By Gregg Miller
Sax/piano duo. Breathe. This is the record you want on when you need a meditative stretch, immersion into a total atmosphere, cleansing, transfixing, liberating, nothing to harsh your buzz.
It’s Rich Pellegrin’s record, yet Neil Welch is the leading light, saxophone (soprano & tenor) playing the lead vocal. Pellegrin lays the foundation from which Welch soars and dips, in the clouds, in the valleys, with the winds.
So many gorgeous moments on this record, where extended technique meets the lush, reverberant piano in the room. Although the allusions of the track titles are to space-time out in nature (ravine, canyon, bluff, cave), I find myself mostly tuned into the richness of the actual instruments, the deep respect of the piano’s depths, the singingness of the horns, keys opening and closing, an interiority reflected back in the reverb. I asked Pellegrin over email about the reverb:
“I spent an incredible amount of time with the engineer working on the reverb in particular. Each track has its own individual reverb profile that attempts to match the type of landscape I had in mind. The canyon tracks have tremendous amounts of added reverb, for example. In addition, the reverb envelope was often adjusted throughout each track to create various effects. ... Sculpting the sound of wind, birds flying overhead, etc. All those effects you hear on the album were meticulously crafted in the studio. Not overdubs or anything like that, but just sculpting the original recorded sounds.”
If you’re used to hearing the angular, whiplash turns of phrase and muscularity powered by Chris Icasiano’s relentless drumming on Welch’s Bad Luck recordings, you’ll catch here a different phase of Welch’s sound palette, one we in Seattle have been exposed to over the last many years in his live performances where he often foregrounds pitchless, engagingly expressive air.
The record opens with a leaping, breathy soprano sax solo line as characteristically rich as anything Welch has recorded. In general the saxophone is very closely mic’ed, catching the percussiveness of the keywork, the fluctuations of breath and tone. “Cave” is particularly good on this, where a breathing body meets and makes resonant the resistance of cane and brass. “Ravine” is a bit bluesy. “Field (day)” adds the element of paper in the prepared piano, adding a percussive buzzing like an African morning. “Canyon (day)” and “Canyon (night)” are highlights, with Welch warping and varying his tone.
Pellegrin’s delicate hammering marks out space; Welch’s saxophone traverses it. A lovely pairing.
Q. I hear Bill Evans' “Peace Piece” here (plus strains of Jan Garbarek in Neil’s playing).
Yes, I've listened to “Peace piece” many times. I do like Bill Evans a lot, but he has not been a primary influence on me. What you might be hearing is a lot of influence from early 20th-century classical music that Evans and I both share. And to that point, let me say that Messiaen's music has influenced me a lot, and I hear a lot of Messiaen's influence in "Peace Piece" as well. One of the overriding features of Messiaen's music is the depiction of birdsong; Evans depicts birdsong in that piece. Topography also depicts birds quite a bit, both in the saxophone and the piano, for example, the rising piano motif in "Stream" depicts the Swainson's Thrush. I'm not surprised that you hear strains of Jan Garbarek in Neil's playing. I was absolutely going for an ECM type of sound with this project, so that steered Neil a little more into Garbarek's orbit.
Q. How much on this recording is written out composition, how much improvisation? Is the written part notes, chords, graphic images, text?
I had sketches for almost all of the pieces. Some of the sketches were very loose, and without any musical notation, but I still had a strong vision for each of them. Some of the tracks were purely improvised, but still came from a place of exploring the themes of the album. For pieces like "Stream," "Canyon (night)," and "Marsh," I had specific motives or pitches written down for myself to play exclusively, because those pieces are meant pretty literally as depictions of the sounds in certain types of natural areas. Those sketches gave pitch material only for the piano; they did not dictate what Neil was to play. He was the "respondent" in terms of the creative dynamic. Neil responded to my overall vision for the project, as well as specific ideas or instructions I gave him for individual pieces.
Q. What’s your next project?
The album I'm recording next week [December, 2024] is with my regular Seattle quintet-- Neil Welch (Bad Luck), R. Scott Morning (Polyrhythmics), Evan Flory-Barnes (Macklemore, Industrial Revelatoin), and Chris Icasiano (Fleet Foxes, Bad Luck). It is going to be fairly radical in that I will be treating the piano like a percussion instrument most of the time. ... Many of the pieces will have a minimalist, ECM-type vibe. We recorded a cover of Steve Reich's "Piano Phase" on my first album, Three-Part Odyssey. This new album will be very much in that vein.
There’s a (gorgeous) 3 minute video trailer of Topography here:
0 comments:
Post a Comment