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| Andy Sheppard Melody Gainsbourg Band – 23/11/08 Purcell Room, LJF |
| Thursday, 27 November 2008 11:02 | |||||||
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Serge Gainsbourg: poet, musician and iconoclast. Andy Sheppard’s latest project, Melody Gainsbourg uses material by this icon of French counter-culture. It will not be to everyone’s taste but it certainly provided compelling entertainment. The performance featured an imaginative interpretation of the familiar classic, “Je t’aime” in which bass guitarist, Michel Benita, anchored the sextet with a strong rock feel. Angelo Bruschini, guitarist of Massive Attack fame, contributed with some edgy and illuminating harmonies which provided a platform for guitarist, Nguyên Lê to launch into a solo. It began with incisive jazz/rock phrases, classical South-East Asian scales and dreamy chord sustains. Using electronic echoes and reverb it developed towards a climax imbued with dense harmonic textures and banshee-like screams. Focus then shifted to the man described as “possibly the coolest looking drummer in Jazz right now,” Seb Rochford, whose solo began with a jaunty funk shuffle. The tension built as he manoeuvred the beat in and out of tempo while retaining melodic coherence. On tenor saxophone, Sheppard’s delivery of the melody was heart-felt and as it developed he punctuated it with shouts and kisses through his horn. The post-Coltrane “sheets of sound” method combined with a distinctive poise and ability to weave melodic phrases into the product. Sporadically a crimson red light would descend onto the stage as a precursor for the arrival of spoken word artist, Ma Chenka. She would drift onto the stage with an air of enigmatic Gallic nonchalance like some sort of contemptuous nymph and deliver lyrics with a neo-noir, breathy eroticism. Gainsbourg once quipped, “Ugliness is in a way superior to beauty because it lasts.” Even though aspects of this performance may invite ridicule, musically it inspires excitement and moments of beauty that last with the listener long after the end of the performance. Review – Joseph KassmanTod
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