It’s not often a koto appears on a jazz record. The stringed instrument revered in Japan occasionally pops up for instance as on a 2015 Anders Jormin record.
The Swede’s fellow bassist, the French jazz player Michel Benita, is best known for his work inside the Andy Sheppard quartet and leads Ethics who have been around a while but are little known on this side of the English channel. It’s a quintet at work, the koto, an iconic Japanese traditional instrument played by Mieko Miyazaki, is perfectly weighted within. The sound of flugelhorn flavours some of the early part of the record, Matthieu Michel occupying a Kenny Wheeler-like space. Sheppard’s Movements in Colour bandmate Norwegian electronics-minded guitar ace Eivind Aarset is the fourth member of the band, Philippe Garcia the drummer has least to do, initiating scribbled-in silences.
Spare, but not empty, beautifully recorded yet again by the brilliant Stefano Amerio in a Lugano radio studio, the melodies cloaked in improvisation are mostly Benita’s the choice of Northumbrian piper Kathryn Tickell’s ‘Yeavering’ adding an arthouse yet homespun character that taps Benita’s early love of folk music.
Released on 15 January