Luis Vicente, Pinheiro, Faustino & Franco - Clocks & Clouds (FMR, 2014) ****½

By Stef

You can rationalise it any way you want, but some people just have 'it', and this 'it' is the unnameable gene of musical sensitivity, the undecipherable element of sonic quality, the unfathomable depth of creative art, the enigmatic possession of sound, the ineffable mysticism of spontaneous interaction, the puzzling poetry of polychromatic pointillism, the baffling blasts of beatic beauty, the hermetic harmonies of hoarse hymns, the syncretic swing of soaring songs. You get it. These guys have it. In spades.

Who are they? Luis Vicente on trumpet (yes, again! as in Fail Better), Rodrigo Pinheiro on piano and Hernano Faustino on bass (yes, again too, both from RED Trio), and Marco Franco on drums, unknown to me but now no longer.

They meet, they improvise, and they create music with one voice, and this on each piece, as if rehearsed : coherent, solid, well-paced, deep, full of subtle interaction, full of respect and openness to each other without moving away from the core concept, keeping the focus intact, yet free to move, to explore, to challenge and to be creative. Does it sound difficult? It is difficult. They not only move as one, and sound as one, but the music has this inherent emotional beauty that is not a sought effect, but an integral quality of these artists' skills, yet one that can only appear through interplay with like-minded artists having the same skills, the result of their love for sound and music, and that love, that is far beyond demonstrating skills, or virtuoso pyrotechnics, is probably the core essence of 'it', this mysterious marrow of musical magic, this enigmatic essence of expressive aesthetics, this brilliant expansiveness of breathtaking intimacy.