NOMAD

John Kenny

Review by Niels-Ole Bo Johansen

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the rather strange combination of musical instruments on this fun CD, because all the players are so incredibly gifted and talented and you never feel let down by the music or the players. The music is semi-improvised - moods and orders are co-ordinated, cues are given - but almost nothing is written down.

John Kenny participates in the group Nomad, which consists of the percussion group Polarity Percussion Ensemble (Bassam Abdul Salam, Christian Dierstein and Dirk Rothburst), free jazz/avant-garde singer David Moss, featuring live sound treatment from the Heinrich Strobel Stiftung, steel sound sculptures by Klaus Gundschen with John Kenny on trombone and carnyx.

The idea for the project was to combine the various performers, so the carnyx - a 2000 year old instrument - was performing with totally new sound sculptures, while David Moss' singing gave a sense of timelessness. All this put with live electronic effects (extremely long delays and loops) created music which is highly improvised but also very organised.

By using all this gadgetry, it is now possible to hear John play the carnyx and the trombone at the same time, as the carnyx is sampled live and played back whilst he includes his trombone in the texture. As well as all of this, John can also be heard singing on this disc.

As a special treat, there is a wonderful version of Tom Wait's The Train Song, which is my favourite track of the CD and is one of the coolest arrangements I have ever heard. Throughout the CD there is a wide variety of moods and styles and although you could call it world music, that would be too modest, as it's plain music with a lot of groove and the raw, primitive joy of making tribal noises. Wonderful.

Together with artists of a very high standard, John Kenny has made a very different and interesting CD, which is a live recording.

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ITF 2008