Zurich based musician Arthur Hnatek is one of a new breed of players who see their music as a continuum stretching between genres, always thinking in terms of links rather than boundaries, possibilities rather than limits.
His time spent playing drums with similarly adventurous and unclassifiable artists Tigran Hamasyan and Shai Maestro opened his ears to the possibilities of rhythmic variation: his immersion in electronic music production and the motorik tradition of Jaki Liebzeit alerted him the possibilities of repetition. Now, with Static, he presents his first trio record: joined by his equally fearless bandmates Fabien Iannone on bass and Francesco Geminiani on tenor sax, this is music created by a classic jazz line-up and steeped in improvisational facility, yet simultaneously utterly unlike anything in the standard jazz tradition.
The bulk of the album was written by Hnatek, paying close attention to the details and textures, and drawing a range of different sounds from the drum kit: ’I like the idea that you can have very complicated rhythms, but played in a repetitive way that sounds natural, and where the binaries of ‘written’ and ‘improvised’ aren’t too clear’. ‘Monotonous’ features the thick, punchy tones of Iannone’s bass, like mountain peaks rising through clouds of ambient electronics, as the kit clatters and Geminiani’s saxophone soars overhead. ’27’ marries plangent bass double-stops with synthesised textures and enigmatic saxophone statements from Geminiani - “He’s a great jazz player, and also a great software programmer and coder - he manipulates the electronics in real time - a rare combination!” - who also contributes the percussive, urgent composition ‘Brew’. ‘MIDI Sans Frontières’ is a ballad from an unusual source: written by Tom Jenkinson aka Squarepusher as a post-Brexit lament.
