Concert Review by: Lara Bellini
Venue: Jazz Café (London)
02/08/03 - Okou: Vocals; Daddy Ous: Vocals; Teppo Mäkynen: drums; Abdissa ‘Mamba’ Assefa: percussion; Jukkis Kiviniemi: bass; Kim ‘Kasio’ Rantala: keyboards; Jukka Eskola: Trumpet; Aleksi Ahoniemi: sax; Matti Lappalainen: trombone; Tuomas Kallio: guitar/sampler.
Nuspirit Helsinki couldn’t choose a better venue for their London gig – the Jazz Café (www.jazzcafe.co.uk,) its lounging atmosphere and the coolest of reputations, proved the perfect frame for a very enjoyable concert.
Their debut at the venue was greeted by a passionate and very much engaged audience of young people, not strictly ‘jazzy’ and partly made up of ‘clubbers’ – this the main formula of Nuspirit Helsinki, a well blended mixture of dance/electronics and light jazz quotations, able to unite under the same roof people of the most diverse musical backgrounds.
For those awaiting new experimental sounds in electronic jazz, this is certainly not the gig to go for. But if energetic groove and an amazing capacity for crossovering with the most diverse roots of electronic sounds (including jazz) are a must for your ideal gig, then don’t look any further.
Nuspirit Helsinki possess this rare talent of reproducing synthetic sounds Live, literally hypnotizing their audience. Their sound is partly inscribed into an appropriation of traditional ‘Seventies’ electronic roots, clearly originating from a Donald Byrd or Miles Davis kind of approach (as in their opening with electrically distorted brass,) translated into a dancing frame due to extensive sampling. The result is a mixture of Soul, Nu-soul, Brazilian, Dub, Funk and Afro/Funk where jazz plays an important (even if not central) part. Interestingly enough, the two guest vocalists (Okou, Daddy Ous) turned the concert more towards soul and dub, maybe blending further down jazz arrangements.
A direct reference to the Seventies, the ‘Korg’ keyboard, a timbric ‘trait d’union’ between old and new, sustained, together with sampling, the ambient outline. Both drums and percussion looked a bit restrained within the dance framework – no extensive improvisation patterns, more of a rhythmical hypnotism varying slightly depending on the nature of crossovers – still, syncopation was not completely absent and the drumming never failed to be energetic and engaging.
The bass line, melted into the general groove of the band, came out more vibrant when quoting drum ‘n’ bass or supporting funky tunes.
In general, the ‘solo’ improvisations were slightly sacrificed to the coherence of the ensemble: among the brass, special mention to the trumpet/flugelhorn, whose solos were the most ‘jazzy’ and frequent of the lot.
The question to ask, though, is how the same audience would react if faced by, let’s say, Weather Report, and in general by the generation who pioneered electronic jazz. The feeling is that most of the younger audience would probably not know them anyway. Perhaps if there is a lesson to learn from Nuspirit Helsinki is that electronic jazz – as amply proven by jazz artists such as Nils Petter Molvaer, Andy Sheppard, EST – is definitely a viable way forward, able to win to jazz an important slice of the younger audience, and perhaps Nuspirit Helsinki are (unknowingly?) playing an important part in making this happen.
For more information: http://www.nuspirit.com/
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