Loading details…
Artist
Barbacana
4+ albums
Avant-Garde Jazz
about
Barbacana is an Anglo-French quartet that brings together some of the keenest young musical intelligences from either side of the channel: British firebrands James Alsopp and Kit Downes and rising French artists Sylvain Darrifourcq and Adrien Dennefeld. Since 2009, they’ve been stunning live audiences with their barbed, angular riffs and hive-mind extemporisations. The self-titled debut album, Barbacana, is a bristling summation of all their group discoveries to date, hinting at both the long history of avant-garde jazz shared by artistic communities in Paris and London, and the love French audiences and musicians have long held for classic British Prog and jazz-rock groups such as Soft Machine, Matching Mole and Hatfield and the North. ‘Animation’ starts with a Beefheartian tangle of robotic, interlocking guitar and organ jabs, squirling sax, and piston-popping, fractured drum rhythms, before giving way to a mysterious, dreamy coda. ‘Steam; sets off into a murky investigation of bass clarinet and low organ rumbles, smeared with Bill Frissel-like guitar sighs, until diving into a prancing, organ-led riff reminiscent of Canterbury-scene Prog at its most gripping. ‘Migration-Big Big Shop’ rushes out of the gate with gnarled, barbed-wire guitar, and twitchy, caffeinated drums only to tumble headlong into turbulent free-fall with wide, endof-the-pier organ swells opening out like a queasy parachute. Imagine strapping yourself into a fairground ride that keeps changing direc
