Paul Motian, Bill Frisell, Joe Lovano
I Have the Room Above Her

THE REVIEW

An ongoing inner tension. A cerebral, dry, and hypnotic dialogue at the same time. An album carved into silence, tracks born by subtraction. A work that strives for essentiality, at the heart of a certain jazz mood.

The mood of ballads on a night to throw away like a dream that doesn't come true. When the mind swings and rocks between its own thoughts, desires, and ghosts. Twirling on the wings of aimless expressionism. And embarking on the listening of this "I Have the Room Above Her" is like setting off on a journey without a reason. With the only motive that you cannot stand still, that you cannot put down roots.

This album is reminiscent of James Joyce's "Ulysses." An album where three immense musicians like Paul Motian, Bill Frisell, and Joe Lovano follow the flow of their musical consciousness in a subtle weave made of poetry and essentiality. But it is especially the drumming of Paul Motian that leaves one astonished. Drumming made of whispers, hints, delicate strokes. A drum set that no longer aims at rhythm, but at melody in its purity and nakedness.

Starting with the opener "Osmosis Part III." A stroll through the realms of unreality, with Lovano's sax folded over itself in a monologue without a solution, Frisell's guitar scented with mystical and oriental sounds, and Motian's icy and impalpable drums that murmur like in an endless prayer. But there are many memorable moments on this album. From the entrenched melancholy of "Sketches" to the guitar solo that enigmatically introduces us to a world made of "Shadows." From the trembling and lopsided "The Riot Act" to the dialogue sometimes rarefied, sometimes violent in "One In Three."

A universal album, without space and without time. Where one floats weightlessly from the first to the last track, "Dreamland," to a land made of dreams only. In a sort of Céline-like journey at the end of that night that is in each of us.