COLLOCUTOR - Continuation

A composer and saxophonist with a classical training from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London, Tamar Osborn leads Collocutor, a band that has won over critics and audiences alike with a modal jazz shaded by refined nuance of Afrobeat, fuelled by a 1970s jazz spirituality, and enriched by its contamination with polyphonic choral music and Indian classical music.

For the third album, “Continuation”, Osborn puts the full nine-piece line-up on hold. With two percussionists (Magnus Mehta and Afla Sackey) and trumpeter Simon Finch out of the ensemble, the instrumental setup becomes softer, suspended. For the artist, it is a creative situation meant to depict the different emotional states triggered by the pain of loss and grief.

There are just six tracks, following a creative arc that moves from peace and reflection (“Deep Peace”) toward an anxious state, nurtured by subtle instrumental and thematic shifts (“Continuation”), before the contamination of rhythm releases an afro-jazz spiritual trance (“Pause”) that erupts (“The Angry One”) and then falls back into line (“Lost And Found”, “Pause Reprise”). 

The band's execution is exemplary: strings recorded in a Baptist church in London give the opening track “Deep Peace” ample breathing room, Tibetan percussion introduces a dialogue between wind instruments (Josephine Davies and Tamar Osborn), and the alchemical title track then celebrates a festival of sound rich in endless detail (guitar, bass, flute, sax, percussion and polyphonic voices). The first moment of expressive ecstasy arrives with the hypnotic “Pause”, where electronics, drone music, and guitar and sax solos coexist, at times ragged, at times denser.

At this point it is necessary to briefly introduce the other protagonists: the already mentioned saxophonist Mike Lesirge (Django Bates, Billy Cobham, Erykah Badu, Phoenix City All-Stars, Hackney Colliery Band), blues guitarist Marco Piccioni (Julia Biel, Cleveland Watkiss, Lekan Babalola and Kate Luxmoore), bassist Suman Joshi (whose versatile résumé includes the Dele Sosimi Afrobeat Orchestra, the jazz-punk group The Destroyers, the folk-jazz of Trio Manouche and the reggae-ska of Maroon Town), the other saxophonist Josephine Davies (Jamie Cullum, the BBC Band, and the Ronnie Scott's Vanguard Band), and the only drummer left in play for this record, Maurizio Ravalico (Jamiroquai, Paul McCartney, James Taylor, Greg Osby, Kaidi Tatham, Dego McFarland, Finn Peters, Shabaka Huchkins).

With this varied technical and stylistic axis, the cocktail of funk, jazz, punk, ethnic sounds and alt-rock-tinged improvisation in the abrasive “The Angry One” sounds like a blazing expression of all the group's creative peculiarities, a wild fragment of what is, in every sense, a true jazz-inflected suite.

The following “Lost And Found” is therefore the apex, the alchemical result of a search that is at once inward and visceral, a minimal sonic nemesis driven by a biting sax solo and the soothing touch of the flute.

Don't be fooled by the title “Pause Reprise”: the apparent return to the meditation and solitude of the opening tracks does not have the same flavour nor the same sonic figuration. Something has happened over these thirty-nine minutes; tension has taken possession of peace, and the material has become incandescent, despite its evident calm.

Collocutor's new album is an artistic experience that leaves its mark and is unlikely to leave the listener's imagination. “Continuation” is one of those records destined to occupy your dreams: after listening to it, music will no longer sound the same.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

10/05/2020