From the flourishing curtain-opening piano structure and sax flowing into the opened landscape throughout ‘His Great Adventure’, you get a sense that both Emma Rawicz and Gwilym Simcock are taking listeners into this wonderful view, filled with beauty, and lovely picture-sque boundaries that are waiting for you to come on board. The duo’s new album Big Visit is quite an astonishing debut, marking the first beginning of a partnership between two musicians that have incredible chemistry that’s unleashed on the ACT label.
Putting this album on, you just turn everything off and let the music speak and guide you into these possible voyages that hits you, one piece after another. The album’s title represents the freewheeling abandon they’ve experiences while recording the album and its quite the marvel that they’ve endured during the sessions.
The morning rise for ‘The Shape of a New Sun’ brings some soulful resemblance to ‘Human Nature’ from Michael Jackson’s Thriller years with Miles Davis handling the production levels of the piece as Rawicz channels Mel Collins’ sax work during the ‘Bolero’ section from King Crimson’s 23-minute suite ‘Lizard’ as Simcock lays down some beautiful piano work as he climbs upwards to the rooftop in the streets of London, waiting at the right moment for the sun to come up.
But its ‘The Drumbledorone’ that becomes a hefty-exercise for Rawicz as she pours her heart and soul throughout her improvisation’s. I wouldn’t compare her to John Coltrane because that would be too much of a cop-out, but strong resemblance to Mel Collins, Dexter Gordon, and Soft Machine’s Elton Dean that comes to mind.
It also has a Peanuts nod in which Simcock adds in his own flavour to Guaraldi’s score to the specials that were aired in the heyday of the late ‘60s into the early ‘70s in which he brought jazz to Schulz’s creation. So, you can just imagine this piece being played on an ordinary day between Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, and Snoopy while ‘Optimum Friction’ gets your heart beat thumping.
There’s this intensive arrangement in which Gwilym adds enough flames on his grand piano so Emma can blare out those high notes on her sax, crying into the night, making each section perfect, top to bottom. It mixes in that seagull effect as they fly high into the clear blue sky waiting for their next adventure into the unknown, with some bluesy punches that Emma hits on her instrument.
‘Visions’ is the calmness set in this smoky night club in the 1950s, set in black-and-white between the Greenwich Village area in New York or in Paris where you vision these two, playing around midnight, Friday and Saturday where all the shops are closed, and audiences are sitting down, watching the duo relieving the stress momentum that is needed to clear their heads.
Closing up the album is ‘You’ve Changed’. It opens with Emma setting up this lonely arrangement on her sax before Gwilym paints one last portrait on his piano almost saying farewell to each other, echoing messages that drives the piece home and sending us a home-like wonder by heading off to bed.
This isn’t just a jazz album; this is an album that’ll really keep you coming back for more to see what you’ve been missing. It’s this force of nature that carries the beauty, the wonder, and the mystery the duo has landed upon us when it comes to the Big Visit that’s waiting upon its arrival, landing on your doorstep.
