Amadou, Cambien, Rempis - On The Blink

2023

This brand new transatlantic collaboration unites three renowned improvisers in a stellar first time matchup. Electric bassist Farida Amadou’s stratospheric rise over the last several years has been shaking the roofbeams of the European improvised music scene. She’s participated in high flying collaborations with heavyweight improvisers like Peter Brötzmann, Steve Noble, and Thurston Moore, many of which have been documented on the Antwerp-based Dropa Disc label. She's also been touring relentlessly during that time. Jonas Cambien on piano and electronics, a fellow Belgian like Amadou, has been living in Norway since 2008. During his tenure there, he’s become an integral part of the thriving Norwegian improvised music scene, with an extremely broad set of pursuits. He works regularly with his own trio featuring saxophonist André Roligheten and Andreas Wildhagen on drums, is a founding member of the new music ensemble Aksiom, and has worked and studied Arabic music extensively in Cairo with a number of Egyptian musicians. Saxophonist and label founder Dave Rempis needs no introduction to Aerophonic fans, and it was on a shared bill with Amadou in Antwerp in November 2021 where they first hatched a plot to combine forces.

One year later, in November 2022, those plans coalesced around a short tour of Belgium and Netherlands with Amadou’s regular collaborator Cambien. With the gracious support of their friends from Dropa Disc and Sound in Motion in Antwerp, who organized and recorded the proceedings, they were able to document the entire first day of their collaboration with an afternoon recording session and live evening concert in Eindhoven, NL at Paviljoen Ongehoorde Muziek. That material is presented here with its many overlapping layers of possibility. With both Amadou and Cambien doubling on electronics, the sonic range of the trio’s palette far exceeds what three musicians could normally put forth. And don’t let the lack of a drummer fool you – the rhythmic drive of this band is intense. Whether pushed forward by Amadou’s percussive approach to her main ax, by Rempis floating pointed lines on top of a bed of electronic noise, or by Cambien offering up calliope-like repetition at the keyboard, the momentum here is unstoppable. Of course that doesn’t prevent the band from sometimes swirling into masses of sound like a summer storm. In fact, it’s their remarkable ability to patiently gather those swirls up into cohesive and sustained momentum that gives this new band such a unique sound.