Colin Stetson
All This I Do For Glory

THE REVIEW

I fell in love again, with Colin Stetson.

This time he's a forty-year-old American saxophonist who, in my opinion, produces very little in terms of jazz as it's traditionally understood. He plays in a strange and minimalistic manner, with almost no improvised escapades, reiterating in his pieces chord upon chord made of short yet full breaths that tend to stay suspended in the air, soaring light but insistent.

“All This I Do For Glory” (2017) is not a complex album, it is not the classic sax-sound that might feel heavy to a listener unaccustomed to jazz digressions. The six pieces are impressionistic ideas that develop circularly and continuously wrap around themselves. “All This I Do For Glory” is sonic vapor that clings to the skin, it is a little Fantozzi-like cloud that, instead of bringing rain, delivers pleasant harmonies.

Colin Stetson creates "spatial" music not in the traditional sense of "space-music" but as "material" music that seems to exist physically, that seems to have an autonomous corporeity. It's a baritonal sonic illusion in which it's lovely to get lost, in which you feel protected. It's hard to find sharp sounds ("The Lure of the Mine"), yet curious to rediscover in the title track Radiohead-like sensations and suggestions ("Pyramid Song"?!?), with rarefied and unconventional rhythmic supports.

It is music you can feel with your hands, it is music that touches you deeply. When, how, and especially where will be for the listener to decide.

Fall in love.