MAN – Helping Hand
(CD, Sub Rosa)
The first track will lead you on a false path
immediately, because the dense, full power approach of Massive Attack
meets Kid Congo Powers with a horn section won’t come again during the
rest of this eclectic yet soothing and satisifying record. But that’s
also true for the last track, the eleven minute “8mm”, which is either
where the ongoing work of Man as soundtrack producers for movies and
theatres parallel to their recording and touring, makes its strongest
appearance, or – as the title would also suggest – actually really a
soundtrack to a short movie. In between those two poles are eight tracks
which are at times like flying high over an ever changing landscape
looking down at the drastically different picture of life.
So, the base of “Helping Hand” is neither an
instrumental independent record nor a soundtrack. It’s more like Radian meets
Wayne Shorter in a holiday resort opting for a week in the studio instead.
Francois Rasim Biyikli and Charles-Eric Charrier spread their music freely
over the globe, browsing into laid back late night but not too jazzy piano
chords (on “drifting” or “separation”) as easily as into
micro-progamming and glitches (on “strange feeling”) or into
dynamically repressed chaos (on “Maiomomie”). The overall feeling is
one of classically trained musicians eager to spread their wings and fly,
forgetting all borders and trusting their own feeling and intuition. And
it works out really well. It is easy, free, gentle, soft, gliding and
relaxing for most parts, and then exciting and challenging in some other
parts, and only a little trite in some small parts. But that won’t
influence my judgement, nor should it influence your eagerness.
Not counting some serious outbreaks, as an electric
guitar screech growing into a storm on the aforementioned
“Seperation”, this could be your favourite record for all kinds of
situations, from dinner with your parents to doing housework to relaxing
with headphones and eyes closed. There is great excitement in the details
as well as in the overall dynamic of the whole album; from the structure
of the notes forming a chord progression on the piano to using various
levels of noise or noise-like sounds as a backdrop or fundament to their
tracks. True, there are times at which the music scratches close at the
luxury suite inhabited by modern jazz (which is a euphemism for that
boring kind of rehash that is suitable for the hotel lobby rather than the
stage, but has such a big and growing market potential, it will end up in
the suite nevertheless, while the music in the lobby comes from a tape),
but these will soon enough be broken up by some more inventive and brave
programming of beats and noise. The change from the track “Farewell”
to “Revenir” is a great example of that. (Would a track called
“farewell” need to be more straight forward and less experimental? Who
needs musical challenges while feeling the melancholia of someone
leaving?). Mostly the tracks will wade around their area for some time,
some more hectic and jumping from square to square, others relaxed closing
on apathy, but eventually will find a space and rhythm to go with.
