Erik Bosgraaf - Hotel Teminus [LP]

Seven pieces inspired by Bach's Brandenburg Concertos.A high-grade bio-vinyl LP transfer for a quirky album scored for a modern-jazz ensemble but crossing genre boundaries in a stylish fusion of Baroque, lounge, jazz and minimalism. Adler, Ibis, Western, Sheraton, Hyatt, Umai, Terminus. The titles of these instrumental songs evoke the restless nowhere space of the international hotel chain, where guests may feel at once at home, in a space of comforting familiarity, and yet curiously suspended from the world around and outside. Through the high-rise windows of a hotel, we see but are isolated from the surrounding cityscape, Tokyo or London or Los Angeles. The passage of time becomes redefined in these spaces, moving faster through the impermanence of one's stay and yet stretching out along their endless corridors, their smooth lifts and impersonal restaurants. All these sensations and impressions are evoked by Erik Bosgraaf and his colleagues. Passing impressions and sketches of particular places embed themselves within riffs and ostinatos. What is improvised, and what is composed? Such distinctions melt away. Meanwhile fragments of Baroque rhetoric - specifically, motifs and ideas drawn from the Brandenburg Concertos of Bach - surface from time to time, but on instruments and in contexts entirely foreign to Bach himself. In one sense, then, there is a kinship with the 'lift music' which accompanies listeners and guests on their frictionless passage to the 45th floor. In another, Bach is the grit in the oyster, reminding us that music is not another industrial process but the work of living genius. In Sheraton, the sublime melody from the slow movement of the First Brandenburg becomes stuck on a loop, while other instruments enter and leave. The album is a rich sonic metaphor for contemporary life but also a dream sequence as ideal in it's way for late-night consumption as the particular pleasure of a lonely brandy and soda, sipped in a penthouse bar while the world beyond flows ever onwards through it's diurnal cycle.