18 monologues élastiques - Samuel Blaser
18 monologues élastiques
Samuel Blaser
Blaser Music BMO 18 CD (samuelblaser.bandcamp.com/album/18-monologues-lastiques)
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Missing Marc Suetterlyn - Listen on Dropbox
Six huit sur sept - Listen on Dropbox
Waedamah - Listen on Dropbox
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If singular extemporization is a challenge for musicians when they have bellows, buttons and a keyboard at their disposal or multiple woodwind keys, imagine how it is improvising with nothing but three valves, a manipulating slide and a body tube. But that’s what Swiss trombonist Samuel Blaser does on 18 monologues élastiques (Blaser Music BMO 18 CD samuelblaser.bandcamp.com/album/18-monologues-lastiques). Not the first to do so, and actually his second solo disc, these monologues are even more unique. That’s because he recorded the album while walking through multiple acoustically-designed areas in Berlin’s famous Funkhaus studio complex. With tracks lasting from 32 seconds to six minutes, the building’s spatial qualities are also adapted to the creation. At points you hear footfalls as he enters a space along with brass textures moving from distant to close up. Sometimes trombone output reflects the location as on Torture Room when detached mouthpiece whistles become murmuring howls and rumbling snarls as brass metal is rubbed against the floorboards. Grand 8 features wide gutbucket slurs that reflect back from the walls, with here and on other tracks antiphonic responses taking two identities, one slurry and horizontal the other fragmented. The speedy 78 instead of 45 is double- tongued, staccato and almost martial, as notes refract onto themselves and slither up to prestissimo. Meanwhile La promesse de l’aube is built around speedy glissandi that when moderated become rounded and almost mellow, but when emphasized turn to triplets. Oddly enough the concluding Waedamah is so linear that the mid-range and moderated tones nearly replicate lyrical jazz standards. However brass pressure is adumbrated on the extended Le grand numéro as the detached slide is banged against the trombone’s body to create metallic clanks as prestissimo yelps echo off the studio walls, then gradually thicken and widen as they bend into subterranean tones.