Sylva by Snarky Puppy and the Metropole Orkest - First Impressions

After having some major problems with the last album from groundUP Records(Swift by Bill Laurance), I’m happy to report that Sylva, the latest endeavour from Michael League, Snarky Puppy and the Metropole Orkest, has restored my faith in the jazz fusion collective.

My biggest concern going into this album was that the use of the orchestra was going to feel gimmicky and tacked-on to give the album an interesting selling point, but nothing more. Thankfully, the orchestra and the band feel like one giant ensemble rather than one accompanying the other. There is only one track that doesn’t implement the Metropole Orkest so well - The Curtain. I want to get my problems with this track out of the way before I continue to praise the rest of the album. The problem I had with The Curtain is that it felt like a bunch of different ideas (all of which had potential) shoved together into one, huge,underdeveloped piece. If they had taken one or two of the ideas they included and developed them, they could have come up with a couple of really great,memorable pieces. What they were left with, instead, was the only piece on the album which felt too long and where the orchestra felt misused.

Much to my relief, the rest of this latest album is characteristically brilliant. TheClearing - the 20 minute centrepiece of the album - is incredibly enjoyable and,unlike The Curtain, never felt too long. The highlight of the album is Gretel - adramatic anthem like piece with an incredible, booming final section whichmakes great use of silence and the full force of the entire ensemble alike. Ialso loved Flight and Atchafalaya. These are, to me, the most melodically andrhythmically interesting pieces on the album and, to make things just that littlebit better, they lead really nicely into each other.

Sylva is an incredibly enjoyable and musically interesting album, that makes fora fantastic follow up to last year’s equally brilliant We Like It Here. I definitely recommend supporting the band by buying this album. All I can say now is that I am even more excited for Snarky Puppy’s next album, coming later this year - Family Dinner Volume 2.

Swift by Bill Laurance - First Impressions

I have to say, I’m a little disappointed by this new album. Having thoroughly enjoyed Flint, I expected Swift to build upon the foundations that the previous album established. Flint was an album that not only provided intellectually stimulating music, but also provided music that evoked feeling from the listener. Swift is certainly musically diverse and impressive in an intellectual sense, which is something I always look for when listening to new music, but it never made me feel anything. Swift lacks the balance that Flint found between esotericism and accessibility. There are certainly no standout tracks that stuck with me after listening to the album. I understand that the point of this album is to create a series of musical landscapes, but what that does is to make sitting and listening to the pieces themselves as a primary activity rather difficult. The biggest issue that I have with the album is that it seems confused. On one hand, it’s trying to break down the barriers between genres and create an intellectual music experience. On the other hand, it creates a sound that is best heard when one doesn’t pay attention to it. There is no denying that the music itself has a serene beauty to it, but that doesn’t help the fact that at times, it feels as if it’s not moving anywhere. To me, Swift feels like an album that could have done something amazing, had the music felt as though it had the purpose that the concept of the album intended.