Barry Guy - Phases Of The Night (Intakt, 2008) ****

For once I will let some paintings write the review. Barry Guy rejoins forces with pianist Marilyn Crispell and percussionist Paul Lytton, for four "compositions" that were inspired by paintings of Max Ernst, Dorothea Tanning, Yves Tanguy and Wilfredo Lam. I could not find the last painting on the internet, so I gave another one with a title that comes close (a doubtful practice, I know). The music reflects the paintings quite well : surreal, figurative yet moving to abstract, lots of open space inhabited by nightmarish creatures or images arising from our collective subconsciousness, conflicting elements trying to merge into coherence, and sometimes they manage to do that, often they don't, yet the overall effect remains imprinted in the brain as an unusal thing, a glimpse into another reality between waking and sleeping, questioning truth, revealing unexpected events, possibilities, harsh, unyielding, scary with an attractiveness of the personal experience of having seen, of having heard, of having been the witness of something unusual, something out of the ordinary, something irrational yet emotionally gripping ... a weird privilege.

Max Ernst - Phases Of The Night

Dorothea Tanning - Insomnias

Yves Tanguy - With My Shadow


Wilfredo Lam - Visible/Invisible

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