Looking At Sounds introduces the new quartet of Michel Benita, the Algeria-born bassist who has long been a mainstay of French jazz. A founding member of the Orchestre National de Jazz, he has played with Archie Shepp and Erik Truffaz. It follows River Silver, his 2016 ECM debut with the group Ethics. The title, Benita has said, is an homage to Jon Hassell, turning round the name of Hassell's album Listening to Pictures. The music is melodic and floating, close to folk song as much as to jazz.
Two players come over from Ethics: the Swiss flugelhornist Matthieu Michel and the French drummer Philippe Garcia, who also handles electronics. The newcomer is the Belgian keyboardist Jozef Dumoulin, whose Fender Rhodes and electronics shape much of the sound, while Benita plays double bass and laptop. The koto and guitar of River Silver are gone, leaving a spare line-up of four. The quartet recorded in March 2019 at Studios La Buissonne in Pernes-les-Fontaines, with Gérard de Haro engineering and Steve Lake producing.
Benita wrote most of the eleven pieces. Dervish Diva, co-written with Michel, opens on bass harmonics, with Rhodes and flugelhorn moving over them. Berceuse, by the Breton harpist Kristen Noguès, is joined to Benita's Gwell Talenn. Jobim's Inutil Paisagem follows Benita's Elisian in a similar diptych, and Barroco gives Michel's flugelhorn its clearest spotlight. The short Cloud To Cloud, credited to all four, was a studio improvisation that came about at Lake's suggestion. Benita closes the album alone, with a solo bass reading of Jule Styne's Never Never Land.
Reviewers stressed the ensemble playing over the solos. Tony Dudley-Evans wrote in London Jazz News that the pieces are "developed by the quartet as a group activity rather than by individual solos". He also noted that Dumoulin's approach is far from the funky sound usually associated with the Rhodes. Nick Lea in Jazz Views called it "unreservedly recommended", and Jazz Magazine gave it a Choc. Roland Spiegel of Bayerischer Rundfunk named it jazz album of the month.
This is the CD edition, ECM 2663, first released on 18 September 2020.
