The Fantastic Merlins, photo courtesy the artists
from our new release Look Around on innova records at http://innova.mu/artist1.asp?skuID=297
Look Around by Ughi is a gorgeously evocative, open lament—it gives a brooding, filmlike sense of foreshadowing that betrays the composer’s affinity for Paul Bley. While there’s an ether-inhaled atmospheria to things, Roessler’s use of bow (haunting flautando and calorie-rich bottom of the François Rabbath, Mark Dresser variety) suggests a more Central Europa-Mediterranean-Sephardic grounding, keeping things from entering into the Scando-austerity of an ECM record. The undercurrent, steeped in sadness and a yearning for hope, pulses with thrums of war, loss, and the slow-motion shock of disbelief.