Artist: Ingrid Laubrock

Date of Release: 01/09/2006

Catalogue no: BDV 2661

Label: Babel

Price: £12

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Track Listing

Appearances by

Liam Noble

new album of standards and improvisations by Liam Noble and Ingrid Laubrock with remixes by Sebastian Rochford

Reviews

26/08/2006 Chris May / allaboutjazz.com

Daring, high-wire saxophone juju flashes throughout the album, but much of the time Laubrock and Noble focus on extended harmonic and rhythmic explorations of the tunes. There are six modern jazz standards (two by Monk, one each by Mingus, Ellington, Konitz and Dietz/Schwartz) and six originals. Most of the standards last around seven minutes, the originals around three. Polar Bear drummer and leader Sebastian Rochford adds subtle electronic modifications to four of the originals (the trippy, treble-register, piano mutations on “Spells” are especially effective). ...Though not without some characteristically dark and edgy corners (...) the album is an exhilaratingly playful and celebratory affair. Laubrock and Noble have worked together often enough to feel at ease in each other's company—but not so often as to lose a heightened sense of adventure.

25/07/2006 Chris Parker

A duo album with a few (remix) contributions from Sebastian Rochford, this refreshingly spontaneous recording mixes Monk material (a slowly coalescing 'We See', a spikily eccentric visit to the title-track), the odd standard (a fluent, strikingly original 'Alone Together') and a few modern-jazz classics (Mingus's beautifully sonorous 'Duke Ellington's Sound of Love', Lee Konitz's slippery 'Subconscious-Lee') with improvised duets given extra textural variety by Rochford.
Ingrid Laubrock's soprano sound ranges naturally from sweetly piping to harshly abrasive as required, and pianist Liam Noble is pungently thoughtful throughout, but it is the subtlety of their rhythmic interplay that captures the attention and holds it.
This album may not contain the impish freewheeling interplay that characterises many duos, but its concentration on tonal shading and delicate rhythmic displacement, and its exploration of what might be termed the hinterland between freedom and structure, render it deeply satisfying.