IRO HAARLA — Northbound (review)

IRO HAARLA — Northbound album cover Album · 2005 · Post-Fusion Contemporary Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
snobb
Northbound is Finnish pianist and harpist Iro Haarla's debut on ECM. I re-listen it once again after I really enjoyed her fresh,second ECM release,Vespers. To be honest, I wasn't so much impressed Northbound when I listened it for a first time some years ago, so I just decided to check if I missed something.

Musicians team is the same on both releases, and in general both them sound in ECM tradition, so from the first look the difference is not so big. But now, listening to Northbound after I just spent some days repeating Vespers again and again,it's even easier to hear the progress Iro done during these six years between two albums releases.

Northbound is melancholic liquid well rounded Nordic saga, down tempo,with strong Grieg classic influence. Piano and straight ahead trumpet (in Jan Garbarek's later works tradition) build beautiful,but too predictable atmosphere, and music if melodic,doesn't have memorable moments and slowly goes to nowhere. Compositions are well structured, with only minimum space for improvs, more classic,than real jazz.

Album still have same ECM clear and cool atmosphere, with obvious Nordic flavor, but somewhere on the middle becomes too amorphous and even boring.It's great to see,how six years later on Vespers, Iro progressed with similar material to really great avant-jazz complex interplays instead of nice but predictable soloing.
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