The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble
From The Stairwell

Effective; this is the first word that comes to my mind upon listening to this latest, superb, concentrated emotion brought to you by The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble. Effective because they manage to remain unmoving, steadfast, impassive, while being mobile, openly dynamic. Effective because their way of conveying emotions doesn't match anyone else's out there. Perhaps they might remind you of something you’ve heard from Bohren And Der Club Of Gore or in the underground, metropolitan jazz of some scattered and brilliant American artist, but their original way of aimlessly wandering is uniquely theirs, and no one else's.

The TKDJE are a group put together by Jason Khnen and Gideon Kiers with the intent to create underground music, a possible mixture of jazz, ambient and soundtracks, ideally for silent films from the early century.

We mentioned unmoving, suspended, almost free in their approach, with those saxophones, those cellos, that voice, chasing each other throughout the duration of the album in question; it’s obvious that the colors shown are anything but inviting: grey-black chiaroscuro, dark in spirit, ambient, yes, this is exactly the word that spins in my head upon listening to them, ambient in spirit, even if everything moves and doesn’t lie in impossible stasis, as demonstrated by their other parallel project The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation, a band born from the same members of the ones reviewed here, to indulge in wandering lands of improvised stasis, ambient noir like only they can afford to do (I recommend them to you, their latest release "Anthropomorphic" has recently come out).

If we have to make a comparison with the past, more than anything with that "Here be dragons" which elevated their sound to total "dark jazz" abstraction (as they define themselves starting from the name), here everything is played differently, on other levels, suspension, where the voice of the magnificent singer Charlotte Cegarre is somewhat put into the background, to give space to the instruments that draw melodies upon melodies, difficult to grasp at first glance, but that once well-rooted, thanks to several listenings, in the soul, will have a stable life there, to unsettle you quietly, without a gust of wind disturbing you.

Effective we said...