Luis Vicente, Seppe Gebruers & Onno Govaert - Room With No Name (Fundacja Słuchaj, 2022)

By Stef Gijssels

We already reviewed two excellent albums by Portuguese trumpeter Luis Vicente earlier this year: the brilliant "Dog Star" and the mysterious "Mata Mata" by Scolari.

Two more of his albums deserve attention: the recent "Room with No Name" and "Made of Mist" from last year.

Luis Vicente, Seppe Gebruers & Onno Govaert - Room With No Name (Fundacja Słuchaj, 2022)

In 2018, we already indicated our appreciation of the the trio consisting of Luis Vicente on trumpet, Seppe Gebruers on piano and Onno Govaert on drums for their "Live At Ljublijana". 

This album was recorded on July 10th 2019, live at the Museu Nacional de Machado de Castro in Coimbra, Portugal. The trio brings us two fully improvised pieces, their music a wonderful mix of abstract sound, emotional delivery, inventive interaction and truly collective creation. The music is rich and treats us to meandering and ever changing soundscapes of quiet intensity and disciplined power, without losing the coherence of the total sound, which is almost as much indebted to avant-garde classical music as it is to jazz, easily blending forms and harmonics into something uniquely their own, possibly also the consequence of the specific differences between the three musicians.

At times Gebruers sets the tone, with abstract chord changes, defying patterns, sometimes in long interplay with Govaert, whose percussive cleverness adds character but can also change the course of the improvisation. Vicente is his usual self in this context: virtuoso, listening, working on the total colour of the music, expressive and impressive. 

The overall sound is fresh and deep at the same time. 

Again an easy to recommend album. 

Available from Bandcamp. 

Watch a video by the trio, performed on April 15, 2022.

Luis Vicente & Vasco Trilla - Made Of Mist (577 Records, 2021)

A review of this album was also long due. On "Made of Mist" both artists - Vicente on trumpet and Trilla on percussion - create an ephemeral sonic universe that explains the title. Percussion does not sound like percussion, but rather by extended single tones extracted from cymbals, scraping on skin, shuffling noises and other timbral explorations. 

On the opening track, the texture is light, fragile, vulnerable even. Vicente's muted and moaning trumpet adds to the sense of serenity and beauty. But it does not stay that way "Esglai" - a Catalan word for fear, fright, a sudden danger - leads to a very agitated and intense interaction that somehow resolves into a certain calm near the end. 

I will not describe every track, which is also quite illusory considering the abstract nature of the pieces. The album is excellent: both artists feel each other blindly, managing to explore new sounds, elevating music to a higher level of abstraction without losing the human aspect of it, and both Vicente and Trilla are true masters of integrating emotion in the creation of new forms. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

And as an extra we give you another video with both musicians, recorded in the Netherlands in 2019.