It sounds like a huge dare making a jazz version of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon. Well it is a considerable undertaking by anyone’s yardstick. Following in the footsteps of the Flaming Lips in tackling the ubiquitous 1973 classic album that has sold more than 4m copies in the UK alone, there have nevertheless been precedents as recently as this year of jazz artists tackling revered rock material, Dylan Howe, for instance coming off triumphant with his clever take on Bowie’s Low period. But this is a step up in terms of sheer scale. I’ve always quite liked Nguyên Lê although not all his albums quite cut the mustard in terms of sheer consistency and live he can be a bit erratic even though technically he is quite obviously a heavyweight player. Scratch deep and you’ll find a Hendrixian at heart, so by tackling Pink Floyd at least Lê keeps faith with the same historical era even if Jimi had shuffled off this mortal coil by the time The Dark Side came to be made. Teaming Lê with Mike Gibbs on Celebrating The Dark Side Of The Moon (ACT ***) makes a lot of sense and collaborating here with the NDR Big Band playing arrangements mainly by the French Vietnamese player with orchestrations by the great Gibbs, featured artists singer Youn Sun Nah, drummer Gary Husband, and bass guitarist Jürgen Attig, means there’s certainly lots of firepower. Tracks include songs from the classic album, and Nguyên Lê’s own compositions.
When The Dark Side of the Moon came out having taken something like a year to make in the studio, staggering in terms of how long it takes to make your average jazz record then or now, a Rolling Stone reviewer noted that the album resembled “a single extended piece rather than, a collection of songs”, continuing: “It seems to deal primarily with the fleetingness and depravity of human life, hardly the commonplace subject matter of rock,” or of jazz for that matter. But how have Lê and Gibbs managed to match the “grandeur” the Rolling Stone writer saw in the source material? Answer well, by both caressing and bombarding the material to hand. For grandeur Sun Nah’s contribution reaches the powerful emotions needed most successfully.
There will be, one would imagine, a strong range of reactions to this new work when it comes out in November: downright hostility, possibly. Intrigued acceptance, more likely; but even a non-committal shrug or two. The original album ran like this, a track order ingrained probably in the heads of millions of rock fans the world over: ‘Speak to Me’, ‘Breathe’, ‘On the Run’, ‘Time’, ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’, ‘Money’ (the opening track of side two), ‘Us and Them’, ‘Any Colour You Like’, ‘Brain Damage’, and finally ‘Eclipse.’ In Lê’s treatment ‘Speak to Me’ opens proceedings followed quickly by a new piece ‘Inspire’, then ‘Breathe’ with Youn Sun Nah superbly laconic and the WDR giving it a whole lot of well, Welly. Then it’s ‘On the Run’ and ‘Time’ from The Dark Side, new pieces ‘Magic Spells’ and ‘Hear This Whispering’ followed by the Floyd’s ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’, ‘Gotta Go Sometime’, then ‘Money’ and ‘Us and Them’ (both from the original album), new piece ‘Purple or Blue’ followed by ‘Any Colour You Like’, ‘Brain Damage’, and ‘Eclipse’ from The Dark Side complete what’s on offer here.
As ever with such classic rock archaeology you’ll want to immediately listen to the original material and to be perfectly frank you might just stop right there and never return to these particular Lê lines. That might be a shame though but I can’t help but feeling Colin Towns, say, could come up with a completely different way of tackling Pink Floyd that might resonate more. And who knows he might one day. SG
Released on 10 November. Nguyên Lê, the NDR Big Band, and Mike Gibbs, above. Photo: ACT/Patrick Essex