In the social network Facebook, I came across a video «Full Warp» by ambient electronics artist Rudy Ensueno in the feed. I listen to his music from time to time, and maybe we'll talk about it again. But this video really hooked me — Rudy has been creating animations using neural networks for some time, and this contributes to the promotion of music. I also fell for it, and then I was fascinated by the music. This is how I got acquainted with the joint project of the experimenter Rudy Ensueno and the jazz trumpeter James Hill.
I stuck to the track «Full Wrap» for quite a long time, and then carefully listened to the entire album — «Dark Matter», which was recorded back in 2015, published in 2016, and appeared on Youtube just now. Of course, I had no idea who James Hill was, although I have known Rudy virtually a few years.
Rudy Ensueno is an Argentine electronics composer (from Buenos Aires) with experimental aspirations. His discography on Bandcamp includes over 40 releases, including several collaborations with James Hill.
James Hill is an American jazz trumpeter, pianist, composer and owner of his own «TCAB Studio». Has been playing jazz since the age of 9. The story of his love for jazz and wind instruments is described in an exciting way on the musician's website — this is a special topic that deserves a separate publication, and will not fit in this review. From the biography of the artist, we can conclude that his musical interests go far beyond traditional jazz. This is confirmed by a huge number of joint works in a variety of styles and genres.
«Dark Matter» is one of those works. It is difficult to describe the album in simple words. Fans of traditional electronic music, as a rule, are far from both jazz and all sorts of fusions of styles, so I will allow myself a “first approximation”, which I will refine later.
You must have heard Jean Michel Jarre's 1986 album «Rendez-Vous». In general, it doesn't look like this at all, but its last part — «Last Rendez-Vous» — is already close to «Dark Matter» to some extent. If you can imagine the sounds of a slightly muffled trumpet floating freely and slowly above the universal array of pads and noise-like sounds, to the rhythm of the cosmic heart, evenly pulsing and compacting the musical space, then this will be something close to my feelings from this music. Only now you need to forget about Jean Michel Jarre, because in the album «Dark Matter» there is nothing corresponding to him — this is completely different music.
50 minutes of «Dark Matter» contains 5 stylistically close tracks. All of them have a common quality — they are rhythmically monotonous, but incredibly expressive with unpredictable trumpet parts. On first listening, it may seem that music has only three basic layers:
- measured rhythm section — very soft, comfortable, balanced (except for the 3rd track, where there is no rhythm section);
- ambient overflows that create an ocean in which everything is immersed here;
- solo trumpet parts that either appear or go into the depths, like whales or dolphins, but always return to the surface to bring fresh air, colors, emotions and feelings into the music…
Careful re-listening reveals a second-degree layering that applies to all components, but especially to the trumpet, which suddenly opens up into polyphony, and we know that the trumpet is a monophonic instrument. And this testifies to a very painstaking and highly technical studio work.
To clarify, the album was recorded at James Hill's TCAB Studio in San Francisco.
Interesting track titles:
- Mvalakharan
- Dark Matter
- Heroes of Exoplanet
- Girls on the Moon
- Full Warp
Some remained completely incomprehensible to me or did not evoke the expected associations (and this does not detract from the excellent music itself), but «Girl on the Moon» definitely made me smile – especially its finale.
The favorite tracks were the same «Full Warp», from which the acquaintance with the album began, and the opening track of the album with a completely untranslatable title «Mvalakharan» (although, Google Translate reports that this is something in Hindi... but, it’s unknown what).
The album is clearly “out of the ordinary”, worthy of serious and repeated listening. But it also sounds great in the background, filling the space around the listener with some unexplored substance, which is the basis of everything in our Universe.
Useful links:
- Rudy Ensueno on Bandcamp
- Rudy Ensueno on Facebook
- James Hill website
- James Hill (TCAB Studio) on Youtube
Album «Dark Matter» on Bandcamp:
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