Gordon Grdina - No Difference '2015

Tracks list

Vancouver string virtuoso Grdinas new project includes searching, delicate duets
on oud or guitar with famed NY bassist Helias, expanding to a quartet with
Kenton Loewen and Tony Malaby to create denser, more energetic spaces.
Grdina’s compositions range from tender ballads to angular, searing
avant-jazz. Arab-flavored duos with oud provide a subtle world music dimension
similar to Grdina’s Think Like the Waves release with Gary Peacock and
Paul Motian. Dynamic, textured audiophile recording. 

Vancouver-based guitarist and oud player Gordon Grdina has been involved in many
collaborations with creative improvisers, including Mats Gustafsson, Fredrik
Ljungkvist, Samuel Blaser, Jerry Granelli, Han Bennink, Gerry Hemingway, Andy
Milne, Eyvind Kang, and Gary Peacock, his early mentor and member of Grdinas
Think Like the Waves trio along with Paul Motian (Songlines, 2006). His
association with Mark Helias goes back to that time, and since then theyve
performed every time Grdina has come to New York, mostly as a trio with Kenton
Loewen, Grdinas longtime drummer in his regular trio and in Grdinas
Arabic-avant-garde 10-piece Haram (Songlines, 2012). Gord takes up the story: On
one of our last shows as a trio Mark and I played a little duo oud and bass
before the show and we both thought it would be a great idea to record some duo
music... So I started to conceptualize the recording. I felt like I wanted to
add Kenton on part of it because he and Mark have a great connection through Ed
Blackwell - Kenton through Ed being his biggest influence and Mark through
having played with Ed for something like 15 years! When they first played
together they hit it off right away. I also could hear horn on some of this
music and I immediately thought of Mark and Tonys connection in Open Loose.
Their thing is real deep, and Kenton and I have been working on everything
together for about 10 years, and I thought that these two things might work
really well together. In June 2012 they went into the studio for a day and
played a gig at ShapeShifter Lab (the recording includes two live duo tracks). 

The pieces, all Grdinas, range from searching, delicate duos on oud or guitar to
denser, more energetic guitar quartet tracks, where a striving towards
collective abandon is held within fairly tight structures, at least compared to
the explosive, noise-drenched Gord Grdina Trio: I wrote specifically for these
musicians and what I could hear the entire group sounding like. In the Trio we
have worked out a way to take the littlest structure and constantly reinvent it
and go in any direction at the drop of a dime. Its the situation of less music
and fewer musicians playing over many years. The quartet is the opposite
situation. So Visceral Voices is both free and swinging. The Throes has a dark
melodic/harmonic language and 5/4 lope reminiscent of certain tunes from Think
Like the Waves, but the treatment is somehow more rooted, a melancholy
introspection tempered by the groups buoyant togetherness. Also notable are the
tender ballad Nayeli Joon (named after Grdinas daughter) and the experimental
Cluster, where the duo quietly plays the melody and improvises off it against an
overdubbed backdrop chaos of effected bowed guitar. 

Grdinas oud provides an Arabic flavor to some of the duos, giving the record a
subtle world-music dimension. His guitar sound has evolved over time: Originally
I was getting most of the high end from my guitar recorded acoustically directly
and then the amp sound was very dark. This was from a love of Jim Hall and Bill
Frisell and hearing my own sound through theirs. Ive since become more
interested in a brighter amp tone and distortion to create that larger sound.
This came quite naturally out of trying at first to hear Wayne Shorters music
through the guitar and then later Albert Ayler. Trying to get something like
their size, energy and intensity of expression. 

“One of the most fascinating and seemingly magical attempts at bringing
the music of the Middle East and vanguard modern jazz together.” (ALL
MUSIC GUIDE) 

Gordon Grdina, oud, guitar, bowed guitar
Mark Helias, double bass
Kenton Loewen, drums
Tony Malaby, tenor saxophone 

01. Gordon Grdina - Hope in Being (7:03)
02. Gordon Grdina - Limbo (5:50)
03. Gordon Grdina - The Throes (8:34)
04. Gordon Grdina - Leisure Park (4:49)
05. Gordon Grdina - Fast Times (5:55)
06. Gordon Grdina - Nayeli Joon (7:07)
07. Gordon Grdina - Cluster (5:19)
08. Gordon Grdina - Fierce Point (6:37)
09. Gordon Grdina - Visceral Voices (7:34)

Related artists