Quiet Inlet is the perfect title for this project by the duo Food, co-led by drummer Thomas Stronen and saxophonist Iain Ballamy. An exercise in texture music via electronica, Stronen and Ballamy take their time constructing lush, late-night vistas of layered sounds, with depth more important than pace. Hardly any variation in tempo can be heard, as sparse percussion accents prompt Ballamy's expansive tenor or soprano saxophone sounds. Only on the funky "Mictyris" in 7/8 time does the ensemble veer away from cloudy soundscapes. Special guest trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer -- a true pioneer of modern electronic film noir-type music -- is heard invading the space during "Dweller," while guitarist Christian Fennesz takes a subsidiary role on select tracks, rather than a frontman's stance. As dreamy music goes, this CD is not only a departure from the ECM catalog, but could be a portent toward the future of a new style of contemporary music. - Michael G. Nastos
British saxophonist Iain Ballamy has had a quite remarkable and visionary approach to music that he stuck to for many years. Apart from being a busy sideman in the fusion bands of Bill Bruford, or the more mainstream and modern jazz outfits with Ian Shaw and Billy Jenkins, his own band "Food" that he co-founded with Norwegian drummer and electronics wizzard Thomas Strønen, has been at the forefront of nujazz, combining instruments and harmonic subtlety of jazz with rock beats, electronics and processing.
"Quiet Inlet" is their first on ECM, and is somewhat better than their previous "Molecular Gastronomy". On this album, Nils Petter Molvaer plays trumpet, replacing Arve Henriksen who was the trumpeter since the beginning, and Austrian guitarist Christian Fennesz, well-known in the world of electronic music. Remarkably, on this album Molvaer and Fennesz don't meet each other, with the former playing on four tracks and the latter on the three other tracks.
The music is as you can expect, with beautiful improvised sax and trumpet lines, full of melancholy, soaring high over a backdrop of electronic waves and alternating subtle and pumping rhythms. It does fit within the ECM catalogue because of its romantic expansiveness and the required pure quality of the recording. - The Free Jazz Collective
Tracks
1. Tobiko
2. Chimaera
3. Mictyris
4. Becalmed
5. Cirrina
6. Dweller
7. Fathom
THOMAS STRØNEN drums, live electronics
IAN BALLAMY tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone
CHRISTIAN FENNESZ guitar, electronics (1, 3, 7)
NILS PETTER MOLVAER trumpet, electronics (2, 4-6)
All music by Food
Live recordings, performances captured at Oslo’s Blå club and the Molde Festival, in 2007 and 2008
ECM Records - ECM 2163 (Germany)