Tom York with Kurt Cobain - smuggling

In Russia, the Swiss trio Contreband is touring with might and main. Concert schedule - by link .

What is a cover? This word itself, Cover , tells the image of the bedspread: some new matter with a new pattern and a new texture, under which a familiar figure is hiding. Let's say the subject of the situation. Such a familiar, perhaps even tired eye and turning into a blind spot, the chair suddenly manifests itself in the room - you just have to cover it with a new blanket. This is a very advantageous move: the chair, on the one hand, becomes a “brave new”, on the other hand, remains “good old”; Sitting on it is both interesting and comfortable. Maybe that's why the genre of musical covers is so successful - the cover is by nature comfortable for the listener. He already knows how to sit in it - which means that he bought a ticket for the best place and can enjoy watching the show.

Only by writing this first paragraph, I noticed that his furniture analogy was prompted by the cover of the album Trio Colin Vallon Contreband . This photograph itself is such that a cursory look does not record its unusualness: the composition of the frame is typically interior, immediately recognizable chair and a floor lamp in combination with relaxed poses of people set a tone, and as a result, the roof of the gas station turns into a ceiling, the blackness of the night is into dark walls, and fuel columns resemble some goats from the European 60s. Such a game with the recognition mechanism apparently says something about the intentions of the musicians. They do not just want to tighten the old chair with a new fabric - they want to take it and, together with the listener, take it into a new space, which can be called nearjazov.

The electrician to the accompaniment of the bass and drums sings the words of Kurt Kobein, Madonna or Tom York, and then begins to sing about something of his own, but remaining in the same mood all the way.

In general, jazz musicians, speaking of the implementation of standards, sometimes use the allegory of travel along the route “House - Unknown - House” (cf. “Theme - improvisation - topic”). Here it is necessary to note that classic jazz topics, many of which were first causes for popular music (for example, for melodies from musicals), ceased to be causes in the full sense of the word and, in fact, became standards. Nobody remembers who sang this song from what film it is, etc.: The figure that guesses under the coverlet is only reminiscent of the case when you saw it, but under another cover. Not at all with jazz causes for modern pop music. Say, “In Bloom” and “Paranoid Android” -plays from the Contreband cover-carry a powerful pop cultural train. That is why, unlike the standard, they can be a “home” not only for musicians or connoisseurs who know the tradition perfectly, but also for almost any person who sometimes included MTV in the 1990s-2000s. And without a “home” in a sense, “journey” is impossible-in any case, the higher the percentage of the known, the easier the unknown is perceived with him.

This game can be played in different ways. You can, for example, surprise an unexpected interpretation or disassemble the “house” in parts. The trio of Colin Wallon in this sense is much more traditional. The electric Piano draws a line of voice, sings the words of Kurt Kobein, Madonna or Tom York to the accompaniment of bass and drums, and then begins to sing about something of her own, but as if remaining all the way in the same mood in which it came out of the “house”. This is a jazz scheme. And it is not surprising, because Wallon is an absolutely jazz person. The albums of his other projects are released, for example, on ECM and on ECM -for-Techno-sk-no-no- ECM - HAT HUT label, which has a reputation for avant-garde. By the way, Wallon's debut in the Hat Hut catalog was called “ailleurs” -with French “Environmentally” or “somewhere else”. And it seems that although the cover is a very successful genre and often an appeal to the pop Canon dictated exclusively by commercial considerations, in the case of Contreband , rather, that the musicians themselves are simply interested in seeing where the music they love since childhood. And let this trip be comfortable, not all the same to conquer new lands.