"an 8 minute ride through a bent carnival mirror"
Jes Berge's innerprovisational track "Space Jazz Monstrosity" is oddly beautiful. I mean oddly as a compliment. Far from a monstrosity but definitely spacey and jazzy, it is full of whimsy and daring do's. It, in fact, feels like bent carnival mirror, an 8 act play directed by Federico Fellini, Henry Selick and Quentin Tarantino all at the same time. As composed by Los Angeles based Berge, he assembled a talented group of musicians to help create his universe, himself on guitar, Igor Willcox on drums, Quincy Njemanze on bass, Morgan Walbridge on vibraphone, William Porter on saxophone, Scott Hearn on trombone and Erika Boshchi on vocals. They all walk tight ropes on slack lines. I absolutely love all the sonic animation going on, the tones that suggest interpretive dancing mimes who act silly one moment and pull out knives and bloody each other up the next. Berge and his collaborators keep the disarray twisted but not typically histrionic, there is more weird cool than instruments falling down a stairwell and I love that approach.
Each set piece is wonderful, there are affections to the Great American Songbook (the jazz and 50's pop paragraphs) to the kitsch and kill of an Italian heist movie to dark dramas, avant garde and surreal creations and even to something more art pop post punk (in texture) as I even thought of Radiohead (for a fleeting moment) but the next moment I was in a rain soaked French 60's movie. So, incredibly wonderfully dreamy and inspiring. All of it.
-Robb Donker Curtius
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https://jesberge.bandcamp.com/
Jes Berge
Los Angeles, California
Jes Berge, experimental jazz, jazz, free jazz, modern creative jazz, Los Angeles, composer, musician, collaboration, "Space Jazz Monstrosity", psychedelic, trippy, 50's jazz, surreal jazz, spacy,
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