Szun Waves’ Earth Patterns is the jazz portrait of (the great) Buffalo Springfield’s “The Hour of Not Quite Rain.” This is music encased in melodic drops of future rain that are always ready to answer any weather prophet’s cautionary call.
My friend Kilda Defnut said of the album: “This music is the ballet dance of a pebble skipped upon an evening’s placidity, and then allowed to slowly descend into the heavy depths of any dream’s dark watery melodic mystery.”
Certainly, Szun Waves’ music will appeal to fans of the ethereal ECM and JAPO records like Herbert Joos’ (brilliant!) Daybreak or John Surman’s (equally brilliant!!) Upon Reflection. It’s quite different in terms of instrumentation, with Luke Abbott (synths and pianos), Laurence Pike (drums and percussion), and Jack Wyllie (sax), but Earth Patterns finds a melodic orbit not dissimilar to the best of King Crimson’s Larks Tongues-era improv stuff. This music inhabits a discordant netherworld and yet, somehow, dons a dulcet life jacket.
Case with many points: “Exploring Upwards” is cautious, with sax and keyboards touching a hopeful vibe. The occasional percussion anchors the dream – and then that hope morphs into a sinister promenade. The tune stretches time with quiet density. But just so you know, while this music shares some textures with the Klaus Schulze’s Moondawn, it paints a much more human portrait — with sonic percussion and sax blared jazzy wrinkles and all. Then “New Universe” ups the pulse and allows that sax to howl amid darker dramatic sonics. Nice! Perhaps the tune is a great grandson to Pink Floyd’s “Interstellar Overdrive” — except this one discovers a new universe or two.
“Garden” floats with the wise touch of so many gods that swirls in perpetual melodic motion. This one buzzes with a distorted keyboard sound, while the sax skates on a gentle winter pond. It’s the sort of melodic spacey interval into which some ’70s prog band would drift in the midst of yet another side-long epic tune. It’s just a lovely piece of music. Then the piano-pulsed “In the Moon House” is a quick roundabout, with a sunsetted sax hovering over the song’s horizon. This could fit comfortably somewhere on the first side of King Crimson’s Islands album.
Ditto for the wondrous trio deep dissonant dive of the multi-colored “Be a Pattern for the World.” This tune leaves emotive impressionistic brush strokes in its wake. Of course, true to its name, “Willow Leaf Pear” is reflective, thick and wet, with a morning rain quiet autumnal thought.
In the end, the expectant storm vibes morph into the rainmaker’s delight as (the physics name-checked) “Atomkerne” begins with big puffs of undulating and imposing clouds. But then the melodic raindrops get cold with freezing precipitation that descends for a deep moment, like life itself, and in the end, fizzles away – with or without any promise of a better day.
Szun Waves scours dark sonic corners for melodic human hope on Earth Patterns – and that’s a tough thing to do.
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