Peter Brotzmann - Sparrow Nights '2018

Tracks list

Piping hot from her knockout ‘Throne’ album, Heather Leigh joins
the bellows-lunged Peter Brötzmann for a nerve-biting, romantic, and heavily
arresting set of duets improvised on woodwind, brass and lap steel guitar .

“There is complexity in simplicity, and Sparrow Nights is Peter
Brötzmann and Heather Leighs most enduring record to date, and their first
studio album. A series of emotionally rich and boldly elucidated tonal and
timbral exchanges played like compositions on pedal steel and reeds, the tracks
(released as a 6 track LP and 10 track CD) are cold-forged minimalist blues
motifs dragged from instrumental laments. 

After three years playing together Brötzmann/Leighs connection and
understanding is by now both cerebral and deeply invested in the physical and
sensory possibilities of their combined sound, while retaining a melancholic
distance. Within this duo there is fluidity – neither is the anchor
– and these recordings sound with as much variety as the sea. At times
Sparrow Nights carries the clarity and poeticism of still water and open horizon
(This Word Love), and at others it contains the elemental and ferocious roar of
white water breakers on black rocks (This Time Around). 

On their previous three live albums (Ears Are Filled With Wonder, Sex Tape,
Crowmoon) the duo have developed an intimate and intense language that manifests
here as a focus on power and control, where figures blasted of unnecessary
decoration are drawn from the shadows and smoke of collapse. The studio setting
also allows Brötzmann to bring a broader range of reeds than in live
scenarios: where previously he has played primarily tenor, clarinet and tarogato
with Leigh, here he delivers the heat of alto and the low pressure of bass
saxophone and clarinet. 

Brötzmann’s duo with Leigh continues to trace a fresh new arc in his
trajectory, and this release also falls at a time when Leigh releases Throne,
her most song-based record to date. Here as a studio duo they play a new-old
blues for times of complexity, noise and chaos, continuing to redefine and
re-sound possibilities for improvised music.”

Tracklist:
2:03 | 01. Peter Brotzmann - Summer Rain
5:45 | 02. Peter Brotzmann - This Word Love
10:09 | 03. Peter Brotzmann - Its Almost Dark
4:00 | 04. Peter Brotzmann - Sparrow Nights
10:48 | 05. Peter Brotzmann - This Time Around
12:35 | 06. Peter Brotzmann - River Of Sorrow
5:45 | 07. Peter Brotzmann - At First Sight
8:26 | 08. Peter Brotzmann - All Of Us
13:02 | 09. Peter Brotzmann - My Empty Heart
5:08 | 10. Peter Brotzmann - The Longer Were Apart

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