Joseph Shabason — Anne (Nov. 16, 2018) |
Joseph Shabason — Anne (Nov. 16, 2018)✹ Na rozdíl od většiny alb, které experimentují s okolím, hudba se nesmí mísit do pozadí téměř jako příjemně nepopsatelná tapeta. Místo toho se na albu Anne daří experimentovat s konvenční strukturou, aby vytvořila svůj vlastní barvitý jazyk.
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Album release: November 16, 2018
Record Label: Western Vinyl
Duration: 48:56
Tracks:
01 I Thought That I Could Get Away With It 4:45
02 Deep Dark Divide 7:00
03 Dangerous Chemicals 6:31
04 Donna Lee 4:50
05 Forest Run 4:28
06 Fred and Lil 6:52
07 Toh Koh 3:08
08 November (ft. Gigi Masin) 5:09
09 Treat It Like A Win Bar 6:13
℗© 2018 Western Vinyl
Personnel:
✹ Joseph Shabason: Sax, Alto Flute, Ocarina, Percussion, Synth, Field Recordings
✹ Bram Gielen: Bass, Piano
✹ Thom Gill: Guitar, Piano
✹ Phil Melanson: Percussion
✹ Nicole Rampersaud: Trumpet
✹ J.P Carter: Trumpet
✹ Ted Bois: CS~80
✹ Hugh Marsh: Violin
✹ Gigi Masin: Synth
✹ Chris Donnelly: Piano, FX
✹ Robin Dann: Vocals
✹ Felicity Williams: Vocals
✹ Kate Allen: Percussion
✹ Anne Shabason: interview
Credits:
✹ All songs written by Joseph Shabason except for November which was written by Joseph Shabason and Gigi Masin and „Donna Lee“ which was written by Joseph Shabason and Chris Donnelly.
✹ All songs recorded by Joseph Sahabson at Aytche Studio. The piano was recorded by Roger Leavens at Boombox Sound.
✹ Produced by Joseph Shabason
✹ Mixed by Roger Leavens
✹ Mastered by Joe Lambert
Review
By Tom Beedham, Published Nov 19, 2018. Score: 8
✹ Formed around interviews he conducted with his mother, and based on how she views herself through the lens of her Parkinson’s disease, at its core, the second album from Destroyer/DIANA saxophonist and electronic composer Joseph Shabason is an extremely personal rumination on the fragility of life.
✹ But there’s a persistent thermal capacity to the work, delivering that experience while avoiding any clichéd representations of illness and finding relief in what the present is able to provide.
✹ More outwardly expressive and emotionally forthcoming than Shabason’s 2017 debut, the compositions on Anne patiently reflect the unsettling grounds for this undertaking and the weighty accumulation of sadness at its root, with decompressive lyrical bursts that were absent on prior album Aytche.
✹ Like Aytche, the subject is never mentioned explicitly, instead sublimated in the face of deeper questions like marbled strands of a kaleidoscope image, true nature shifting with time and exposure to light. As Shabason bends, stretches, and warps instrumentation, field recordings and interview clips alike, he’s working in neo~expressionist portraiture, mining the ambiguities of the abstractions to beautiful, evocative effect. ✹ https://exclaim.ca/
Description:
✹ Anne, the second album By Toronto saxophonist and composer Joseph Shabason, is a tonal essay on degenerative illness. Delicately and compassionately woven with interviews of Shabason’s mother from whom the album takes its name, Anne finds its creator navigating a labyrinth of subtle and tragic emotions arising from his mother’s struggle with Parkinson’s disease. Across the nine vivid postcards of jazz~laden ambience that comprise the album, Shabason unwraps these difficult themes with great care and focus revealing the unseen aspects of degenerative diseases that force us to re~examine common notions of self, identity, and mortality.
✹ Shabason’s uncanny ability to manoeuvre through such microscopic feelings is mirrored by his capacity to execute a similar tightrope~walk through musical genres. His music occupies a specific space that is as palpable as it is difficult to pin labels to. On Anne’s second track “Deep Dark Divide” rays of effected saxophone shine behind clouds of digital synthesizer that echoes the sound of jazz in the late 80s, but with a Jon Hassell~esque depth of sensibility that consciously subverts the stylistic inoffensiveness of that era. There is detail and idiosyncrasy beneath Shabason’s dawn~of~the~CD~era sheen that elevates the album far beyond a mere aesthetic exercise.
✹ Still, the sounds on Anne are not so experimentally opaque as to stand in the way of the album’s through~line of sincerity and emotionality. When dissonance is employed it is punctual and meaningful, like on album~middler “Fred and Lil” where a six~minute cascade of breathy textures builds suddenly to an agitated growl, only to abruptly give way to Anne Shabason speaking intimately about her relationship to her own parents. Snippets of such conversations see her taking on something like a narrator role across Anne while the sound of her voice itself is sometimes effected to become a musical texture entwined into the fabric of the songs without always being present or audible. The subsequent piece “Toh Koh” then drifts into playful disorientation as a lone female voice echoes the two syllables of the title, recalling the vocal techniques of composer Joan La Barbara, or even the light~hearted mantras of Lucky Dragons. From here the album veers back onto its aesthetic thoroughfare with “November” where Shabason lays muted brass textures atop a wavepool of electric chords provided by none other than the ambient cult~hero Gigi Masin, one of Anne’s many integral collaborators.
✹ The serene tragedy of the album distils itself gracefully into the ironically titled album closer “Treat it Like a Wine Bar” wherein flutters of piano and mournfully whispered woodwinds seem to evaporate particle by delicate particle, leaving the listener with a faint emotional afterglow like a dream upon waking. There is a corollary to be drawn here with what it must be like to feel one’s own mind and body drift away slowly until nothing remains, while the collection of memories and abilities that we use to denote the “self” softens into eternity. On Anne, it is precisely this fragile exchange of tranquillity and anguish that Joseph Shabason has proven his singular ability to articulate.
Label: http://westernvinyl.com/
Bandcamp: https://josephshabason.bandcamp.com/album/anne
_____________________________________________________________
Joseph Shabason — Anne (Nov. 16, 2018) |
Joseph Shabason — Anne (Nov. 16, 2018)✹ Na rozdíl od většiny alb, které experimentují s okolím, hudba se nesmí mísit do pozadí téměř jako příjemně nepopsatelná tapeta. Místo toho se na albu Anne daří experimentovat s konvenční strukturou, aby vytvořila svůj vlastní barvitý jazyk.
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Album release: November 16, 2018
Record Label: Western Vinyl
Duration: 48:56
Tracks:
01 I Thought That I Could Get Away With It 4:45
02 Deep Dark Divide 7:00
03 Dangerous Chemicals 6:31
04 Donna Lee 4:50
05 Forest Run 4:28
06 Fred and Lil 6:52
07 Toh Koh 3:08
08 November (ft. Gigi Masin) 5:09
09 Treat It Like A Win Bar 6:13
℗© 2018 Western Vinyl
Personnel:
✹ Joseph Shabason: Sax, Alto Flute, Ocarina, Percussion, Synth, Field Recordings
✹ Bram Gielen: Bass, Piano
✹ Thom Gill: Guitar, Piano
✹ Phil Melanson: Percussion
✹ Nicole Rampersaud: Trumpet
✹ J.P Carter: Trumpet
✹ Ted Bois: CS~80
✹ Hugh Marsh: Violin
✹ Gigi Masin: Synth
✹ Chris Donnelly: Piano, FX
✹ Robin Dann: Vocals
✹ Felicity Williams: Vocals
✹ Kate Allen: Percussion
✹ Anne Shabason: interview
Credits:
✹ All songs written by Joseph Shabason except for November which was written by Joseph Shabason and Gigi Masin and „Donna Lee“ which was written by Joseph Shabason and Chris Donnelly.
✹ All songs recorded by Joseph Sahabson at Aytche Studio. The piano was recorded by Roger Leavens at Boombox Sound.
✹ Produced by Joseph Shabason
✹ Mixed by Roger Leavens
✹ Mastered by Joe Lambert
Review
By Tom Beedham, Published Nov 19, 2018. Score: 8
✹ Formed around interviews he conducted with his mother, and based on how she views herself through the lens of her Parkinson’s disease, at its core, the second album from Destroyer/DIANA saxophonist and electronic composer Joseph Shabason is an extremely personal rumination on the fragility of life.
✹ But there’s a persistent thermal capacity to the work, delivering that experience while avoiding any clichéd representations of illness and finding relief in what the present is able to provide.
✹ More outwardly expressive and emotionally forthcoming than Shabason’s 2017 debut, the compositions on Anne patiently reflect the unsettling grounds for this undertaking and the weighty accumulation of sadness at its root, with decompressive lyrical bursts that were absent on prior album Aytche.
✹ Like Aytche, the subject is never mentioned explicitly, instead sublimated in the face of deeper questions like marbled strands of a kaleidoscope image, true nature shifting with time and exposure to light. As Shabason bends, stretches, and warps instrumentation, field recordings and interview clips alike, he’s working in neo~expressionist portraiture, mining the ambiguities of the abstractions to beautiful, evocative effect. ✹ https://exclaim.ca/
Description:
✹ Anne, the second album By Toronto saxophonist and composer Joseph Shabason, is a tonal essay on degenerative illness. Delicately and compassionately woven with interviews of Shabason’s mother from whom the album takes its name, Anne finds its creator navigating a labyrinth of subtle and tragic emotions arising from his mother’s struggle with Parkinson’s disease. Across the nine vivid postcards of jazz~laden ambience that comprise the album, Shabason unwraps these difficult themes with great care and focus revealing the unseen aspects of degenerative diseases that force us to re~examine common notions of self, identity, and mortality.
✹ Shabason’s uncanny ability to manoeuvre through such microscopic feelings is mirrored by his capacity to execute a similar tightrope~walk through musical genres. His music occupies a specific space that is as palpable as it is difficult to pin labels to. On Anne’s second track “Deep Dark Divide” rays of effected saxophone shine behind clouds of digital synthesizer that echoes the sound of jazz in the late 80s, but with a Jon Hassell~esque depth of sensibility that consciously subverts the stylistic inoffensiveness of that era. There is detail and idiosyncrasy beneath Shabason’s dawn~of~the~CD~era sheen that elevates the album far beyond a mere aesthetic exercise.
✹ Still, the sounds on Anne are not so experimentally opaque as to stand in the way of the album’s through~line of sincerity and emotionality. When dissonance is employed it is punctual and meaningful, like on album~middler “Fred and Lil” where a six~minute cascade of breathy textures builds suddenly to an agitated growl, only to abruptly give way to Anne Shabason speaking intimately about her relationship to her own parents. Snippets of such conversations see her taking on something like a narrator role across Anne while the sound of her voice itself is sometimes effected to become a musical texture entwined into the fabric of the songs without always being present or audible. The subsequent piece “Toh Koh” then drifts into playful disorientation as a lone female voice echoes the two syllables of the title, recalling the vocal techniques of composer Joan La Barbara, or even the light~hearted mantras of Lucky Dragons. From here the album veers back onto its aesthetic thoroughfare with “November” where Shabason lays muted brass textures atop a wavepool of electric chords provided by none other than the ambient cult~hero Gigi Masin, one of Anne’s many integral collaborators.
✹ The serene tragedy of the album distils itself gracefully into the ironically titled album closer “Treat it Like a Wine Bar” wherein flutters of piano and mournfully whispered woodwinds seem to evaporate particle by delicate particle, leaving the listener with a faint emotional afterglow like a dream upon waking. There is a corollary to be drawn here with what it must be like to feel one’s own mind and body drift away slowly until nothing remains, while the collection of memories and abilities that we use to denote the “self” softens into eternity. On Anne, it is precisely this fragile exchange of tranquillity and anguish that Joseph Shabason has proven his singular ability to articulate.
Label: http://westernvinyl.com/
Bandcamp: https://josephshabason.bandcamp.com/album/anne
_____________________________________________________________