Taking two players from Guy Seger's Eclectic Maybe Band (Discus Records), classically trained Catherine Smet and improvising drummer Dirk Wachtelaer fulfill their album's title with 11 free dialogs, their dexterous mastery evident as they carry on energetic conversations of urgent activity, or lay back in cultivated discourse of sophisticated artistry; engaging.
Format: CD Condition: New Released: 2018 Country: Portugal Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold Recorded at Studio Hype, in Mechelen, Belgium, on May 11th, 2018.
"Catherine Smet is a classically trained pianist, who studied both at the Conservatory of Brussels and Antwerp. She has been active in many genres, including African and Latin, which she further perfected in Buenos Aires and Cuba. She is a member of the tango band Tango2.
Dirk Wachtelaer has been a drummer for over 30 years, and has played in a variety of experimental settings, including collaborations with Toshinori Kondo, Jim O'Rourke, Paul Lytton, to name just a few.
Even if the album's title is not very original, it says what it is, and you get eleven tracks of improvisations. Smet's harmonic approach is more classical than jazzy, improvising with limited use of dissonance and extended techniques, and very loud and 'busy' in terms of style, as if afraid of silence, playing full chords very often, as if trying to avoid any sentimentality, and very broad in her improvisations, using the full range of her keyboard each time, with a high sense of drama and immediacy, as if what she has to say must be told now, immediately and completely, as if she is running out of time. All this makes for a very nervous and agitated album. Wachtelaer's drumming, which is excellent, luckily matches her style, as he's also hard-hitting and intense, and he often leads the improvisation, or at least he takes the intro for some pieces. Yes, there are more subtle pieces, such as "Look At The Right Side", which is more avant-garde and quiet, and "Improvisation 11", which is calm and gentle, both welcome variations in the avalanche of pounding chords.
Both are also member of the Eclectic Maybe Band, whose "The Blind Night Watcher's Mysterious Landscapes" was released earlier this year on Discus, and which I could unfortunately only listen to for two minutes, despite the presence of Joe Higham, our former colleague in the Free Jazz Collective."-Stef, The Free Jazz Collective