Food – This Is Not A Miracle (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

“… seductively groove-inclined … delicate brush hisses, pattering footstep sounds, flaring echo guitar chords and tense hip-hop fidgets partner ambient drones. Ballamy’s tenor is as stately and Coltrane-like as a train-rhythm chatter …”
– The Guardian

“Four Stars … the sum of the parts here is more important than the individual pieces in that there is an organic flow and feel to the album when taken in its entirety. Like well-trained athletes, these players have a way of making it all sound easier than it is. This is Not A Miracle is not a miracle, in fact. What it is however, is another mindful collection of compositions that look at jazz music with an open mind and equally open process.”
– All About Jazz

Food, the British/Norwegian electronic duo of Iain Ballamy and Thomas Strønen, is joined again by Austrian guitarist and electronics player Christian Fennesz on this album of powerful grooves, evocative textures and exploratory improvisation, sometimes hypnotically insistent, sometimes turbulent. Strønen describes the sound of This Is Not A Miracle as “heavier, drier, connecting more with how we actually sound live.”

When originally assembled, Food was an avant-jazz quartet that experimented with sound. After five records with Feral and Rune Grammofon, they pared down to a duo of saxophonist Iain Ballamy and drummer/electronics wiz Thomas Strønen, signed to ECM, and enlisted guests to fill out their lineup. The one constant has been guitarist Christian Fennesz. Electronics are more central to the band’s musical identity here, though jazz is still an important part of the mix. They craft something more akin to “songs,” though improvisation remains. The basic recordings for This Is Not a Miracle were done in the summer of 2013. Strønen, Ballamy, and Fennesz cut a wealth of material live from the floor of engineer Ulf Holand’s studio in Oslo. Strønen (with Ballamy’s blessing) took the tapes and worked on them alone for five solid months, radically reshaping the music. His solitary production approach is more directly reflective of electronica, with flaring, undulant grooves, hypnotic beats, glitchy shard-like atmospherics, and spacy rock. That said, the melodic invention of jazz remains at the core. Strønen knew when to leave well enough alone: Ballamy’s horn is largely unadorned throughout. Over 11 pieces (most between three and five minutes), the emotional depth of the saxophonist’s playing – with his debt to John Coltrane on full display – is the set’s most defining aspect. The majority, if not all, of Strønen’s drums are treated loops, but there is such a fluid, creative sense of rhythmic propulsion that they don’t become monotonous. Fennesz’s guitar is often treated as a backdrop instrument for tonal variation, or is papered over with blurry echo effects so as to be almost unrecognizable, though there are a few striking exceptions. One is “Sinking Gardens of Babylon,” where his flanged, distorted single-string playing offers a skeletal counter to Strønen’s tom-tom rim shots and syncopated cowbells. The lonely, desolate, harmonic articulation is carried by Ballamy. “Exposed to Frost” is the set’s finest moment. It exists in the meta-musical terrain where Coltrane’s modal Eastern melodicism and Miles Davis’ most abstract ’70s jazz-rock experimentation meet IDM culture. Only three-and-a-half minutes long, it is marked by skittering, brushed snare loops and Ballamy’s restrained yet spiritually expressive melody. Fennesz’s wah-wah pedal and punchy, droning chords ride waves of dark ambience, adding heft and drama. Ballamy’s long tones on closer “Without the Laws” bind the driving, post-jungle rhythm and vast swells of noisy guitars to the earth. Notably, Manfred Eicher’s mix on This Is Not a Miracle – done while the band was rehearsing to play the material in concert – is kinetic, warm, and connected to the heart of the music; his usually icy signature is nowhere present. The album is the most groove-driven, performable, and accessible record in Food’s catalog.

Tracklist:
1-1. Food – First Sorrow (03:05)
1-2. Food – Where Dry Desert Ends (04:18)
1-3. Food – This Is Not A Miracle (04:08)
1-4. Food – The Concept Of Density (02:55)
1-5. Food – Sinking Gardens Of Babylon (04:22)
1-6. Food – Death Of Niger (03:43)
1-7. Food – Exposed To Frost (03:27)
1-8. Food – Earthly Carriage (06:55)
1-9. Food – Age Of Innocence (04:27)
1-10. Food – The Grain Mill (04:59)
1-11. Food – Without The Laws (05:07)

Personnel:
Thomas Strønen: drums, electronics, percussion, Moog, Fender Rhodes
Iain Ballamy: saxophones, electronics
Christian Fennesz: guitar, electronics

Download:

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