Miķelis Dzenuška + Victory Boulevard: The Fish Suite 02024 (Jersika Records JRA023-00-1100 – LP)
My knowledge of the Latvian jazz scene is lamentably sparse but it was, arguably, broadened by the information sheet inside the sturdy cover of this LP which relates to a different album by a different band. For more info about the release under review I resorted to googling the website of the record label, Jersika Records.
The band, Uzvaras Bulvaris (Victory Boulevard) is fronted by vibes player Miķelis Dzenuška who composed the Fish Suite that gives the album its title (Latvijas Zivis in Latvian) and which was inspired by Dzenuška’s passion for fishing. The suite was conceived as a Third Stream piece and there’s probably a joke there somewhere but I will eschew it.
Each of the suite’s five movements is intended to reflect the characteristics of their titular fish: perch, pike, chub, zander and trout. I can’t judge how successfully this has been achieved but the resulting music is attractive and varied (evidently most of these fish have several sides to their personality and the chub seems a bit of a rascal.)
The classical influences are well integrated and not immediately discernible. More obvious are the elements of funk, soul, fusion and even a touch of electronics. The website claims that only acoustic instruments are used, but that is clearly not the case: Matīss Žilinskis plays a Fender Rhodes, Svens Vilsons plays electric guitar and uses various effects pedals, and Daniels Pelcis uses an electric bass. Whatever, they form a crisp, tight unit that does an excellent job of providing drive and, along with the leader’s vibes, some sparkling and interesting textures.
If this band is representative of the current state of Latvian jazz it would seem that they have a very vibrant scene and I am tempted to explore it further.
Karl Latham: Living Standards II (Dropzone Jazz DZJ20241001)
The rock influences are much more pronounced on drummer Karl Latham’s album. If you worried about categories you’d probably call this jazz-influenced rock rather than rock-influenced jazz, and you might agree with the second part of the title of the third track, Led Zep Zeppelin’s What Is And What Should Never Be, which is given a laid-back funky reading. Then the band launches into a version of Eric Clapton’s Layla which, after some high-speed work, resolves into a rather beautiful final section spotlighting pianist Henry Hey capturing the spirit of the original recording of this yearning love song. Matte Kudasi, first recorded by King Crimson (the “prog rock” band that at times included Keith Tippett, Marc Charig and Nic Evans) maintains the gentler mood.
The album is a follow-up the first Living Standards album, released in 2016 and. Like its predecessor, you might say it does for rock classics what so many jazz musicians have done for the Great American Songbook over the decades. It opens with a rather beguiling version of The Doors’ Break On Through (To The Other Side) featuring crisp work by Wolfgang Lackershmid on vibes, and if that grabs you, the rest of the session will please you. Someone (a conductor on the Beeb I think) distinguished light music from classical music by saying that with the former the tunes matter, with the latter it’s what you do with them that counts. I suppose you might make a similar somewhat simplified distinction between rock and jazz, but this album convincingly demonstrates that in the right hands they can still merge very satisfyingly.
