here & now

“This project is not simply about having jazz musicians play rock or pop compositions. From Gabor Szabo to The Thing, this has already produced so many results of the greatest difference in quality that we have enough to do studying the causes of this difference. When Albert Oehlen had the idea that Sven-Åke Johansson’s group play the music of Mayo Thompson, he was thinking of something else. (…)

Oehlen selected particular compositions written by Thompson (some of them together with his comrades in arms from the early days of the Red Crayola) for the way in which they would make clear a specific, unorthodox treatment of melodic, theme-constructing or deconstructing elements, and in whose peculiarity he perhaps recognised the sensibility evident in the arrangements and compositions from Johansson’s quintet, albeit in quite a different context. But instead of simply compiling pieces from very different phases of Thompson’s work and having Johansson and his group play their own arrangements, Thompson himself should also sing. Which he did, in the end result establishing that he couldn’t create a solo record in this musical context, rather only a “Red Crayola covers” album, whose artist-composer relationship, though, would thereby become charmingly complicated, with the composer also appearing in the exposed role of singer.” (Excerpt from the introduction text in the cd booklet by Diedrich Diederichsen)

The cd titled “Shotgun Wedding” was published by enja records and will be presented on Friday, January 15th in Berlin, Bar Babette, Karl-Marx-Allee 36. More details to follow.