Dark & involving music
N. Dorward | Toronto, ON Canada | 06/02/2005
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This was originally planned as a solo session, but ECM head honcho Manfred Eicher made a call to drummer Jon Christensen, inviting him to sit in on a few tracks, & in the end the musicians & producer liked the results so much that most of the album is duets. Bandoneon/drums duets are unusual to say the least, & the resutls are fascinating, not least because you can hear the musicians thinking about how to respond to the situation. Saluzzi mostly favours dark, brooding, quiet textures, sometimes like a nostalgic memories of tangos & folksongs, sometimes quite dissonant, like some atonal church organ piece. Christensen plays sparsely but very dramatically--silences & rustles broken by big abrupt blobs of sound. He almost never keeps time--more often it's the bandoneon that states the pulse (when there is a pulse).
In a rare packaging mistake, ECM says there's 60 minutes of music on this disc. There are actually 79 minutes--way too much music to absorb in one go, I've found, but this is an album well worth lingering over. Definitely not for all tastes, but if the idea of bandoneon/drums duos sounds intriguing, then by all means check it out."
Dino Saluzzi, bandoneon
Lawrence Duckles | Oakland, CA United States | 09/09/2005
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Dino Saluzzi is bandoneon player, as was his more famous countryman Astor Piazzolla, but Saluzzi seems more classically oriented and his music is more introspective and harmonically adventurous. Particularly toward the end of his career, Piazzolla tended to become his own cliche, recycling a lot of the same harmonies and chord progressions. Saluzzi never does this--I own four of his recordings and every one is different. His music is probably something of an acquired taste--it doesn't have Piazzolla's popular appeal and there's less of a direct connection to tango--but it's fascinating stuff and well worth more than one hearing."
Track Listings (14) - Disc #1