Alen Ilijic - I Have No CoordiNATION

Courtesy of http://www.ninetyandninerecords.com/

Normally when writing about the art that adorns album covers we have to consider both the artist who created the artwork and those responsible for the music. Here we have an album and artist who is responsible for the whole process. Alen Ilijic is the man, I Have No CoordiNATION released on Ninety and Nine records in May 2014 is the album. He breaks the linear relationship between Music and Art too, neither one inspired the other, the cart doesn't come before the horse because both are one and the same.

Alen Ilijic

Alen Ilijic was born in the Macedonian 'Las Vegas' Gevgelija in 1975 and is both an avant-garde composer and multimedia artist. Formative years were spent in England studying film music at City of Westminster College but home is now Serbia where he completed his education in composition, orchestration, electronic music and sound engineering at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade.

Zelot by Alen Ilijic

Although the album, I Have No CoordiNATION, is a retrospective of Ilijic's talents over more than a decade (1999-2013) it is the album's art that represents a slap in the face of time itself. It signifies the moment that Ilijic woke from surgery, and before his eyes appeared a bright red cross as the nurse cojouled him. I am no doctor but this album asks that you awaken your senses too. This artwork was shown at the ’NOISYGENES’ exhibition (Belgrade 2014),which included abstract-expressionist painting and performance to help both viewer and artist examine the concept of noise.

Alen Ilijic told me about some of his inspirations, including a photo of a Victorian ’Penny sit-up’ that appears on the back of the CD.



Penny sit-up

"The story about homeless shelter was very unusual, and I immediately equated to it personally. What made this shelter unique was that in exchange for a penny, clients would be allowed to sit on a bench in a reasonably warm room all night long. Moreover, they were not allowed to lie down and sleep on the bench. At the same time, I imagined the sound of their talk and the shelter in general, ranging trough various dynamic levels and other musical parameters which can be found in my compositions."

Alen Ilijic - Gavrilov put

A favourite from the album is My Suspicious Look which holds the tension and drama from Ilijic's film score training. The listener occupies a space where the other inhabitants actions are amplified. Casual steps take on an unknown significance, as does that of fumbling fingers in a pocket or the stirring of a cup. A magnetic field keeps the protagonists apart so that deepening shadows and hate are also exaggerated. An escape is needed, a crashing of incidental delights as we run to a space where our thoughts are our own once again.

Listen to the title track of Alen Ilijic's I Have No CoordiNATION below and keep and eye out for a new book about his work by art historian, curator and Alen's wife, Milica Ilijic.

AL.

 

Giuseppe Solinas Scerbo: D'Agaro - Mella - Rivagli Trio's Bangalore

Bangalore album cover by Giuseppe Solinas,  AKA Scerbo

It is with bubbling excitement that I introduce you to the artwork of Giuseppe Solinas under his moniker of Scerbo. His art graces the new album, Bangalore, from D'Agaro - Mella - Rivagli Trio on the New York label Ninety and Nine records. Released at the end of last year (03/11/2014) it is a musical encounter between three established musicians on the Italian jazz scene. There is an enthusiasm which straddles original compositions and those of Leadbelly, Charlie Mariano and south African sax player Sean Bergin. The spirit of improvisation and sense of adventure lives on through this album and its artist. 



Scerbo

The artist Scerbo was born in Biella, Piedmont on Valentines Day 1984 and has been active on the art scene since 2007. His route to art passed along the path of philosophy, which he studied at the Vercelli University. Since then he has exhibited in Turin, Ferrara, Cigliano and most recently Rome in 2014. The curator, critic and journalist Danilo Jon Scotta writes about Scerbo, "The use of colour remains the main protagonist in his work, it is an interpreter of a renewed awareness." (excuse my basic translation skills from Italian to English)

Courtesy of Scerbo

Colour and energy are the first impression of Scerbo work and it seems they sit well together with the music of D'Agaro - Mella - Rivagli. The original album cover image is titled Soffio (Breath) and the idea came to Scerbo while listening to the music in the winery where he works. There was still plenty of room for improvisation on the canvas on which it was created, an act which reflects the spirit of the music.

"I was inspired by the symmetry between environment and Trio. I tried to link the idea of warmth through my spontaneous use of red, and to the concept of improvisation with the free and gestural act of the graphite." Scerbo
 



Aldo Mella (left), Elio Rivagli (centre), Daniele D'Agaro (right)

The trio of musicians on Bangalore are Daniele D'Agaro (tenor sax, clarinet and Bass clarinet), Aldo Mella (double bass) and Elio Rivagli (drums). It was recorded at Sound Sistemi Studio (Santhià Italy) by Paolo Guercio in June 11th 2013.

The story starts with Aldo Mella who has been a stalwart of Turin's jazz scene since the 1980's. He earned his stripes in the same jazz hotbeds as Elio Rivagli, working together they became the 'go to' men in the studio as well as touring and recording with the best in Italian and international music. Although Daniele D'Agaro garnered critical acclaim in his native Italy with Best Reedman in consecutive years (2007 & 2008) it is his explosive time on the Amsterdam jazz scene which earns him the respect of jazz lovers throughout the world.

 

Courtesy of Scerbo

Aldo Mella explains what drew the trio to their preferred album cover image,

 

 "Those three chairs, which lodge in our imaginations, speak of the ancient and takes the listener to the magic world of India with colours that recall the earth. The two compositions that describe the atmosphere of the picture best are Bangalore and Haiti."

 

 

Listen to the title tune Bangalore and it makes it's entrance through a series of doorways, opening out onto a colourful tapestry of lanes and snaking corridors. It is playfully escapist with an energetic edge that relaxes into a colonial opulence. You feel it harks back to an era where what was said by a person was as important as what was left unsaid. There is a luxuriance and a beautiful simplicity that makes it a fertile bed for our imaginations.

 

Courtesy of Scerbo

Haiti in contrast has more of a rolling menace, it plays upon the listener's thoughts and fears. It is an oozing swamp of a tune, a bog which threatens to capture and possibly cut. There are beasts that lurk here in this viscous world, lumbering shapes that could be humorous if it weren't for the threat of their deadly intent. People inhabit the shadows too and keep out of your way, making you walk this composition alone.

 

You can find out more about the album and the D'Agaro - Mella - Rivagli Trio on the Ninety and Nine website - www.ninetyandninerecords.com/

 

Listen to the title track Bangalore below.
AL

Eyebrow - Garden City - album inspiration

Typography and additional design is by Jason Ewing at
The Group of Seven www.thegroupofseven.co.uk

Pete Judge - Jazz Café 05/03/2014

Today is the official release of Eyebrow's album Garden City on the New York label Ninety and Nine Records. Here at Art of Jazz we like to champion the art and artist's who help us visualise the music. Paul Wigen's it seems is our Renaissance Man of the day. He provides us not only with drums, percussion and violin on the album but also the photographs that adorn the 6 page CD sleeve.




Photo - Paul Wigens

Eyebrow is a trumpet and drums duo based in Bristol, UK, formed in 2009. Its music evolves out of improvisations which are reassembled into structured pieces. Paul Wigens studied with American jazz drummer Clifford Jarvis (Sun Ra/Archie Shepp/Pharoah Saunders) and has played with Grand Drive, The Blue Aeroplanes, Limbo, Cousteau and alongside the warped genius of Ted Milton in Blurt. 
Pete Judge recently played at the Jazz Café here in London with Get The Blessing where I had the pleasure of drawing him live. He has also composed music for film & live ensemble projects for Shetland Arts Trust, Portland Royal Manor Theatre, Gloucester Royal Hospital, Bristol’s Brunel 200 and Aberystwyth Silver Band.



The photos which wrap the Garden City album together were all taken by Paul Wigens. He cites the Hipgnosis album art of the 1970's as an influence but Eyebrow's is much more subtle. No melting face of Peter Gabriel or chewing gum breast like the Scorpions. The images talk of the detail and subtlety amongst a harsher landscape. Underneath the clod of grass on the cover is hidden a brick. The album's concepts are those of growth and decay, and the transitory narrative of Nature’s cycle. The title "Garden City’ refers to the ambitious town planning movement whose self-contained communities were surrounded by greenbelts of land, containing proportionate areas of residences, industry and agriculture.



album centrefold

Paul explains "The cardboard packaging reminds me of 1960s brutalist architecture and my parents had a red Heinkel bubble car which I remember travelling in as a child (It konked out in the end and dad gave it away to the milkman). I put them together in homage to my birthplace of Stevenage New Town; one of a number built north of London following WW2 to alleviate housing shortages."

Garden City has 7 tunes that populate the album with varying degrees of city, industry and agriculture. Blind Summit has a cinematic dystopian edge which belies the utopian ideals of our Garden City theme. It is a steely assessment by a being (animal or human?) purveying its domain. There is control and superiority emphasised by Wigen's drums, and a toll of bell across hollow landscape.



Unused album photo  -
Paul Wigens

As we traverse Eyebrow's world along Golden Road there is a distortion that affects you physically. Your body feels like it is being made into jam. It simmers, squeezes and amongst the viscosity there is a sweet tang. Mr Choppy brings back the mean beat after the refreshing wash of Pete Judge on the preceding Lustre. Choppy challenges you to makes everyday living into a piece of performance art if you are willing to play the game. Slow your pace to that of the music, be complicit in the pleasure of doing this for yourself, for your body, experience the new Bristolian Tai Chi.

The 13 minute Thaw is a sawing, repetitive piece that reflects the gentle textures of the album art. Mosses, lichens and imperfections are flattened to pattern. Amongst the shards of drums sit the soft dewy beds of a pulse. Scrim is an impressive swell of a much larger force that features the rumbling Jim Barr (Bass guitar and pedals). It is a living mountain of a tune. An elder god is contained within it. Garden City ends with a puzzle in Pinch Point. The thought wanders the mind like it was trapped within a Perspex 3D maze until the inevitable pinch, the moment which asks as many questions as it answers.

Pete Judge sums up the album, "the title and the artwork suggest, in a beautifully succinct way, the city-dweller’s search for space and wildness. We both live in Bristol, a city which still has at least one muddy boot in the farmland that surrounds it. Eyebrow’s music seems built on the interlocking patterns of buildings and traffic movements, but also stretches out and up, journeying slowly through real and imagined landscapes."

Listen for yourself (below) or see Eyebrow release the album on Sunday 30th November at The Brewery Theatre, featuring live visuals from Kathy Hinde, and special musical guests Jim Barr (Get The Blessing, Portishead) and Tim Allen (Bat For Lashes).
8pm, £8 (£6 concessions).

AL.

Tammy Payne - Viva Outsider

Marko Miladinović artwork

New York label, Ninety and Nine records, have done it again. If their musical releases are as true and reflective of their ethos then they will be an innovative force for years to come. Their latest CD release (27/10/2014) is from Tammy Payne, whose album art has been created by Marko Miladinović. The name may be familiar from his work with Serbian foursome EYOT who recently released their Similarity album. Miladinović's isn't a one-trick pony, his broad portfolio includes forays into photography, art and design. He currently works at the Centre for Culture and Arts in his hometown of Aleksinac, Serbia where he was born in 1981. He has won several awards for his painting and photography, with over 20 international exhibitions under his belt.


Jim Barr - Get the blessing

Tammy Payne is a chameleon. Under the wings of Gilles Peterson she released “Take Me Now” in 1991 on the Talkin Loud label but this wasn't where her talents were destined to land. An expansive journey continued for the next 20 years, working with Sissi, Bristol sound originators Smith And Mighty, Boca 45 and Jukes. My ears pricked up when she created the earthy album of covers/standards, 'Don't Think Twice', on Edition Records in 2010. The album included drummer Dylan Howe ( The Blockheads ),bassist Jim Barr (Get The Blessing ), Dan Moore on keyboards ( Pee Wee Ellis, Andy Shepherd ) and Neil Smith. The organ work of Dan Moore is worth hearing alongside Tammy Payne's emotionally threaded voice.



Tammy Payne

As you would imagine the title track on today's release, 'Viva Outsider' is also the inspiration for Marko Miladinović's artwork. Miladinović has always had a strong connection to the landscape and here he also plays with one of his favourite toys, Scale. The topographical mountain range that is unfurled beneath us is isolated by a desert world around it. Although this talks of vastness and height it could just as easy be a crumpled sheet of paper destined for the bin. Discarded words, too painful for the everyday eye to read.

Tammy Payne sees the artwork from a bird's eye view,
"I like the way the "outsider" has been elevated to the position of a creature that has an aerial view - the bird. This empowers the outsider and gives her the power of flight, a good view, and the feeling she can circle the area in a predatory fashion."

Marko Miladinović

The title track 'Viva Outsider' mirrors the soaring prairie, a vastness that is exaggerated by Payne's laconic vocals. Although there are Americana vistas in this work, the pulsing unease is one of Lynchian proportions. Planting us firmly in this current time of disintegration. In aonther track, 'Some People', you hear the iron fence that keeps us from each other's predatory instincts, the heat from the yard that is relentless.

The foreignness of 'Viva Outsider' seeps into the bones of this recording. It is the measured pace that you have to adopt in warmer climes. Those hotter territories where passions are barely contained and you sense emotional eruptions are imminent. Yet everything is hidden behind closed doors.

Marko Miladinović's Art

Tammy Payne told me about the journey from her Tamco work to this current creation.
"We tried a few songs with the same wild, raucous feeling as Tamco, but my voice was lost. We stripped it right down to just voice and guitar. I have a dream of putting string arrangements on top of this one day. Although ultimately we built up the sound with the whole band, we made sure the focus was the singer and the song."

Find out more about Tammy Payne at - http://www.tammypayne.co.uk/

Viva Outsider is released today 27/10/2014 on Ninety and Nine Records.
Buy it at -
http://www.ninetyandninerecords.com/

Listen for yourself -


AL.

EYOT & Marko Miladinović - Similarity album inspiration




Similarity, EYOT (album cover) - Marko Miladinović

 We continue our album inspiration posts with a visit to Nis, Serbia and the latest offering from EYOT. 'Similarity' is the 3rd opus from the Balkan foursome, Dejan Ilijic (Piano), Milos Vojvodic (Drums), Sladjan Milenovic (Guitar) and Marko Stojiljkovic (Bass) but this album has a distinct Bristolian weight to it. Recorded, mixed and mastered by Jim Barr at J&J Studios, Bristol, UK in November 2013. It also features two more Get The Blessing personnel in the form of Jake McMurchie (saxophone) and Pete Judge (trumpet).

Marko Miladinović

The artist who created the cover artwork for 'Similarity' is Marko Miladinović, whose broad portfolio includes forays into photography, art and design. He currently works at the Centre for Culture and Arts in his hometown of Aleksinac, Serbia where he was born in 1981. He has won several awards for his painting and photography, with over 20 international exhibitions under his belt.



Marko Miladinović - sculpture

The 'Similarity' artwork is inspired by an album of delicacy, the music talks of airiness and gentle persuasion. It straddles the genres of Jazz, traditional Balkan musical and electronic earthiness that gives the listener the space to breathe and dream. There are paths and walkways to explore within each track like second tune 'Druids'. While the evocative imagery in opener 'How shall the dust storm start' is a fertile ground for an artist like Miladinović. It epitomises many of the tunes, which are a blank canvas of possibilities for the listener to explore. 'How shall the dust storm start' for me talks of a hot European town in mid siesta, crackling with energy despite not having a denizen in sight.

Marko Miladinović

The title track 'Similarity' has a delicious complexity which works against the rest of the album, its tread is urban, where the remaining album stretches into landscape dimensions. X-rays and microwaves fizzle as creeping night-crawlers wander the streets. If it was a figurative vision then Edward Hopper would have painted it, combining the alien and the familiar in that unnerving style of his.



EYOT - Horizon

Dejan Ilijic explains why he chose Marko Miladinović's artwork to represent EYOT's latest offering, "I like the colours, they "sound" like our music and there is a small similarity with first album cover, Horizon, you can see some kind of the Horizon on it, that means we are still sailing full steam ahead"




Marko Miladinović - Landscape

Miladinović's artwork compliments the album and it creates the spaces for which the mind can dwell. Like the music there is still work for us to do, what we bring to the picture is what we get out of it.

The biggest clue to understanding how Marko Miladinović's  brain works is in his photography of the landscape. He cuts and trims what could be bland views into compositional gems, and the textures he conjures from both the small and large scale are what makes both his work and the music of EYOT worth devoting time to.

The album will be released on 1st August 2014 by Ninety and Nine Records NY
 www.ninetyandninerecords.com and you can get your hands on a copy here - BUY Similarity   
 
Keep up to date with the latest EYOT gigs and news at www.eyotmusic.net

AL.