Invite Invite Your Eye into your ears. Like all invitations, it demands RSVP – from you, the listener. OK, you might not be into jazz, but maybe the jazzier bits of Black Country, New Road or Alex Henry Foster or The Mars Volta have intrigued you and you’re always willing to experiment. Invite Your Eye is an ambient, atmospheric slice of grown-up music, impeccably poised, intriguingly paced, always engrossing.
Moody, masterful opener And It Happens Every Day offers precise playing of the highest order, the command, control and cohesive whole of it apparent in every note, every beat, every second (I hear Al Pacino in my head saying: “One half step too late or too early, you don’t quite make it …” Yes, Any Given Sunday, we’re going to the movies!).
Dusty Village could be music over the credit sequence of some Michael Mann crime epic, a sinister sandstorm whipped up off the desert “road” as menacingly uniform 4x4s flank an incongruous limousine cruising towards bristling border control in the early dawn (the camera in the cab, POV). CUT TO a lizard flinching at the sudden sound of gunfire (OK, I made that last bit up, the gunfire. I’m making all this up, in fact). The guitar commands attention, dominating the horizon while the sun and the sax and the synths join the fray and the unsettled gecko quits the heavy scene, man … victims bleed out.
Ersahin, Harrington, Wollesen are now firmly into their collective stride for what is an expert, entertaining, evocative set of instrumentals, all written by the trio. Other highlights include the laidback, sultry and sweetly sinful Even As You Smile and the fun and funky Wreck The Study. The title track opens off-kilter before diving into a groove as if ducking down an alley, the movie in my brain now more like Shaft (NY) or Dirty Harry (SF) than the afore-mentioned Mr Mann’s masterpiece Heat (LA). What All The Books Say wouldn’t be out of place in Bladerunner or some other sci-noir and is bookended by the swoony The Long Goodbye Part 1 and Part 2 which by their very title keep tales of crime to the fore, along with that yearning for … something else, somewhere, some time other than now.
New York-based Swedish/Turkish saxophonist, composer, club-label owner Ersahin is on saxophone, Wurlitzer electric piano, Juno 106 synth and piano. Darkside’s Harrington (who also produces and mixes) delivers on guitar, bass, moog, mellotron and more. Wollesen (Tom Waits, John Zorn, Norah Jones) nails it on drums, percussion and vibraphone. All in all, a seriously stonking record. And a great movie.
Invite Your Eye, by Ilhan Ersahin, Dave Harrington, Kenny Wollesen, is out on March 4, on Nublu Records