(((O))) : Ilhan Ersahin, Dave Harrington, Kenny Wollesen – Invite Your Eye

If the album title ‘Invite Your Eye,’ by Ilhan Ersahin, Dave Harrington and Kenny Wollesen suggest some kind of film connection, you would be perfectly right.

As the artists cite themselves, the album was inspired by the classic Robert Altman film from 1973, The Long Goodbye, starring Elliott Gould as Philip Marlowe. The sessions were created in a late night jam at the East Village Club Nublu (owned by Ersahin) and later refashioned in the studio by Harrington, who had recently moved from NYC to Los Angeles. His nostalgia for New York and imagining of Los Angeles informed the reconstructions and led to Altman and The Long Goodbye, which so perfectly captures the ambience of 70’s LA in the film.

Harrington explains: “The bones of this record were recorded during a late night, graveyard shift session on one night in summer 2019 at Figure 8 studios in Brooklyn. The three of us were used to playing at this hour anyways, most of our gigs as a trio being after hours hits at Nublu that could easily go until 4am. So the setting was right for us to do what we always do, which is come in with a blank slate and improvise–creating from a shared language and history of improvised music and groove-based exploration. I then took the recordings to my new studio in Los Angeles and took them apart, put them back together, dubbing and radically reconstructing the raw materials, with all of us adding new overdubs and creating studio-based compositions from the raw improvisations.”

Essentially, Harrington gives quite a clear indication of the sounds to be heard on the album. Very, very late night, saxophone, guitar, drums and electronic embellishments that are geared at creating an atmosphere that conjures visual images, in this case, for the artist connected to the Altman classic.

Yet, the music here is so open and open-minded that it leaves the listener the possibility to recall any film noir or late night visual scene they have experienced or is simply a part of their imagination, to quite a staggering effect.