Search - Leandre, Maneri, Marguet :: For Flowers

Although I wouldn't call it exactly accessible . . .

Jan P. Dennis | Monument, CO USA | 01/01/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

". . . this glorious avant-garde music from French bassist/composer/bandleader Joëlle Léandre somehow achieves a friendliness, a listenability, seldom associated with out jazz.



The leader, a force of considerable magnitude in the international exploratory jazz and New Music scenes, here delivers something like her fifteenth or twentieth album, about half of which I own. Never one to situate herself among an established group of musicians, preferring to invite specific players to her various recording projects, Léandre here has put together an assemblage of like-minded practitioners almost uncanny in their ability to track with her (admittedly) idiosyncratic musical vision. That is to say, it almost sounds like she's got a real group going, albeit a rather odd one timbrally: bass, violin, drums, and electronics.



Be that as it may, she's really onto something with this disc. Resonating with everything from experimental jazz to avant-garde classical to New Music stylings, this border-crossing and genre-bending album presents Léandre in her most listener-friendly and, oddly, adventurous setting yet. I confess, it took me a handful of listenings to track with the sensibility here--and I pretty much had to abandon a bunch of bogus preconceptions--but once I did, I was totally on board, encountering soundscapes and aural signatures never before heard, but nevertheless oddly pleasing (esp. the strangely beautiful track, "Tulips," featuring wild pizzicato stylings and the leader's eerie wordless vocals).



Not for everyone, certainly, but for those with big ears looking for something genuinely new and different."