Monday, August 05, 2013

The Moss Project: What Do You See When You Close Your Eyes? - Manchester Jazz Festival 2013

The Moss Project, Festival Pavilion Teepee. Tuesday 30th July 2013

Having already checked out the Moss Project's excellent new album, I was really looking forward to this one. Moss also reminded me that I wrote his first ever gig review here on the Ring Modulator back in 2007, but somehow it’s taken me this long to catch another one of his gigs. Things have changed in lots of ways since then it appears.

Freed cooked up some groovy-wah guitar in the set opener, uplifted by the soaring long note vocal lines from the ever-amazing Alice Zawadzki. We were then introduced to author Lawrence Norfolk who read one of a number of writings inspired by the Moss Project music. ‘Anniversary’ opened with some spiky tremolo guitar and sparse violin over the beaten rumbles of Marek Dorcik’s drums. This was soon followed by the repeating Reich’ish figure of ‘What Do You See When You Close Your Eyes’. Zawadzki treated us to some even more soaring violin doubled vocal lines pitched over the bands disjoint groove. ‘Freud and Jung Ride The Tunnel of Love’ proffered some enticing abstract echo reverb guitar and dark violin tones. Once it got going it, perhaps oddly, reminded me of Pink Floyd’s ‘Interstellar Overdrive’ before fully transforming into a rough and dangerous tempest.


The band finished with the precise and pushy angular phrases of ‘The Bubble’, Zawadzki and Freed lining up the lines admirably. The song’s strong chorus style hook whipped up some serious momentum, launching Freed into a bitingly angsty solo, followed apace with a Metheny-esque high register bass solo from Kevin Glasgow. This was a fine and refreshingly original set. The project’s writing is great and the band delivered with energy and passion.

You can listen to the new Moss Project album in full at the Babel Label Bandcamp page.

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