MoonJune 2024
Flotando En El Vacio
When “void” and “vacuum” don’t mean the same, sound travels in most adventurous ways.
If ever there was anything predictable about this Uruguayan guitarist’s journey, it’s his steady shift from progressive rock to jazz. While Bele Beledo’s 2016 album "Dreamland Mechanism" felt like a pinnacle of his ascent to fusion, what followed purified that movement to an extent where “Flotando En El Vacio” must become an exemplary offering of the improv-based genre towards which the artist’s been steering his ship for almost four decades now. Still, the eight pieces on display here demonstrate more reasons to feel awestruck than a simple expanding of the master’s approach to style: the veteran’s impeccable sense of tune and, yes, the capivating unpredictability of his melodic choices.
Bele doesn’t need a lot of time to strike a chord with the listener, even though opener “Djelem Djelem” has to crystallize for quite a bit, as the delicate layers of Jorge Pardo’s flute slowly focus its perspective, before morphing into the familiar, at least to many a European, form of the Romani anthem. It embraces the Latino sensibilities the South American and his Spanish compadres project on this tremulous tapestry which is given tangible vibrancy via Carles Benavent’s insistent bass and Asaf Sirkis’ imaginative drumming, especially when Beledo’s own violin passages get factored into the number’s faux fandango alongside acoustic filigree. The drift may turn electric once gusts of his piano begin to vie for space with hard-hitting riffs and honeyed harmonies that are peeled from the fretboard to shape “Rauleando” and explore baroque borders and dynamic frontiers of sheer beauty. But then, enhanced with Gary Husband’s Fender Rhodes, “De tardecita” takes the resulting elegy, as opposed to elegant belligerence “Es prohibeix blasfemar” exudes in spades further on, to the verge of sweet reverie and lets Beledo go off on a series of wondrous tangents and indulge in regular changes of the groove.
However, the gracious “Candombesque” switches its topline between eighty-eight keys and six strings, and the record’s title track adds playful levity to the flow and defies its own ten-minute length through diaphanous weave of instruments that flutter above the ground only to remain tethered to the glistening surface of an ivories-encrusted soil. “Rodeados” – the album’s bluesy finale – meanders much longer, yet there’s studio chatter in the reflective and relaxed, if increasingly wild, mini-epic’s backdrop, and Pardo’s sax is at the fore to lift the mood, whereas the vigorous “From Within” allows jazz rock aficionados to cast a glance at Beledo and his friends’ jovial mindset which made the sculpting of “Flotando En El Vacio” such a pleasant process.
Here’s the mindset which transports the audience to the heat of the creative moment and the heart of a wordless song and makes this album a milestone in the genre’s annals.
*****
