Featured Artist: Denis Beuret

CD Title: Alone

Year: 2008

Record Label: Leo Records

Style: Free Jazz / Avante Garde

Musicians: Denis Beuret (augmented bass trombone, live electronics)

Review:

The title of this CD might imply a sense of isolation or perhaps an introspective type of musical paradigm.  On the contrary, Swiss bass trombonist Denis Beuret professes a very active and multi-tiered set via his employment of live electronics and computer programs.  I don’t know enough about the Logic Pro tools and other technicalities briefly mentioned in the liners.  However, Beuret is onto something here.  On a side-note, modern jazz/improvising trombonist George Lewis was an early exponent of this medium while performing with his laptop, although the tech tools have developed in leaps and bounds since the ‘90s. 

Beuret’s multi-octave phrasings complement the human-computer framework.  With EFX consisting of cyclical undertones and dissipating motifs, the artist often engages in call/response improvisation while also using his effects for rhythmic parameters.  It’s partly about left-brain, right-brain exchanges, where droning ostinatos and swirling treatments offer numerous contrasts throughout.  Either way, Beuret casts vivid notions of a surreal environment.

On “Nouvloop3,” the trombonist launches an ethereal climate by fusing dense electronics with extended note ‘bone lines.  And with the final track “MP-05,” he eases the proceedings into a cosmic void, all annunciated by howls and upper-register phrasings.   Beuret corners a niche so to speak, especially since he’s quite adept at conveying how successful one can be.  He flips the time-worn, man vs. machine adage into a deeply personalized musical state.  Somehow, someway, Beuret makes it all sound as though it is was meant to be. 

Record Label Website: http://www.leorecords.com

Reviewed by: Glenn Astarita

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