01- Irregular Orbit ► 04 - Prochronistic ► 05 - Sidereal