Hammer, Roll, and Leaf is an audacious exploration of sonic intimacy, collaboration, and the spaces between sound and silence. This collaborative effort between saxophonist Sakina Abdou, percussionist Toma Gouband, and pianist Marta Warelis feels less like a recording and more like a shared meditation, a soundscape that invites listeners into its vast, fluid architecture. Their collaborations resulted in a challenging and breathtaking journey, reaffirming their commitment to pushing the boundaries of jazz and free jazz while connecting their disparate traditions in deeply personal and inventive ways.
Recorded in the intimate setting of Abdou’s home and punctuated by two live performances, the album captures the raw vitality of first encounters. There’s an immediacy here, a tangible sense of discovery that permeates every note. Abdou’s saxophone alternates between assertive and delicate, its tone sometimes brash and guttural, at other times featherlight and melodic. Her ability to shape the narrative of the improvisation feels effortless, her phrases unspooling like tightly wound and freely flowing threads. Gouband’s percussion work is an explanatory revelation. Eschewing the traditional drum kit for an organic arsenal of stones, branches, and an array of unconventional tools, he conjures textures that feel earthy and astral. His rhythms pulse like a living organism, primal and visceral, yet capable of surprising subtlety. His ability to sit at the heart of the ensemble while also orbiting its edges creates a fascinating interplay between groundedness and expansiveness.
Warelis’s piano is a universe in itself, her touch ranging from crystalline delicacy to thunderous dissonance. The Polish pianist draws on her background in improvisational collectives and avant-garde experimentation to thread melodic fragments and harmonic gestures that resonate like echoes from another time. Her interplay with Abdou’s saxophone is particularly striking, as the two instruments seem to converse in an ancient and invented language. This is music without a safety net, crafted entirely in the moment, with no predefined structure or narrative. Yet, within this freedom lies an extraordinary cohesion. Their ability to anticipate and respond to each other’s movements is mesmerizing, a sheer example of their deep listening and mutual trust.
The album’s improvisations unfold like a series of cinematic scenes, moments of tension and release, light and shadow, chaos and order. There are stretches where the music feels like a quiet conversation, each player contributing delicate gestures that barely disrupt the silence. Then, without warning, the trio surges into cacophony, the instruments clashing and colliding like tectonic plates. It’s a dynamic range that keeps the listener on edge, unsure of what will come next but eager to find out. The textural quality of Hammer, Roll, and Leaf is its most compelling feature. Gouband’s percussive palette adds an almost tactile dimension to the music, you can almost feel the stones grinding and the branches snapping under the weight of his rhythmic imagination. These organic sounds are juxtaposed against Warelis’s piano, which shifts from resonant chords that seem to stretch infinitely to percussive strikes that punctuate the music like exclamation marks. Abdou’s saxophone is the glue that holds it all together, its tones often mimicking the breath of life itself, sometimes steady, sometimes ragged, always human.
There’s also a fascinating interplay between the natural and the mechanical. At moments, Gouband’s percussion and Warelis’s piano seem to mimic the sounds of the natural world, wind, water, and rustling of leaves while Abdou’s saxophone introduces an element of human vulnerability, resulting in a soundscape that feels grounded in the earth and untethered from it. While the album’s foundation is firmly planted in the language of jazz, it reaches far beyond its traditional boundaries. There are echoes of minimalism in the repetitive motifs and slow-building crescendos, as well as hints of classical music in Warelis’s more lyrical passages. The influence of noise music is also evident, particularly in the album’s more abrasive moments, where the instruments seem to rebel against their own identities.
This genre-fluid approach gives the album a timeless quality. It feels as though it could have been recorded at any point in the last 50 years, yet it also feels uniquely of this moment. The trio’s willingness to blur the lines between composition and improvisation, melody and noise, tradition and experimentation, makes Hammer, Rolle, and Leaf a work that defies easy categorization. Beneath its surface-level beauty and complexity, Hammer, Roll, and Leaf is a meditation on connection, between the players, between their instruments, and between the music and the listener. There’s a sense of shared memory that runs through the album, as though the trio is drawing on experiences that transcend their individual lives. This connection extends to the listener, who is invited to become part of the process. The music’s openness and unpredictability demand active engagement, asking the listener to fill in the spaces between notes and interpret the silences as much as the sounds. It’s an album that rewards patience and curiosity, offering new insights with each listen.
In an era where so much music is carefully planned and polished, Hammer, Roll, and Leaf remind us of the beauty of improvisation. The album’s rawness and spontaneity are its greatest strengths, capturing moments of pure, unfiltered creativity that could never be replicated. At the same time, it’s a work of remarkable cohesion and craftsmanship. Their ability to navigate the unpredictable terrain of free improvisation while maintaining a sense of purpose and direction is astonishing. It exemplifies their individual talents and collective chemistry, as well as their commitment to pushing the boundaries of what music can be. With its blend of raw emotion, intricate interplay, and boundless creativity, it stands as a shining example of the power of collaboration and the endless possibilities of improvisation. Sakina Abdou, Toma Gouband, and Marta Warelis have created a jazz masterpiece worth spinning over and over again.
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