Areni Agbabian is best known as a featured vocalist with the Armenian jazz pianist Tigran Hamasyan, although her debut for ECM Records is most assuredly not a jazz album. She was born and bred in California, but rarely sounds American: her cut-glass delivery is more akin to a European arthouse singer, and she has certainly absorbed the folk songs and microtonal scales of her Armenian heritage.
The opener, Patience, sets the tone: it’s a sorrowful melody that starts like a Gregorian chant and ends oddly reminiscent of Radiohead’s Karma Police, sung in a pure, frictionless timbre at the upper end of a contralto range. This is not a voice that gets down and dirty: it floats a few inches above the earth on a higher, more rarefied plane, unsullied by the elements.
Instead of being accompanied by Tigran’s florid improvisations, Agbabian accompanies herself, with a piano style that is fugal, sparing and minimal. Sometimes she mutes the piano strings, which meshes well with the textural percussion of Nicolas Stocker, a Swiss drummer who uses brushes on drums and cymbals and teases out gentle noises on bells, gongs and Tibetan singing bowls.
Agbabian can write strong, effortlessly hummable melodies. A haunting theme is repeated on Petal One, Petal Two and Full Bloom as the album’s leitmotif. Mother is an intense, slow-burning ballad, like an old Celtic folksong played in ultra slow-motion, while two songs explore the unusual modal intervals of an ancient Armenian hymn. Most interesting of all may be The River, where Agbabian improvises melismatically over Stocker’s clattering drums, like a malfunctioning soul-singing robot.
Often she is more interested in exploring sound and texture for its own sake. Yearning sees percussionist Stocker creating a gentle, gamelan-like pulse on a West African thumb piano, while Agbabian plays zither-like riffs on a prepared piano. Sear sounds like a rigorous avant-garde piece by Morton Feldman, accompanied by the slow, intense rumble of Stocker’s drums. It is a creepy and beguiling collection from a real talent.
Also out this week
If Agbabian’s voice is smooth and unadorned, Leïla Martial’s voice is all sharp angles and wobbly shapes. On Warm Canto, she uses plenty of transgressive vocal glitches – yodels, whoops, rhythmic sighing – while the other two members of her Baa Box band (drummer Eric Perez and guitarist Pierre Tereygeol) contribute similarly eccentric vocal harmonies, using ultra-low baritone growls and throat singing. It’s fascinating but often a little too busy and cluttered – the trio only start to connect emotionally when they pare back the vocal gymnastics.
A new album from Kahil El’Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble is always a treat. Like the Art Ensemble of Chicago, El’Zabar’s Chicago outfit explores jazz music’s ancient African roots as well as its freakish avant garde branches. Be Known: Ancient/Future/Music mixes off-kilter bebop with hypnotic minimalism (using an mbira along with other African percussion) but manages to make it sound funky and soulful rather than joylessly academic.
