Roberto Bonati Madreperla Trio - Parfois la nuit

R

Parma Frontière PF-CD016

These Italian musicians do not just circle pleasing around each other and craft a solemn flow. Even when the double bass has a ‘ground’ role, they are acting as three equals that amplify each other in subtle and shining way. Guitarist Luca Perciballi works wonders in depth while succeeding in remaining restrained on the surface at crucial moments. 

The three musicians constantly lead and seduce each other into new shifts and moods. They do this with contrapuntal sophisticated timing which lends the music a rich inner rhythmic dynamics and agility. They also work with sub-articulation and delay tactics in a dramatic built up in which eight longer pieces, nocturnal island-zones, are interspersed by bridging dream fragments articulated in various dream language expressivities. It is all expressivity with a value or valence in the unfolding dramatic zone, no straight-up fillibuster full of nice somersaulting distortionozzo. Working with returning motifs, it follows and touches upon the flickering mysteries of the inner and outer night shadows’ shifting.

Parfois la nuit est difficile 
On ne comprend pas, parfois, 
Avec sa couleur, ses lumières, 
Ses ténèbres joyeuses, le noir de son obscurité, 
Le bruit de la pluie, l'aube qui viendra. 
Parfois la nuit est suspendue, 
Quelque fois elle a une grâce particulière, 
Une beauté douloureuse, toujours inconnue

The pieces: Parfois la unit - Chiara è la notte - Rouge - Night Village - Folk - Madreperla - And He Paints Her Blue - May Love

The dreams: Danza d’amore - the Getaway - the Fall - the Fight - Weird Meetings - Flying Shadows

The gist in this music is not arbitrary. It however leaves enough to listeners' imagination when they immerse within this challenging narrative contextualisation.

Traveling along the 14 pieces of the album’s deeply crafted mobile soundscapes can be passed and experienced in cinemascope. Here just a few hints...

“Rouge” is indeed a red-hot piece with southern Tammurriata-like  undertones and goes into full embers of all three instruments. “Night Village” is a thoroughly acoustically shaped gem that would be loved by Jon Hassell. Bonati’s arco-play here is, as in “Chiara a la notte”, a class of its own.

Dream-piece no. 4 “the Fight” swirls with rough and raw free sounds that pour into the hymnic, gripping “Madreperla”. Dream-piece no.5 “Weird Meetings” is spooky reminding of everything and nothing. “And He Paints Her Blue” is a truly poetic title for a piece the music of which increases the nocturnal enigma. The sound in this piece reveals a fascinating deep absorption and southern transformation of the tone of voice of Jan Garbarek in Gabriele Fava’s playing and Gary Peacock’s in Roberto Bonati’s. By the way, not only Peacock is resonating on this album, but also Charlie Haden, for example in “May Love”, the final piece). It is strongly them and simultaneously transformed into something new. It is precisely this what makes it so strong and thrilling.

I wonder how the trio approached it to ‘carve’ out this narrative scenery, how they dissected these wondrous sounds out of the mental and physical space. The music is shaped with/from sounds in their natural places, their ‘homes’. There are no vagrant sounds. From the handling of the here indicated elements and properties in the creational process of the music its great coherence and captivating impact resulted.

Tekst en foto's © Henning Bolte

Musicians:
Roberto Bonati double bass, composition
Gabriele Fava tenor and soprano saxophone
Luca Perciballi guitar, electronics

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