How marvelous must be for some music artists to be able to get away of their sonic comfort zone and explore different musical alleyways still obtaining astounding results.
Whilst not many are able to achieve that artistic goal, it's rather refreshing to see affirmed artists such as Pianist and Keyboardist Bill Laurance and Composer, Multi-instrumentalist and Producer Michael League, better known as the highly successful ensemble called Snarky Puppy, exploring a more meditative music path, although still maintaining some elements of extravagance in their improvisations, for which Snarky Puppy, as a project, excels in.
With their second record out now and released just as Bill Laurance & Michael League, called Keeping Company, both artists navigate away from the swagger and electrifying magnetism of Funk, Jazz and World Music, the signature style of Snarky Puppy, choosing instead to concentrate on creating exciting sonic vignettes solely by using piano, fretless bass and an oud lute, with rather excellent results.
The 11 instrumental pieces included in Keeping Company feel not only as a very organic form of escapism from the Puppy's highly successful musical recipe but also as the perfect soundscape to a solid personal friendship and an artistic partnership that go back to the time when both artists were a lot younger and built their own Wall Of Sound together. In that respect, the musical content of Keeping Company reflects, in our opinion, the duo's individual personalities, both as artists and human beings and their unique capacity of knowing exactly what and how to provide to each other the necessary sonic support needed, when recording or live performing.
The fabulous interplay between League and Laurance moves from minimalistic Jazz to Ambient, delving at times also into Flamenco, World Music and Mid-Oriental music layers in such effortless style, alternating notes of sentimentality to other more nostalgic, inserting also those carpets of experimentation and free-form approach for which Snarky Puppy are and have been universally known for a two decades already.
It's not an accident that the closing piece of Keeping Company, Iki Keklik Bir Kayada, a piece originally written by Turkish artist Erkan Oğur, means literally "Two Partridges On A Rock", something that sums up, in a sort of poetic way, the idea of two artists and friends expressing their common desire to spread their musical wings as far as possible, musically, still maintaining that exceptional marque-de-fabrique sound and interplay that make of Laurance and League two artists unique in the contemporary music scene.
Keeping Company is the perfect demonstration of the forward-thinking, exciting musical alchemy of two artists in constant progression. An extraordinary record.
Keeping Company is out now and it is available to be purchased at the Artists' Bandcamp Official Page.
