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A few years away from a recording studio can do some good...
The poly-instrumentalist, and composer from Holland, Saskia Laroo
has during this time found a way to refine her musical research, between
energetic spaces of electronic jazz and Hip Hop, in which the presence of
the keyboarder Warren Byrd and from a trio of rappers (Mc Stewlocks,
Mc Firestorm and Mc Phantom) has without a doubt produced some brilliant
ideas for her fifth album release, coming to us with a more than significant title,
"Really Jazz".
Between mélanges of densely stylistic improvisations,
of encounters perfectly set against each other between the trumpet, sax, drum'n
bass and vocals, she vigorously shows us the light with this versatile "Lady
Miles of Europe" – as opportunely acclaimed by the American public – that, a
few decades of age magnificently exhibited here, she is still among the few artists
who are constantly on the research of chromatic variants, of unpredictable styles,
of vehement crossings of some lines of bop with trial rhythms and urban ones
that define "Nu Jazz" which, in this case, would be too reductive.
Rather than think of a way of outlining this case (as we assert more often than
not) an eclectic buzz of a "swingin' body-music" - cocktail instinctive
of Hip Hop, jazz, salsa, funk, reggae, world – that few are able to
suggest with so much unimaginable confidence.
Of the rest, the proof of this artist has already been given to us in "Sunset
Eyes" with the great company of the tenor saxophonist Teddy Edwards and
of the vocalist Ernie Andrews [Laroo Records & Music,
2000], an unforgettable album.
So, here we are, to shine light on a soul that is orientated towards the electric
Davis, the percussive styling of the James T. Taylor Quartet, to the
verve of George Clinton: the necessary landscape for those percolations
of contemporary breeds, for those transversal waves that shatter those networks
of volcanic traumas that always require great attention to the "pleasing sound"
for the final destination of the sound.
For Saskia it is necessary to try, to experience different languages,
different syntax's, different imaginations; as was affirmed in some more recent
interviews: "It can be quite nice and relaxing to stay within your own musical scene
for a lot of musicians….I am a very curious person, though, who loves to take great
musical risks… so I can appreciate different styles."
So good to see, they aren't statements similar to those of John Coltrane,
of Miles Davisor Charlie Parker?
Saskia launches long notes in "legato" in a confident way, she
climbs over the beats with a bitingly incisive way which seem to make it possible
to generate a tension without "screaming", the accentuation of the phrases indicate
a multi-directional and inventive action and launches the soloers (in this way,
and like in the davisesque "Doo-Bop"), the accompanying phrases flow
fluently and dynamically with a lightness, a subtlety, and precision, solid in disposing
its proper chords in "blocks".
The stamp on this renders the entrances real and proper events of a magma
level, followed rapidly after by columns of arpeggios, with small substitutions
of chords that intend to give vibrant weight and an immersed melody in a stormy
dimension that is almost suspended.
The movement appears substantially Coltranian, with starting attacks and an anchored
phrasing in tension and stretching, up until it arrives at an extreme that is pushed
in virtue to a design that avoids and confirms markedly the harmonic fundamentals,
vaulting in an extremely free pithy of rhythm and dancing on a "baroque" plot of
electric colours, that exercises to who listens, a singular hypnotic fascination,
that is not only a must in the chromatic alchemy but above all to the luminescent
volume of the sonorous amplified recordings in a plastic and solar fashion.
In the musical environment of Holland, this has always seemed to have happened:
soul, blues and jazz meet the afro, the caraibic, the Latin,
the oriental, the Slavonic and the classical.
Saskia is testimony to the vitality in her sound, in her groove
that encourages the bodily movement, to the amusement (or to the divertissement,
which perceives the apex of its intentions) through the energetical improvisations,
the proper riffs of the blue notes, the freedom of thinking, the overwhelming,
nice, sincere and absolutely sharable indifference for the pale and purist critic:
her principal preoccupations is that the music "arrives", that it gives joy to the
public and herself. And for so much, we can only be grateful to her.
Fabrizio Ciccarelli for Jazzitalia
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Publishing Date: 16/11/2008
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