Audio Rebel by Samuel Blaser & Marc Ducret

!!! Audio Rebel receives the "Coup de Coeur" Award from the Charles Cros Academy 2020. Thank you so much !!!

If world happenings were sound events, a global pandemic would be one hell of a clam. Discordant and ugly, it’s hard to imagine anyone making anything positive out of one, but jazz is all about the quick pivot that appositely resolves a potentially wrong note. The international music business shutdown that has accompanied attempts to flatten the COVID-19 curve may have cleared Swiss trombonist Samuel Blaser’s performance and release schedules, but it has also given him the time to revisit his recording archive and select some hidden treasures, which he has placed on the virtual shelves of Blaser Music.

Audio Rebel, the digital imprint’s first release, is an artifact of Blaser’s first Brazilian tour. In 2013 he and French guitarist Marc Ducret were invited to play at Sesc São Paulo, a cultural center that serves the nation’s biggest city, and scheduled two other gigs around it. This recording is taken from the third, which took place at the intimate studio and concert space, Audio Rebel, in Rio De Janeiro. It reveals the essence of a partnership that began in 2009, appropriately enough, with a duo concert, and has been further documented by three CDs on Hat Hut Records.

The first two, Boundless (2011) and As The Sea (2012), are quartet performances of ambitious, album-length suites which are densely packed with musical information. But the music on Audio Rebel shows that the duo’s fluid interplay can be just as complete. Their give and take is evident from the first seconds of the title track, as guitar swells and muted trombone growls undulate in time with each other like ranked waves. Here and elsewhere, the two men pass the tasks of support and elaboration like a couple football players kicking the ball back and forth. Sometimes the exchanges are so quick, one wonders if the tape has been sped up. But on “L'ampleur des dégâts,” they’re more patient, giving each musician time to develop bluesy intensity about of the theme. And on “La voie grise,” they fall into unison to wring maximum yearning from the melody before letting it subside like the last coals of a fading fire. Despite the combativeness of its name, Audio Rebel is an expression of purposefully applied intimacy.

- Bill Meyer

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

May 27 2020, Le soir, Jean-Claude Vantroyen

"Samuel Blaser et Marc Ducret, c'est l'alliance du trombone et de la guitare, de la densité et de la fluidité."

May 30 2020, Les Dernières Nouvelles Du Jazz, Xavier Prévost

"To inaugurate a series of new albums, Samuel Blaser has released a recording from his Brazilian tour in duet with Marc Ducret almost 7 years ago. The two musicians already had several years of collaboration, including traces on CD. With this duo, recorded in a studio (the aptly named Audio Rebel ....) which is also a concert venue, it is the triumph of the first draft, like a manifesto written on the razor's edge .... From the first track, the music leaves limbo to unfold in a torrid exchange, where the lively musical intelligence and the taste for risk are in constant dialogue. Difficult to say where the border between the written and the improvised is established (besides, is there a border? Is it necessary?). And the same goes over the beaches, between the compositions of Samuel Blaser (4 out of 7 tracks) and that of Marc Ducret (3 therefore, including moving reunion with The magnitude of the damage and L'Ombra di Verdi). It is in this kind of circumstance that the chronicler becomes aware of what is difficult to account for, whether by the attempt (inevitably doomed to failure) to describe all or part of the music, or its course, its magnificent accidents, its protrusions and its falsely calm beaches. What remains to be said (poorly, very poorly), of one's emotions, one's astonishments, one's wonders. This is a beautiful admission of helplessness. In short astonished, conquered, amazed and transported I was, and remain, listening to this sound adventure which I hope you will drive into. I even urge you to throw yourself into it, heart and soul; you will have the body, which for sensations and emotions remains essential. Immerse yourself in this disc which undoubtedly constitutes a Work in its own right."

July 13th 2020, LondonJazz News, Alison Bentley

"Some music is made to be firmly in the foreground. This highly original album by Swiss trombonist Samuel Blaser and French guitarist Marc Ducret brings the listener right into the room with them. The music rewards intense engagement with its mix of free improvisation, jazz, blues and rock. Blaser has “revisited his recording archive” to uncover this gig, recorded live in 2013 in Rio de Janeiro in a concert space named Audio Rebel – it suits the music, and provides the title for the first track as well as the album.

Samuel Blaser Audio RebelIn opener Audio Rebel, viscous electric guitar notes slide discordantly with laughing trombone. Momentum builds in Derek Bailey-ish rushes; chromatic notes slip off deep trombone sounds. There’s humour as the instruments improvise together like underwater creatures. Sometimes you can hear boppy arcs and jazz fragments in the trombone (Blaser started off playing hard bop) but the notes are unpredictable. There are agile leaps as the two have an excited buzzy conversation. Sometimes Ducret hits the guitar hard – the scratch of the strings makes abstract patterns.

Rio combines delicacy and toughness. Guitar notes hop birdlike over the trombone’s split note drones. They merge in electronic splurges, and the guitar takes on a heavy metal distortion. The trombone lumbers behind as the guitar sculpts pieces of a jazz scale, then Blaser solos melodically.

Most of the tracks are credited to both, and sound spontaneous; three are by Ducret, including L’ampleur des dégâts and La voie grise. The first has an infectious recurring blues-rock riff, with a few extra beats thrown in every so often so it doesn’t get too settled. There’s silvery guitar chord work and blues-drenched trombone. (Blaser’s 2018 album Early in the Mornin’ reworks classic blues tunes.) La voie grise is more delicate: a blend of blues and modern jazz, with ruminative trombone bass lines. The sombre unison theme is enlivened by intriguing harmony and skittish guitar harmonics.

The Brazilian city of São Paolo is known for its subversive musical traditions, and the eponymous track has an anarchic fervour. The duo seem to provoke each other into scratchy sounds, spikes, gravelly grunts and electronic clangs. They resolve into a rocky riff with blossoming harmonics. Cabo Frio seems to grow out of the previous track; as the strong trombone stalks around, the guitar bursts into flakes of jazz-blues. In Ducret’s groove-based Le blues de l’Ombra, earthy guitar notes bend away from the ursine trombone riff, like blues underwater. The harmonies draw you in but also disorientate.

The album repays total concentration with its attention to detail and imaginative musicality. For Blaser, music is “all about discovery and communicating new ideas” and you feel as if you’re joining in their discovery.

July 2020, The New York City Jazz Record, Robert Iannapollo

Swiss trombonist Samuel Blaser, who turns 39 this month yet has almost two-dozen compelling albums under his belt since 2008, and French guitarist Marc Ducret began a musical partnership in 2009 and it seems to get stronger with each year. Ducret first appeared on Blaser’s quartet record Boundless (hatOLOGY, 2010) and Blaser returned the favor as a member of Ducret’s group on Metatonal (Ayler, 2014). But perhaps their bond is best exemplified in the trio the two share with Danish drummer Peter Bruun. They released the live Taktlos, Zurich 2017 on hatOLOGY to great reviews and toured the album.

They now have a second disc, ABC, Vol. 1, self- released by Blaser in digital-format only. Each player contributes material and it marks a step further in their development. The opener is an epic 25-minute version of Ducret’s “L’Ombra Di Verdi”. It develops into a three-way improvisation alternating between the spacious and the dense; at the midway point, all build to a fever pitch and seamlessly lock into a repeated riff, which demonstrates how attuned these players are to one another. Bruun contributes “Svesker”, a slowly developing, brooding piece with the melody handled by trenchant trombone. Blaser’s arrangement of a brief Stravinsky piece, “Fanfare For A New Theatre”, (originally a miniature, scored for two trumpets) is also found on the Taktlos disc. But whereas that earlier version serves as a prelude to a Ducret piece, here it is given a full nine-minute treatment with the brief theme cropping up throughout in fragments and reprised at the end. Blaser’s “The Rain Only Drums At Night” is a beautiful piece with the composer and Ducret harmonizing on the melody as Bruun artfully splashes cymbals to accompany them. This is a remarkable trio. Blaser has a number of projects in his arsenal but this is one of the best.

The first meeting of Blaser and Ducret as a duo happened in 2009. And while they’ve played together in several formats, the duo has continued throughout. Audio Rebels stems from a tour of Brazil they did in 2013. This set is from the Rio de Janeiro performance and it’s a corker. The seven tracks sound like a mixture of complete pieces and excerpts. But they are all discrete and play well as excerpted. Both players are sonic texturalists and vary their sound throughout. In this performance one can really appreciate Blaser’s use of harmonics and deft handling of mutes. Ducret uses the occasional attachment (particularly effective is a gnarly fuzz) but many of the textural shifts stem from the handling of his instrument’s strings and fretboard. Opening with the title track, it’s quiet, almost tentative with the two seemingly feeling each other out. But they quickly find their mark and they’re off. Blaser does some remarkable muted work during this section as the two intertwine around each other. “La Voie Grise” is a beautiful interlude with a bittersweet melody. It’s not quite three minutes long yet still a complete piece unto itself. It’s hard to tell if its fade is engineered or natural. The album closes with a more compact version of “L’Ombra Di Verdi” (5 minutes vs. 25 found on ABC, Vol. 1) and while not quite as satisfying as the trio version it’s a perfect way to close out this album.

Samuel Blaser (20 July 1981 in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland) is a Swiss trombonist and composer.

samuelblaser.com
Facebook
Instagram