Artist.......: Colin Vallon Trio
Album........: Ailleurs
Label........: Hatology
Genre........: Jazz
Catnr........: 636
source.......: CDDA
rip.date.....: Mar-27-2008
str.date.....: Feb-05-2008
quality......: VBR/44,1Hz/Joint-Stereo
Url..........: www.colinvallon.com
track title time
01. Le Paradis Perdu 07:11
02. Babylone 06:56
03. Swing Low 04:31
04. Souris 01:25
05. Trenke, Todorke 04:20
06. Sous-Marin 01:09
07. Je ne sais pas 07:45
08. Robots 01:25
09. Zombie 06:02
10. Mardi 05:48
11. Quand Meme 05:29
12. Elle 04:41
Runtime 56:42 min
Size 82,3 MB
Release Notes:
Over the past decade, Hatology has been home to a
robust roster of inventive and enterprising
pianists. Players like Ran Blake, Marc Copland and
Russ Lossing continue to produce projects with
strong ties to the jazz tradition, sometimes to the
chagrin of certain backward-looking factions of the
Hat audience. Newcomer Colin Vallon shows himself
worthy of inclusion in the established company with
Allieurs, his debut for the label and an album that
tinkers with the tactile conventions of the piano
trio to create a body of music both familiar and
strange. From the opening Vallon-scripted Le
Paradis Pedu the album exudes a strong ECM aura,
somber and awash in tonal grays and whites.
Listening to the disc in my car after a recent
snowfall, I found the music a perfect aural
correlative to the ashen skies and icy exteriors of
a Minnesota winter. Splashes of primary color arise
on up-tempo pieces like the vivacious street band
anthem Mardi, but the ensemble palette stays
comparatively muted much of the time.
Vallon's naturalistic voicings remind me of a
curious admixture of Keith Jarrett and Bobo
Stenson, with the occasional inclusion of subtle
piano preparations like dampened keys and struck
strings. Bassist Pat Moret and drummer Samuel
Rohrer also rely on calculated manipulations of
their instruments, the latter bowing cymbals and
the former torquing his strings to create plinging
overtones. Rohrer is especially difficult to pin
down. One moment he's dealing in delicate dry brush
strokes as on the closing reverie Elle, at another
in syncopated snare and kick drum rhythms that
delay and decay like dub beats on the vaguely
Klezmerish Babylone. An incessant rock-inflected
backbeat and press rolls on Zombie work in
surprisingly effective collusion with Vallon's more
ornate chords. That percussive adaptability jibes
closely with the variable fingerings of Moret, who
slips easily from periphery to prominence with
patterns that rely on warmly rounded curves. His
sturdy solo preface to the trio's reading of Swing
Low sets up the lush ensemble interplay that
follows. Likewise, the elegant Je Ne Sais Pas
benefits from his sparsely placed harmonic accents
and Rohrer's quieter side.
With a dozen tracks rendered in less than an hour,
several are little more than fragments. The bright
bouncy rhythms of Souris and cyclic machinations of
Robots practically beg for extra elucidation while
the scraped harmonics of Sous-Marin feel more like
filler than a feasible fountainhead for something
further. Freer elements occur sparingly and the
overall accessibility of the performance once again
makes ECM comparisons handy and apposite. Listeners
who already wince at the more approachable side of
the Hat catalog probably won't be won over by
what's here, but others with less obdurate tastes
will likely find a musical friend in Vallon. I did.
Derek Taylor