Customer Reviews

Northbound

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When I listen to this music I am redeemed as a human being! So much of that to which I listen from ECM makes me feel that way! The best of music deserves the least amount of technical analysis and the most amount of direct experience from which can flow the deepest appreciation. This music reminds me of how personal the listening experience can be. It is melodic in the most noble of ways. I've heard that art can uplift the soul and put one in mind of life's wonders and in Iro Haarla's Northbound, I have the catalyst for both. There is a dignity, a sophistication inherent in the music without pretense. The individual musicians seem to have made a pact that their playing must serve the song being played. There is a unity of purpose throughout that serves each composition to its' greatest benefit. It is impossible to convey how beautiful is the music on Northbound. I have found that repeated listenings only serve to emphasize how interesting and wonderful this music is. I have been motivated to seek out other cd's from ECM as a result of being exposed to this artist as well as Tomasz Stanko's Quartet and The Marcin Wasilewski Trio (check out their cd, January). Indeed, I am an ECM addict and have become that person who can't wait to see what Amazon and ECM are bringing me today. I highly recommend this particular cd if you love beautiful, relaxing, interesting, and uplifting music!

This is for the most part lovely as others have said, but on the rare occasion it seems to degenerate into tuneless, directionless meandering - though who knows, maybe this is intentional, and I am missing the point :)

Anyways, for me, when it works, it does work beautifully. So ... 4 stars ...

i have no idea what the hell you just said j dennis. but i think you liked this cd. and i think everyone else will too. james brown once sang "talkin' loud and sayin' nothin" yikes!!!!

. . . notably, Manu Katche's Neighborhood. I may eventually review that misguided disc (how could something with that brilliant aggregation of players fail?--but it did, miserably); then again, maybe I won't.

What we have here is ECM at its most mysteriously, arcanely, plaintive: And that's hard to beat.

First of all, you've got that whole Northern thing going full bore. We're talking Tolkien mapped onto some ur-Scandinavian crepuscular sensibility--entire vistas drenched in mournful sunset brilliance--approached, but never, somehow, fully realized by Bjork, but so achingly present in her finest achievements as to almost single-handedly define an entire aesthetic.

But not quite.

Throw in Sigur Ros at their most inimically baffling yet heart-breakingly evocative, and you might begin to approach the huge elegiacism at work here.

Think next-generation Charles Lloyd, circa Voice in the Night, and you might begin to access the vibe going down here. Trygve Seim, on various saxes, but mainly tenor, conjures that sensibility. He's carved out such a huge presence on this disc as to almost overwhelm it were it not for the inherent res displayed by the leader and her chosen band. Nevertheless, Seim impresses so magnificently as to almost overshadow the leader--and he would, were it not for her adamantine brilliance on both piano and harp.

Mathias Eick on trumpet, out of the Palle Mikkelberg school of post-Miles melancholic musings (check out his playing, especially, on "With Thanksgiving"), almost wrests the artistic core from Seim, but not quite because of the latter's huge, nay, towering presence. Nonetheless, he stamps the proceedings with such gravity as to establish his bona fides beyond challenge.

What this is, for me, at least, is Grieg in a jazz mode.

Very hard to top.