Déjà vu
Carlos Jimenez; Alexandre Cote; Pierre Francois; Dave Watts; Alain Bourgeois
CAJ Music CD005 (carlosjimenez1.bandcamp.com/album/d-j-vu)
What we are looking at is a rollicking album of eight songs written in the style of contrafacts (new pieces based on the chord changes of existing works). Its many styles include forays into jazz, folk, Berlin cabaret, Middle Eastern and chamber music of the post-serialist 20th century conservatoire. But to describe it as such gives the impression of overcooking when in fact the whole project is a masterpiece of subtlety.
Carlos Jiménez’s take on the spacy and the cool rippling horn-like tones from his guitar summon woodwind-like tones from Alexandre Côté’s alto saxophone which, along with Pierre François’ piano, Dave Waltz’s rumbling bass, and Alain Bourgeois’ world of drums, makes for something magically different. This is the contrafact-world of Carlos Jiménez’s Déjà vu. The performers’ long-limbed dreamworld of narratives crafted into glassy sheets of harmonic soundscapes with earthy melodies and rolling rhythms lift up these songs to elevated heights.
Jiménez pilots a tall ship that navigates deep and shallow waters. He rings in the moods and changes with compositions and improvisation; he dashes his music into rocks, breaks free and glides rippling through Deep Blue ink-black seas, with a Look At The Stars in a brave new sound world all his own.
