Sometimes you can just look at the back of a jazz album, check out the list of players and their instruments, and conclude that it will be great. And when the label in question is ECM, anyone who needed an extra push just got one. So is the story with the latest of the label's discs to win this writer's heart from a pair of exceptional trumpet players—Arve Henriksen's Cartography and Jon Hassell's Last Night The Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes In The Street. In truth, this may be the most revelatory pair of releases on ECM since Anouar Brahem's transportive Le Pas Du Chat Noir. Henriksen and Hassell both possess a uniqueness of phrasing that transforms the typically bright clarion call of the trumpet into a mournful timbre more akin to that of an oboe. Match that voice with layers of drifting electronics and spare, exotic percussion and you end up with the kind of East-meets-West albums in which ECM specialize—records that manage to deftly navigate the fine line separating truly gorgeous, multi-ethnic ambiance from, well, Enya. It's far harder than it sounds, and they owe their success mainly to a touch that never forces any one flavour upon a track.
Henriksen's album is even more remarkable for the success of spoken word appearances by David Sylvian. Often the straw that breaks many a pretentious album's back, Sylvian's spare readings intersect beautifully, much in the way that similar (albeit much heavier) pieces on Sunn 0)))'s recent albums blend ambience and narration. Although both discs stand easily on their own, it's telling how well they complement one another—each an exceptional exercise in active musical meditation.
(For another take on Jon Hassell's Last Night The Moon..., also check out a review of that disc that ran back in February 2009.)