Spin & Spells

Forging a parallel path to her membership in the NOUT trio, with Spin & Spells, French electric harpist Rafaelle Rinaudo has put together another threesome whose sounds are as individual as NOUT’S punk-Jazz admixture. Spin & Spells joins the sometimes formal, sometimes improv textures from her instrument with folkloric and ethnic timbres. Providing upfront and comprehensive backing to the six live-recorded tracks are French tenor saxophonist Raphaël Quenehen, who has played in Papanosh and L’Orchestre Des 20 Ans, plus Burkina Faso-born Simon Winsé, whose instruments of choice are the resonant, lute-like West African ngoni and the diagonal, diatonic bell-less flute peul. He also vocalizes in the Fulani language.

Winsé’s griot affiliation doesn’t mean this a so-called World Music trio. Instead the idea is to blend Rinaudo’s swift-finger picking and shimmering glissandi, not only with Winsé’s timbral adaptations, but with the Jazz-swing emphasis from Quenehen. Strikingly his tunes seems to waver between melodic folksiness and West Coast Cool.

“Aguertou” is one of the more successful of this polyphonic mixture. With the harpist’s Morse Code-like fingering projecting a groove abetted by the saxophonist’s low-pitched scoops and doits, Winsé’s gargling vocals project a squirmy but not atonal secondary line. Horizontal pacing is maintained as tough strokes from both stringed instruments create a rhythm guitar-like pace.

The extended “L’Aube”, whose theme is defined by pointillist reed bites spit onto the unbroken canvas of expansive harp frails, also confirm this folkloric/non-folkloric idea. As each player’s tones intersect the whoops and cries emanating from the flute exposition sound as much like a Rahsaan Roland Kirk solo as traditional West African transverse peeping.

Among the vocals, tough cadences and mellow reed asides some of the interludes are in danger of clinching too close to pop sounds. But if the trio can keep this tendency in check and continues to emphasis invention over idiom, Spin & Spells progress will be necessary to chart.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Les Comparasions 2. Brest même 3. Aguertou 4. Incantation 5. L’Aube 6. Du cristal à la fumée

Personnel: Raphaël Quenehen (tenor saxophone); Simon Winsé (ngoni, flute peul and vocals) and Rafaëlle Rinaudo (electric harp)