Recordings

Arthur Jarvinen’s Some Over History veers in slightly different directions from his other group, the California EAR Unit. With Robin Lorentz on violin, Marty Walker on bass clarinet and Toby Holmes on trombone, tuba and acoustic bass, Jarvinen switches between electric bass, harmonicas, bell plates and garage-band-esque electronics. Over the course of this album, a suite-like tapestry of music and sounds, we hear scruffy, jazz-minded minimalism; the hummable “Cheap Suit Tango”; and composer-player-ensemble founder Jarvinen in a harmonica solo that brushes across Japanese mystique, blues harp cliches, and “Oh! Susanna.” But what’s most important on this deceptively spare, occasionally ironic, oddly contemplative album is the whole--the assimilation of jazz and classical musics and the balance between written and improvised material. Not fake at all.

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