Vilod - Safe In Harbour (2015)

The meat in the middle of this week's ECM sandwich comes from two electronic musicians who have in fact featured on that label together, in the remix double-album Re:ECM.  That one was under their own names, Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer, and I'm still making my mind up about it - it'll probably appear here at some point.

For their first full-length album of original material, Villalobos and Loderbauer compressed their names into Vilod, and compressed jazz, dub techno and free funk (yup, I've checked around to make sure I got my subgenres right!) into a subatomic particle chamber to let them freely intermingle for an hour.  With the beats made up of at least as much live drums as machine programming, and some moody electric piano on tracks like Beefdes and the outstanding title track, this is a record that genuinely swings with its jazz DNA.

Both artists wear their love of classic jazz on their sleeves in the grin-inducing opener Modern Hit Midget.  The track samples the between-song announcements from a Modern Jazz Quartet performance for NDR Hannover in October 1957 (released in 2013), and a few bars of Milt Jackson's vibes, both speed-shifted into absurdity.  That one and the title track are my definite favourites, with the epic Zero running them close, but every time I listen to the other tracks as well there's a fresh microscopic detail to pick out and revel in.  Deep listening electronica par excellence.

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previously posted at SGTG: Fizheuer Zieheuer