Erik Truffaz Quartet - Lune Rouge

2019 CD release.

Erik Truffaz (trumpet); Arthur Hnatek (drums, electronics); Marcello Giuliani (bass); Benoit Corboz (Rhodes, keyboards, piano)

It is three years since Erik Truffaz last released an album. Now, with Lune Rouge, the acclaimed French trumpeter returns in his distinctive style, alongside Arthur Hnatek (drums and electronics), Marcello Giuliani (bass) and Benoit Corboz (Rhodes, keyboards and piano).

It is an album of vast open landscapes. The rhythm section lay down insistent, cycling grooves – loping hip hop, four to the floor dance, straight rock, nu jazz electronic loops. A high-performance vehicle of interlocking rhythms, driving to the horizon under the big sky of Truffaz’ simple, beautiful melodic lines. “Do they do solos with so few notes in New York?” Truffaz jokes with Hnatek during the recording, apparently. And what notes they are. Each carefully chosen and delivered with a meltingly smooth tone. Sustained breathy exhalations - haunting, uplifting - surrounded by a luxury of space. Fragments of astral patterns repeated and developed. Simple harmonies. So little used to create so much.

The compositions for the album developed collectively in the Swiss studio from extended improvised sessions, before being adjusted, refined, polished. Hnatek, who joined the long-established band for their last album, is colourful and absorbing on drums – making angular sure-footed changes of direction to keep it fresh. Locking in tightly with Giuliani on bass, they are the compelling precision machine needed. Corboz is key to keeping the listener engaged throughout the album, providing essential variety in texture with his changing use of keyboard sounds. Smoothly supporting Truffaz with sweetly beseeching piano in Nostalgia or the album’s soporific savasana Houlgate. Creating tension with more unsettling, edgy synth sounds in the terrific Five on the Floor, the space-age Tiger in the Train, or the industrial distopian Alhena.

There are also two vocal tunes – the soulful Reflections featuring Jose Jones, and the wistful-optimistic She’s the Moon featuring Andrina Bollinger. They are uncomplicated, pretty songs, providing unexpected conventional islands in the open ocean of the album. It would be interesting to hear the contribution of the vocalists to some of the more spaced out, extended form tracks.

Overall, this is a great album which is at its best when Truffaz makes that visceral connection between his music and the listener. The restless racing heartbeat of Cycle by Cycle. The anguish and release of the title track Lune Rouge, opening with an exquisite understated lament from Truffaz over a cycling, echoing electronic pattern, before rising to animalistic cries from the trumpet which loop and overlap.

Through his 20 year career, we are told, Truffaz is setting out perpetually “on a passionate quest to make the stars align.” With Lune Rouge there are moments of that stellar calibration he is searching for.

Maddt Shaw - https://www.jazzviews.net/erik-truffaz---lune-rouge.html