Alessandro Fongaro – Pietre
(Honolulu Records)
Vinyl | CD | DL available here
Out now
A brilliant and unconventional “jazz” release from Italian double bassist Alessandro Fongaro and his quartet.
Pietre means stones in Italian. It’s also the name of acclaimed jazz double bassist Alessandro Fongaro’s quartet, and of this album. The album’s cover shows a mountain range peeping through the clouds in northern Italy, from where Fongaro hails. The opening track, Barbarro, gives the feeling you are walking up that mountain, the baritone and tenor saxophones combining to map out a brisk yomp. Thus far, you would be mistaken in thinking you are up for a straightforward set of enjoyably rugged cuts that herald back in spirit to the likes of Edmund Hall, Sonny Stitt or Oscar Peterson.
And you would be mistaken. The second cut, Doggo, is a colourful bag of audio tricks and leftfield influences that throws the listener completely off track. The effect this sonic assault makes is not too dissimilar to the sound of a cassette tape being chewed up, and at times the playing feels as each instrument is doing its thing in separate rooms before reuniting to see how the other is getting on. Passages fade away, only to immediately shudder back into life, like a car battery being jacked. The studio wizardry – psychedelic steam issuing forth from the pedals, and sonic cutups worthy of a Ballard novel – threatens to magic the music into psychedelic territory, but Sun-Mi Hong’s beautifully intuitive drumming acts as the binding element. Overall, there’s a slightly pantomime air to the piece, festive, trickster, giddy; “a bit Carla Bley” in its overall approach.
Is this jazz, the ingénue may ask, to which this reviewer cannot supply an answer. Certainly after the surreal, slightly theatrical pounding served up by Doggo. More a set of soundscapes using instruments and some arrangements traditionally used in the jazz world, with all its legacies and aspirations? Maybe. It’s jazz, but not as we know it. Still: two cuts, One Minute and Three Minutes feel like the kind of thing you would expect to hear on a jazz album, with double bass adding questions, and the sax blurts and percussive flaps and rolls coming on like Brotzmann and Bennink.
And then there’s “the most jazz title ever”, Stop Thinking About Feelings, which may give succour to those feeling a little discombobulated by what they have heard so far. The track has a slinky urban feel which dovetails nicely with the conceit the title suggests; the slightly abstract groove had me thinking of the quieter moments on Charles Spearin’s The Happiness Project. If ever a voiceover was needed to tell us, to à la Monsieur Spearin, to stop thinking about feelings, it would be here.
Fongaro’s music has a strong narrative quality and his quartet’s playing often sets out to tell its story; it’s their key strength. The popping bass for Marcia Nuziale introduces such a strong character study of someone, you could almost draw their outline, even if we don’t know who this person is. Here, too, the snapped rhythms and off-beat sax blurts and synth, or pedal-driven interventions have little to do with jazz, certainly as a “thing” we expect “jazz” to do. Uno Spreco Di Pazienta (A Waste of Patience) is a wonderfully fog-bound piece that conjures up a walk undertaken to clear the head, Palermo is a section of hot, busy streetlife, and the hushed playing on The Holy Mountain allows another instance of where the title clearly intertwines with the story the musicians set out.
Last two tracks are slightly more traditional; the sax notes are hyper literal at some points, almost picking out the title, Se, Tu, Un, Gior – No Mi Di – Rai, Quel – Lo, Che Vor – Rai in an increasingly joyous workout. Last cut, Semprettutti, Tuttiinsieme, is a languid stroll in the sun that has a very irrigating quality to it; bent out of shape throughout the album’s running time, you don’t really want things to end. The last notes are squeezed out, almost like we are listening to a small music box.
It’s a super record, and well worth anyone’s time.
More about Alessandro Fongaro can be found here. Honolulu Records’ site is here.
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All words by Richard Foster. More writing by Richard can be found at his author’s archive.
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