Chassol
– Indiamore (Tricatel)
CD/DL
Out Now
French pianist, composer and
arranger releases his new album.
There’s something exciting
about ground-breaking artists. A breath
of fresh air, a new lease of life, a headful of news ideas. Christophe Chassol certainly ticks all those
boxes. Indiamore could almost be a
modern day Tubular Bells, where its twenty-two tracks spread over four sides
weave and blend together intricately to create Indiamore.
The popular theme on the album seems to be the
fantastically clever harmonising of a voice or vocal with a high pitched
keyboard. The keyboard and voice play at
the same time, occasionally directly after each other and the result, whilst
difficult to describe, is clever. What
is perhaps a drawback, and a problem with the album is its repetitiveness. Like most jazz tracks, to the non-jazz fan,
it simply goes on a bit too long.
Take Dosidomifa Pt 1 for
instance, a lovely sitar and percussion number which could have its five-minute
halved making it a gorgeous piece.
Instead it gets tiresome and an end is never too soon.
The pairing together of jazz
elements and traditional Indian music is fascinating and added with soundbytes
of primary school classrooms and train stations and traffic it really is very
compelling, often working and making tracks which are very very good.
As part of the Paris Conservatory,
Chassol studied harmony and melody when he became aware of the likes of Ravi
Shankar and Indian ragas and song formations.
It was obviously pivotal in his musical development with all those elements
now combining in his own work.
There are several violin excerpts
too, most notably is Fiddler In The Street, a near prog-rock effort albeit
shorter than the norm and therefore more palatable! Conversely, there are also several tracks
which may have been improved if they
were longer and had been able to evolve, Drumachine is case in point as a rolling
procession of carnival percussion is cut short at just thirty seconds, and
Ultratheka No 2 again unfolds with whistles, voices, percussion and keyboards
but disappears at less than two minutes.
There’s no doubt that Chassol
is a clever man, and potentially a musical revolutionary. With some small adjustments Indiamore could
be a brilliant album, unfortunately these small adjustments are slightly
wanting but do at least give an insight into something which could be rather
exciting.
8.5/10
Links
Tricatel Records
Chassol website
Chassol on Twitter
Published on Louder Than War 2/09/14 - here
Links
Tricatel Records
Chassol website
Chassol on Twitter
Published on Louder Than War 2/09/14 - here
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