Pioneering Swiss trombonist and composer Andreas Tschopp marries contemporary jazz with South African horns and homemade ocarinas, creating a record quite unlike anything you've heard before. "πΎπππ ππ πΎπ π¨ππππ πΆππ π©πππππ" disregards the curvature of borders, genre, and time itself - tugging a thread through the history of wind instrumentation with ghostly agility.
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At the heart of the record lie spiralling, bonelike kudu (antelope) horns - instruments that have lent their stirring calls to indigenous South African rituals and signalling systems for millennia. These horns are clustered, harmonised and stretched beyond their godly usage by Tschopp - his extended techniques coaxing an array of melancholy, playful voices to canter through the album.
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Flourishes of trombone, alpine flutes and a stellar supporting cast on double bass (Shane Cooper), cornet (Ben LaMar Gay), udu drums (Gontse Makhene) and spoken word (Koleka Putuma) bring groove, countermelody and a sense of earthy introspection to the proceedings. This is inconceivable music: a sighing tapestry of brass, clay and bone that hints at some preconscious connectedness, tracing figures that rejoice, exhale and embrace outside of time.
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Recommended if you like Francis Bebey, quantum physics, peat bogs.

