Food (Iain Ballamy, Arve Henriksen, Mats Eilertsen, Thomas Strønen) - Food (1999)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 260 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 123 Mb | Scans ~ 118 Mb
Contemporary Jazz, Free Improvisation, Avant-Garde | Label: Feral | # ASFA 101 | 00:51:23
There have been countless attempts to counteract the inherently boring nature of the CD as an artefact and the approach adopted by Feral shapes up better than some on the strength of this first release, which takes some excellent music by saxophonist Iain Ballamy (in the company of three young Norwegian musicians) and packages it with a set of intriguing print artworks by Dave McKean in an elegant library case. On the other hand, we may now be so accustomed to the blandness of the format that any attempt to escape it seems like a distraction. While debating this, it's important not to forget to play the disc, which is quite remarkable and a far cry from Ballamy's formative years in the sprawling bloke-jazz outfit Loose Tubes. Recorded live at the Molde Jazz Festival in 1998, it's astounding that this music seems to date from the very beginning of Ballamy's association with these musicians, given their obvious level of empathy.