Inclassifiable Label Bleu
With Steve Lodder and Nana Vasconcelos:
1. Where We Going? (7.34)
Andy Sheppard / Nana Vasconcelos
2. SlowBoat (6.15)
Andy Sheppard
3. Hush Hush (6.49)
Andy Sheppard
4. RCA (5.36)
Steve Lodder / Nana Vasconcelos
5. Ocean View (4.48)
Andy Sheppard
6. Is everything Alright Up There? (7.13)
Steve Lodder / Andy Sheppard
7. Too Close To The Flame (5.57)
Steve Lodder
8. Ships In The Night (6.18)
Andy Sheppard
9. Sharp Practice (6.10)
Steve Lodder / Andy Sheppard / Nana Vasconcelos
Sleeve Notes
Playing the disc makes it easy to understand why the magic worked.
The combination of acoustic and traditional materials with contemporary musical technology is an arresting rarity in itself. Listen to Vasconcelos quiet, breathy vocal sounds and Sheppard's poignant soprano at the beginning of the opening track 'Where We Going',turning into a dancing, country tinged theme that Pat Metheny or Keith Jarrett would have raised both eyebrows at, and the Brazilian's cymbal smacks in the climax make the music fizz from the speakers. The same sunlit, freewheeling atmosphere, though at a much more leisurely tempo, envelopes 'Slowboat,' with its water-drip sounds from Vasconcelos and Sheppard's heat-haze horn, and the harp-like music of Lodder's keyboards. Like many Sheppard pieces, this one subtly changes its character when you've just got used to trailing your fingers in the water intensifying to a reserved passion by its final.
The music moves through much more rugged, urbanised funk though even here, Nana Vasconcelos' backbeat has a deeper, softer resonance quite different from the usual whiplash sound, and into a languorous African feet with chanting voices drifting in and out of the ensemble, and the beginning of a phase of gentle, rhapsodic playing from Sheppard that includes some of his best slow improvisation on disc, culminating in the soprano sax gliding over keyboard sounds that resemble French horns, and Vasconcelos' shakers suggesting a fast moving steam locomotive somewhere in the middle distance. The music ends with a gleeful rumba, a characteristically affectionate Sheppard adaptation of a popular form with a long history.
Even by now, these three artists will be painting a different picture in music, but just as rich and full of gentle surprise. Because they never stand still, and they never stop listening to the world around them, they know how to go on making sounds with this fresh and graceful energy. Keep checking them out.
John Fordham The Guardian, London - April 1995
INCLASSIFICABLE
Andy SHEPPARD, Steve LODDER and Nana VASCONCELOS have painted a unique picture of a fast-moving musical world with the band they call 'Inclassificable'.
This imaginative trio represents new blends in contemporary jazz-based music of the acoustic and traditional with cutting-edge electronics, of performers from the Americas and Europe, of street party exuberance and chamber music detail. Andy Sheppard's own favourite bandleaders (Carla Bley, the late Gil Evans and George Russell) have all played the whole band as an instrument rather than simply used it to change the drapes behind soloists, and it's a lesson that 'Inclassificable' puts to inimitable use.
The three members don't need much introduction to anyone who's kept even half an ear open to recent developments in music. The English saxophonist Andy Sheppard has been a leading soloist on the European scene since his emergence in 1986 on a London new talent contest, but he's been learning his craft in a variety of situations for a long time before that, including a sojourn in France which took in a spell with the Paris based mixed media group Urban Sax. And, as a composer and bandleader, Sheppard has drawn on the inspirations of the freethinking Americans Bley Russell and Evans (he has worked with all three), as well as hi-life bands and Cuban festival outfits. He and his regular keyboard partner Steve Lodder have also worked with the Smith Quartet (a young British classical chamber group) and the saxophonist has also performed with the string quartet led by violinist Alexander Balanescu, with the genre-leaping Indian violinist Shankar, and with the remarkable free-jazz pianist Keith Tippett.
The little band that recorded the music on this disc also describes the big stage that contemporary jazz musicians now tread easily. Steve Lodder, the keyboardist, is also English, a classically trained pianist with an encyclopaedic store of textural, rhythmic and harmonic surprises in his head, comfortable with both regular jazz and its extensions into the looser forms of contemporary classical music, and comfortable too with the increasingly mixed vocabularies of acoustic piano and electronics.
Brazilian Nana Vasconcelos is one of the most inspired and expressive percussionists on the planet, sometime partner of Pat Metheny, Jan Garbarek, Don Cherry and Gato Barbieri, and a man as liable to play drums on his own chest, cheeks or knees as he is on his vast array of instruments, and adding to these considerable resources a remarkable range of vocal effects as well. Vasconcelos also happens to be one of the world's leading exponents of the bowed-string berimbau.
Some of the mellow, witty, sophisticated and atmospheric music on this set was composed for choreographer Jonathan Lunn's award winning contemporary dance piece Modern Living, and the group has added more pieces over the past two years. The group has only occasionally performed in concert, this recording was made shortly after a successful week at Ronnie Scott's Club in October 1994, during which the trio tantalised a nightclub audience not often confronted with such ambiguous and reflective music, getting its message across through commitment and consummate musicianship.