Review Summary: Just a double bass and an acoustic guitar, but full of tension and life.
A sound of a creaky old garden gate closing very slowly. Accidentally stretching out the rubber band that keeps your lunch box closed, it snaps back with a mournful twang. Somebody a few blocks away is mowing the grass, or at least that is what that distant, droning hum suggests. When you get inside (creaky door), you notice an insect tries to go outside, but it keeps hitting a weird, solid piece of air (glass) in a hole in the wall (window), brushing, tapping. You go sit on the bed for a while, the mesh base screeching while it takes your weight. The washing machine is switched on. Since youβve left a can with some painting tools on top of it, a merry rattling sound can be heard because the tools keep bumping into each other in the can. All the time birds are singing outside.
When listening to Live at OZO LAND, this is what you hear. A day in the life of the protagonist from this utterly modernist (and more than a little ridiculous) story. Goncalo Almeida plays his double bass in every way he sees fit (plucking with fingers, using a bow, a combination of both), while Dirk Serries does the same with his acoustic guitar (plectrum, fingers, bow, close to the bridge pins or near the tuning pegs). Whatβs remarkable about this record is that despite this unorthodox approach, despite a lack of common melodies and rhythm, Almeida and Serries manage to keep things interesting and accessible. Experimental jazz can be estranging or too pretentious to many listeners. I myself do not have a very high tolerance for this kind of thing usually. Yet the mysterious, eerie ambience that this duo creates is completely engrossing. Slow, gracious playing alternates with energetic, jittery sections, neither of which go on for too long. There is room for extensive solo parts, for dramatic pauses, but often the two instruments play together. Itβs an immensely intimate record, the live setting might have to do with that, but the clear, warm production certainly helps too. It feels like you are there, witnessing them unfold these strange pieces just an armβs length away. Two musicians, two instruments, playing off each other. Listening to each other, creating something full of tension and life.
