Trilok GURTU & Arke String Quartet - Arkeology 2007

Trilok GURTU & Arke String Quartet - Arkeology 2007
Label: Promo

Jazz

Trilok Gurtu, the great Indian world-music percussionist, plays the Jazz Cafe in London on Monday with this lineup, and it will be interesting to see how he gets on in what can be a sonically competitive environment with a lot of quiet themes and four quiet partners. Gurtu is the only improvising soloist here (on staccato, percussion-mimicking vocals as well as a multiplicity of instruments), and contributes three out of 10 compositions - the others are by the chamber group members.
The Arke Quartet have shrewdly and musically lent an ear to a lot of world-music materials - from a softly singing microtonal quality reminiscent of Chinese violin music, to the rhythmic devices of Indian classical music and a Shakti-like Indo-jazz fusion, to a Celtic skip, an ambient tone-poetry sigh and much more. So, although perhaps the samplings from these different cultures don't entirely escape the local equivalents of hot licks, the programme is very varied, sensitively played and affectingly melodic - and Gurtu's famously tumultuous jamming against it is as inventive as ever.
By John Fordham.
**
From his work with the African Divas to house producer Robert Miles, Gurtu has been nothing if not eclectic in the last few years, making a mockery of the Indo-jazz maestro epithet often lazily slapped on him. He can bring a great deal of rhythmic trickery and textural finesse to just about any situation and this meeting with the Arke String quartet is no exception to the rule. It’s not so much what Gurtu plays as what he doesn’t play that impresses here.
Trilok Gurtu-Arke String Quartet - Arkeology
On many tracks he is discreet and understated, supplying the faintest of pulses while the strings swirl around him, the sense of space a key part of the aesthetic of the disc. While the chamber music resonances are clear enough, there is a fascinating composite vocabulary that emerges with many pieces steeped in a Mediterranean, quasi-folkish sound that is both rousingly danceable and emotively lyrical. It’s interesting to think that Gurtu first ventured into similar territory as a member of the group Oregon many decades ago so this setting isn’t entirely new to him. But as with much of his recent work, he brings a discerning touch to the table that shows him to be a musician of great maturity and consummate judgment. And Arke quartet are simpatico partners. A successful, enjoyable meeting of minds and musical worlds. 
By Kevin Le Gendre.
**
TRILOK GURTU- Tabla, Drums, Percussion, Flute, Voice
CARLO CANTINI- Violin, Dilruba, Recorder, Kalimba
VALENTINO CORVINO- Violin
SANDRO DI PAOLO- Viola
STEFANO DALL’ORA- Doublebass, Ukelele.
**
01.Balahto (4:02)
02.Nanda (To My Mother) (3:42)
03.Kermansah (4:21)
04.Dea (4:19)
05.Fes (6:47)
06.Taranta Suite (6:39)
07.Yoragathupaga (5:48)
08.Folded Hands (7:30)
09.Skopje (5:33)
10.Sveva (3:17)
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