Discover 2 mediterranean jazz releases with free Bandcamp download codes from independent artists and labels.
‘Velella’ refers to Velella velella - the “by-the-wind sailor,” a colonial hydrozoan whose way of life, floating across the surface of the open ocean, carries it by the wind to many places, as we hope our music does for our listeners. Recorded live in Brisbane by the extraordinary Melbourne-based sound engineer Siiri Metsar, this album further extends the band’s unique sound and style, inviting listeners to immerse themselves in its finely-crafted soundscapes and improvisations. Over the eight years of their collaboration, East of West have developed an intuitive musical relationship, flourishing through their dynamic interplays, virtuosic unison melodies and expressive soloing. Gajić’s compositions explore gentle melodic motifs nested in uptempo passages set to Balkan-influenced rhythms, interspersed with moments of mesmerising musical sparseness. “I had two new ideas for this album,” Gajić says. “One of them was to arrange tunes allowing for improvised sections to become more open and interactive, and to be as important part of the recording as the melody. I believe we managed to achieve this in a couple of tracks and I am quite pleased with that. Another thing I wanted is to give more opportunity for Malindi to express herself on percussion. She always carefully crafts her percussion arrangements, but this time she had a few more opportunities for open solos which she played rather beautifully.“ Philip Griffin, the trio’s oud player and a highly skilled naturalist, has also contributed two compositions to this album: a Distinct Lack of Parrotfinch - a driving piece in the unusual time signature of 50/8 - whose title links to his adventures in search of the elusive bird. His second piece, Camille, was written for his god-daughter.
This album began with a small piano being crammed into the back of a family car. Malindi, our percussionist, was on a mission to buy a piano that could fit in our tiny apartment. After visiting and rejecting a number of them, Malindi found a beautiful old spinet upright. She called the owner, we drove to the suburbs, walked behind the house - and there was the piano, sitting on the grass, covered in a tarpaulin, in the middle of the rainy, sweaty Brisbane summer. Our hearts sank deeper than our feet into the suburban floodplain mud. The owner's ex had turfed the piano and all his music gear out of the house to the mercy of the subtropical summer weather. He offered it to us for zero dollars. Malindi bargained the price up, three of us somehow loaded it into the back of Subaru Forester and took it home. The piano tuner worked hard to give the piano back some self-respect, and on it I sketched out the compositions on this album which were played by the remarkable Romano Crivici to complement East of West's oud, double bass and percussion. We recorded on a beautiful Steinway piano with an equally interesting story, but we'll leave that for another time.
