Michiel Borstlap
Body Acoustic

Body Acoustic is the reinterpretation-homage of eight beautiful tracks from the vast production of Weather Report (frankly, according to this humble writer, perhaps for sentimental reasons, there is nothing bad this group has ever put on record, not even "This Is This", made for contractual reasons at the end of the "journey"). In addition, there are two original compositions by Michiel. The challenge is to create new, valid, and fresh versions of old tracks, which are overall very complicated, but without "electronics", only with acoustic or traditional instruments such as the semi-acoustic guitar of the incredible Jesse Van Ruller!.

The title is a nod to "I Sing The Body Electric", a historic W. R. album from '72. It's noteworthy, ironically, that while the W. R. over time became increasingly electrified (with results of absolute excellence, as technology realized the concept of the "very sophisticated accordion" dear to the Austrian pianist) with this Borstlap album there is a sort of "closing the circle"; in the sense that initially the Weather Report project (which was nevertheless conceived and set up "primarily" by Miroslav Vitous, who has never been given the proper credit-merit) was exclusively acoustic with some initial flashes of Fender piano following. To support this, we will cite "Milky Way", the first track of the first self-titled W. R. album, which sounds as if it was made with who knows what wizardries, whereas it is just a succession of acoustic piano chords, having had the initial attack cut, and represents prophetically the birth of "something big" (Milky Way), where Shorter only joins towards the end (always with the acoustic sax), sealing and witnessing the beginning of a collaboration that would have enormous impacts on contemporary world music. To return to Body Acoustic, it must be said that the level of mastery and interplay reached by the musicians in this album is very high, where there are lengthy unisons executed in technically perfect ways combined with incredible examples of fresh real-time creation on complex melodic and harmonic structures.

A final consideration to be made is that, in my negligible opinion, while Herbie Hancock would like to define "The New Standard" or highlight "New Directions In Music" (both good albums, nonetheless) without succeeding too much in the intent, both because Nirvana or "Norwegian Wood" will never be truly played by any jazz musician and because "New Directions" remains an all in all quite traditional album, the new things in jazz are currently being quietly asserted, emerging slowly but assertively, by Ben Allison, Michael Blake, Ron Horton, Robert Glasper and, indeed, Borstlap. MVHO. V.