Blowout

モデル・水原希子も参加!?コスタリカ滞在からインスピレーションを得たサマームード漂う1枚

フジロック出演も話題のソランジュやフランク・オーシャン、シャバズ・パレセズともコラボレーションするLA出身の大注目キーボード奏者ジョン・キャロル・カービーが、2021年に滞在したコスタリカでの日々からインスピレーションを得た2023年作品がリリース。自身のYouTubeチャンネルで公開されている様々な地域の地元ミュージシャンにインタビューするトラべログ・シリーズ「Kirby's Gold」の第4回に登場するコスタリカのバンド、カーウェ・カリプソをはじめとするローカル・ミュージシャンとの交流や、美しいビーチやサンセット広がるカリブ海沿岸の町プエルトビエホの自然からインスピレーションを得たサマームード漂う1枚が完成。

先行シングル「Oropendola」は、彼の滞在中毎朝5時にその鳴き声で起こしてくれたという鳥・オオツリスドリをタイトルに、《LEAVING RECORDS》からのリリースも予定している同じくLA出身の日系人キーボード奏者/ビートメイカー"ライオンミルク"ことモキ(モキチ)・カワグチの心地良いフルートの音色が響く、穏やかなコスタリカの朝をイメージしたアルバムの幕開けにピッタリのナンバー。現在公開されているティザー映像にはモデル・水原希子の姿も!どうやらアナログシンセで参加しているようなので是非映像でもチェックを。

Grammy-nominated keyboardist, composer, and producer John Carroll Kirbys presence has graced dozens of recordings from the current generation of pop hitmakers, but his most compelling work has appeared on his own albums. The restless theme of "elsewhere" ribbons through much of his recorded work. 2017s Travel was conceived in Tokyo, written in Belize, and recorded in L.A. Tuscany, a solo piano album composed in Pietrasanta, Italy, alternately reflected the influence and technique of Ethiopian pianist Emahoy Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou and offered an elegy for the victims of the SantAnna di Stazzema massacre during WWII. Conflict, a series of minimal piano and electronic works, offered reflections on the topic across history and geography. The masterful solo work My Garden had otherworldly, exotic reflections of Kirbys personal Los Angeles. Septet went "elsewhere" as a full modern jazz band created a 21st century electro-futurist evocation of 1970s jazz-funk. Dance Ancestrals sunny, idiosyncratic approach to spiritual esotericism journeyed the astral plane with funky optimism. That brings us to Blowout, easily the most exotic-sounding album in Kirbys catalog. In 2021, Kirby visited Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica, to film an episode of Kirbys Gold, his web travelogue series with the Kawe Calypso Band. He wrote the album between the early-morning birdsongs of the oropendola, jamming with local calypso legends, experiencing spectacular sunsets, and surreptitiously playing Bob Marley covers and standards in bars. Kirby recorded Blowout in Los Angeles with a stripped-down core band at 64 Sound Studios. Single and opener "Oropendola" is bright, lithe, and funky. An homage to the birds that woke him each morning, its cut time groove frames an infectious melody delivered by a rambling key bass and sunny, Stevie Wonder-esque keyboard funk. Its appended with contemporary jazz flute and cascading Latin and Afro-Latin rhythms -- some courtesy of a primitive analog Wurlitzer drum machine from 1959! "Mates" melds Cuban son to a sultry, Brazilian samba melody provided by layered flutes. "Hotel Jonny Chingas" is all electronic, with synths, organs, and Rhodes pianos woven together atop a swaggering bass and squelching lines from his bank of keyboards framing circular claves and bata and conga drums. Kirby claims composer, multi-instrumentalist, and bandleader Hermeto Pascoal as a primary influence. "Sun Go Down" illustrates that influence, juxtaposing Afro-Latin polyrhythms with contemporary jazz harmony atop an Asian-inspired melody. The trippy, celebratory "Gecko Sound" begins as an exercise in syncopated synth abstraction but evolves to seemingly embody the compositional and groove signatures of Joe Zawinul with Weather Report (especially on Black Market). "Flying Cat" is neo-electro framed by synthetically created steel drum rhythms, tender flutes, and layers of ambient sound and synthetic percussion, in dialogic effect. The album closes with cinematic dub versions of "Mates," "So So So," and "Hotel Jonny Chingas" (the latter clearly inspired by the rhythm track for Wars "Low Rider"). Taken as a whole, Blowout is Kirbys most adventurous record as well as his most accessible, thanks to hip arrangements, imaginative compositions, and focused, expert musicianship. ~ Thom Jurek

ソランジュやブラッド・オレンジ作品などへの参加で知られるLAの鍵盤奏者の新作は、コスタリカ滞在中に現地の人や音楽、自然からインスパイアされて制作したという。彼らしいアンビエントやフュージョン・テイストを全編に敷きつつも、得意のスピリチュアル感を薄くし、そのままトロピカル風味に入れ替えたようなリラックスした聴き心地が最高だ。モーグ・シンセやフェンダーローズの音色、そして軽やかなフルートがメロディーを紡ぐ楽曲群には現代的なヴァイブと80年代のニューエイジ・ムードを接続したような、無国籍かつタイムレスな響きがある。この夏聴きたい一枚を選ぶならこれ。
bounce (C)池谷瑛子