Joëlle Léandre & Núria Andorrà

Joëlle Léandre & Paul Lovens
Off Course!
Fou Records FR-CD 41

Doyenne of creative bass playing, Paris-based Joëlle Léandre once said she likes to improvise with old associates and also prefers to work with new associates. The maxim is proven on these duo sessions, which also prove that with in-the-moment improvisation, integration can occur in any circumstances. Recorded in 2013, Off Course features one elongated improvisation and a brief coda by Léandre and German drummer Paul Lovens. Lovens, who is a member of the Schlippenbach Trio and other groups, first recorded with the bassist in 1984. From 2021, BLA BLA BLA is a premiere meeting between the French double bassist and the younger Catalan percussionist Núria Andorrà, who has been part of interdisciplinary performances with dancers and musicians.

Experienced enough to appreciate a bass drum’s capability, Lovens frequently rumbles and vibrates its centre to meet up with Léandre’s deepening plucks and vibrations from her instrument’s basement-pitched strings. Alternately he turns to gongs, cymbals and other parts of his kit to rhythmically challenge or modify her torqued string twangs and deepening sul ponticello slices. His strategies encompass lug tightening and loosening, mallet echoes on unyielding surfaces and creating a darbuka-like tone with bolo-bat-like reverb. At the one-third point, Léandre segues into another aleatoric diversion as she begins wicked witch-like vocal croaking, while amplifying her prestissimo strokes to move the exposition upwards. Meanwhile Lovens claps his cymbals and beats his snare to sound out a regularizing march tempo that preserve middle tones. As the pressurized sequence is stretched still further, it’s a combination of Lovens’ percussion paradiddles, rubber-band-like plucks from Léandre’s strings and her bel canto warbling that simultaneously thrust the narrative forward as well as consistently interrupt the horizontal function for greater sonic variety. Thick string stops and measured drum thumps signal the finale, with the coda an abridged variant of the previous improvisation.

Divided into a dozen tranches rather than a single evolution, the BLA BLA BLA duo also differs from the other in that Andorrà prefers to emphasize lighter idiophone tones unlike Lovens’ full kit elaborations. This is made clearest on “BLA BLA 6” where her bell-chiming, ping-pong-like cracks and whistling vibraphone-like plinks are a perfect counterpoint to Léandre’s stretched arco expression and bitten off vocal yelps and nonsense syllable yells. From the top it appears as if the bassist will be bringing the percussive underpinning to the pieces as the percussionist colors them with strident cymbal pulls, drum top shakes and sandpaper-like scratches. By the second part of the concert however, an harmonized détente between the two styles of improvisation has been reached. With tracks such as “BLA BLA 8” and “BLA BLA 9” moving at a leisurely pace, the logic of melding fine glass-like plinks, chiming bells and what sounds like an old-fashioned telephone buzz with wood-rending-like string tugs and measured sul ponticello rubs becomes clear. Before reaching a climax with “BLA BLA 12”, the final and longest track, intermittent patterns encompassing gamelan-like gongs and bell-tree shrills from Andorrà, and subterranean pumps and thumps from Léandre become more prominent. Straight line string judders and squeaks, clock-chiming patterns and – to preserve the inventive discordance – some nonsense syllable yodeling from the bassist, reach a logical ending point and buzz away in unison. Different as they may be, each session confirms Léandre’s adaptability in many situations.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Off: 1. Off Course ! 2. … where else ?

Personnel: Off: Joëlle Léandre (bass and voice) and Paul Lovens (drums, cymbals and gongs)

Track Listing: BLA: 1. BLA BLA 1 2. BLA BLA 2 3. BLA BLA 3 4. BLA BLA 4 5. BLA BLA 5 6. BLA BLA 6 7. BLA BLA 7 8. BLA BLA 8 9. BLA BLA 9 10. BLA BLA 10 11. BLA BLA 11 12. BLA BLA 12

Personnel: BLA: Joëlle Léandre (bass and voice) and Núria Andorrà (drums and percussion)