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12twelve, "L'Univers"
On their fourth album, this instrumental quartet from Barcelona pushes the boundaries of jazz, blending classical elements with psychedelic touches, effects, and just plain strange explorations. The result is one of the best unclassifiable jazz albums I’ve heard in years.
Much of contemporary jazz seems relegated to the dinner club crowd and lite FM stations, with all of the cultural cache of an open mike poetry night at a neighborhood community center. That it was once America’s most popular music for many decades is hard to imagine in today’s culture of tedious pop ephemera. What used to be a progressive style stopped evolving ten or even twenty years ago by all appearances, and has since been claimed by nostalgia buffs seeking comfort in the familiarity of old songs “updated” by younger performers.
Yet apparently nobody’s told any of this to 12twelve, and for that I’m grateful. Even though they only have one horn in the group, a saxophone, they manage to encapsulate the best aspects of a variety of jazz styles, from classical jazz to bop and free jazz. The exemplary rhythm section keeps them grounded yet invigorated, while the sax frequently takes off into passages of soaring lyricism. Despite a few exceptions, I’m not normally a huge fan of guitars in jazz, but here it works well as it investigates musical horizons without the burden of leadership.
There are some rock-like moments, such as the tasteful wah used on “Profesor Ali” and “Il Monstro,” yet even these are handled expertly enough to add texture without removing the music from the jazz idiom. The group isn’t afraid to be weird, either, like the noisy and abstract “9è 4°” or the electronics and anxiety of “R2 Chapa.” A couple of the songs even start with overheard conversations, at times lending the disc a casual and relaxed atmosphere. The album has enough differences between songs, and sometimes with plenty of changes within the songs themselves, that there isn’t a dull moment to be found. The emotions follow suit in a wide range of expression that never bores. Likewise, their vigorously imaginative and skillful efforts here go a long way toward revitalizing the genre, bringing to it a youthful energy and lack of compromise that hasn’t been evident for far too long.
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