ABACAXI / TAXI CONSILIUM
ABACAXI
Julien Desprez - guitar
Jean Francois Riffaud - bass
Francesco Pastacaldi - drums, synth
www.juliendesprez.com
Somewhere between noise, funkrock and sound art, ABACAXI (pineapple in Portuguese), the remarkable new power trio has a heart full of candy and a skin made of spikes. Geared around maverick guitarist Julien Desprez, this brand new incarnation of the classic rock line-up guitar/bass/drums presents an intense, electrified, and loud sound sculpture, carved by the rock idiom. Elements of abstraction, snarly noise and prog mixed with the guitarist’s gymnastic, dance-like maneuvers on an array of floor pedals, including stage lighting controls. The trio creates an highly energetic new music full of noisy brightness and sharp edges - completed by a choreography of flashlights. Band leader Julien Desprez has developed his own approach to the guitar, as if he’s playing an organ or drum kit. Tap dancing on the pedals, he engages his whole body. He doesn’t hide behind the powerful sound of his instrument. For him, the guitar has become a controller which he uses to fluctuate between contrasting levels of light and sound, while he explores the physical and mental space, making it soar and tremble at the same time. ABACAXI made a big impression during their European debut at Berlin Jazz festival 2019. The first release “Mainstream desire” followed in March 2021 (Carton / Coax records). Abacaxi is one of the more exciting, genre-blurring and multisensory new ensembles around.
TAXI CONSILIUM
Filip Bukrshliev - guitar
Blagojche Tomevski - bass, Bb clarinet
Andrea Mircheska - double bass
Dragan Teodosiev - drums
www.facebook.com/taxiconsilium
Taxi Consilium is the spiritual conjointement of four well established musicians on the unwholesome Macedonian jazz æther (members of: Cobalt Code Unit, Yordan Kostov Quintet/Ensemble, Filip Bukrshliev Trio, Fighting Windmills, Svetlost + Odron Ritual Orchestra, Shock Troopers, Pijan Slavej), guided by the eternal wisdom of seasoned taxi drivers prowling the desolate city streets at 3 in the morning. It is epitomic after-midnight music. The sound of Eric Dolphy if he was a character in a Thomas Pynchon novel. A doped up horn man who moonlights as a PI: the wail of a lonely bass clarinet playing counterpoint to the dim sounds of fornication from the other room. Unmistakably decadent and mildly felonious, this is the music of choice for lowlifes, weirdos, paranoids, practitioners of transcendental meditation, advocates of karmic readjustments, used-car salesman and the emissaries of the black market. Pulsating like the off-beat reveries of a retired trapeze performer and the purr of a neurotic bourgeois taking an afternoon cat nap while Duke Ellington’s “Far East Suite” plays in reverse on the stereo. It is jazz as it should be: unruly, undefined, untrustworthy, unsafe and not boring. Shadows and smoke, distant ominous laughter. Nocturnal flights and exposed flesh… A free-jazz hard-on in a shady dark alley.