Music Meant to Be: A Quartet Made in Kraków

Five minutes of explosive progressive jazz-rock. Yeah!
From the Moving Out concert series.
Video Courtesy of Tomasz Wełna

The band served up a tour-de-force of vocal-free eclectic instrumental jams and hypnotic ethno jazz. The first of two sets saw the group veer towards the fringes of free jazz, but they were not afraid to also dabble in more progressive rock drones, with swirling and visceral sax interjections from Ethan Smith that jolted the listener out of their dreamy reverie. There was space and colour here in the floating improvisational structures of their own compositions, and the music’s meandering twists and turns always focused the listeners’ attention.  Such an intuitive sense of dynamic and musical understanding between the members was striking. They even performed a fine cover of an Alice Coltrane and Joe Henderson song, Earth, toward the concluding part of their set.

The second set was a rather different beast, perhaps because the audience may have imbibed more than they should have, or the band had relaxed into a familiar groove and mood around which they all firmly coalesced. Either way, the music they served up started to veer toward the darker end of the spectrum – swirling euphoria, doomish overtones, and layers of sounds conjured a sense of dread. Even though the nod to Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk remained, as was the overt ethno-funk dimension to their ouevre (particularly on the sublime Turkish-inspired Dertlii Dolap by Ozgur Baba and a great Tinariwen cover,) they were intent on delving into the mania of the progressive and psych-rock canon, with great interplay between the sax and guitar in various call and responses between Smith and Tworzydło. As Smith remarked, there really is a striking intuitive commonality to the musical language they speak, and they reacted to each other’s arrangements and riffs as they happened – in real time. When the South African breathed voice to his flute, I thought of Ian Anderson’s Jethro Tull and other nostalgic echoes from the distant past like King Crimson. That said, the present was also there as it should be, shining through in the tasteful yet minimal guitar licks of Tworzydło, who, replete with the most ostentatious pink tie-dyed flares, had a lovely clean tone with plenty of reverb, the sound of which is reminiscent of the haunting soul funk psychedelia of contemporary outfit Khruangbin. I have seen plenty of bass players in Kraków over the years, but there is something so visceral about the masterful funk-rock playing of Spendel. He effortlessly channels the spirit of both Bootsy Collins and John Paul Jones, without ever making it sound kitschy or over indulgent for he also knows when to rein it in. Together with the solid backbone of Bobik’s percussive fills, they make a formidable rhythm section.