Jazz

This week's Jazz CDs reviewed

ARVE HENRIKSEN
CartographyECM ****

Filled with ethereal beauty and a surprisingly diverse range of emotional hues between sadness and the serenity of acceptance, Henriksen's leader debut on ECM is like a spiritual experience. The trumpeter's uniquely vocalised sound, more reed-like than brassy, has grown in expressiveness, its sparseness framed in aural landscapes of Jan Bang's live sampling and programming, with Erik Honoré's synthesizer, Eivind Aarset's guitars, Lars Danielsson's bass, vocal and choral sampling, strings, organ and voices added where required. The most suitable analogy for these performances is painting, including collage. If one or two are sketches rather than larger works and David Sylvian's poetry, on Thermaland Before And Afterlife, is, personally, not persuasive, the finest tracks – Assembly, Recording Angel, Famine's Ghost, Migration, Sorrow And Its Opposite– make one wonder where Henriksen's strikingly original voice will lead him in the future. www.musicconnection.org.ukRAY COMISKEY

RENÉ MARIE
Experiment In Truth (No Label)****

This self-produced album catches an exceptional singer at a new level of maturity, displaying a formidable range as a performer/songwriter. Weekendis a highly charged reflection on consent and power in sex, This Is (Not) A Protest Songis a plea for compassion for the homeless, Rim Shot is a bluesily erotic double entendre delivered with sexual gusto, O Ninais a Gospel-flavoured tribute to the barrier-breaking courage of Nina Simone, Stronger Than You Thinkis an exemplar of her own experience, Vertigo is a reworking of an earlier piece, and Colorado River Song has a simple, old-time rustic feel. Fine versions of pieces by others – I Ain't Gonna Let You Break My Heart, Turn The Page, Caravanand Some Other Time– are, like her own material, inseparable from the passion and individuality she pours into them with her so-sympathetic band: Kevin Bales (piano), Rodney Jordan (bass) and Quentin E Baxter (drums). www.renemarie.com  RAY COMISKEY

JULIAN ARGÜELLES
Inner Voices OJM***

Setting Julian Argüelles loose in a studio to multi-track with a plethora of reed instruments, piccolo, piano and percussion is a bit like giving a master chef a kitchen and telling him to grow his own ingredients; the results may have a share of idiosyncrasy but they will be tasty. To listen to the textures he creates in the through-composed You See My Dear, the calypso-ish Disateaseand Tin Tinand the lovely 2nd Study in 12 Toneis to hear a superb musician at work. And, given the freedom he has, this one-man band almost never yields to self-indulgent technical exercise. Throughout there's a warmth and a real sense of purpose and enjoyment, perhaps most explicit on the grooving Brushesand Ghana. He'll be here on February 1st with Michael Formanek and Tom Rainey; don't miss him. www.jazzcds.co.uk RAY COMISKEY