| It's Mostly Residual |
2005 ArtistShare, Intoxicate Records (Japan), Auand (Europe)
Cuong Vu - trumpet
Stomu Takeishi - bass
Ted Poor - drums
Bill Frisell - guitar
Recorded by Donn DeVore at Avast! Recording, Seattle, WA Jan. 2005
Mixed and Mastered by Laurent Brondel
Produced by Laurent Brondel and Cuong Vu
Cover Art by Virginia Valdes
....................................................................................................
To purchase in Japan go here -
http://www.bounce.com/interview/article.php/2320/
To purchase in Europe go here -
http://www.jazzos.com/products0.php?brand=300016
................................................................................
"It's Mostly Residual" has made the critics' choice lists for Best Records/Top Ten releases of 2005 including -
Nate Chinen (Village Voice)
Bill Milkowski (Village Voice)
Greg Burk (LA Weekly)
John Kelman (AAJ)
David Adler (jazzhouse.org/JazzTimes)
Brent Burton (JazzTimes)
Christopher Porter (JazzTimes)
David Dupont (Cadence, Onefinalnote.com)
Matthew Sumera (Onefinalnote.com)
Contributor Picks/Top New Releases (AAJ Critics Vote)
JazzTimes Top 50 (Critics Vote)
................................................................................
The first sounds you hear on Cuong Vu's new album are ethereal trumpet moans joined by equally otherworldly clusters of notes emanating from a guitar. These sounds herald the beginning of a musical marriage made in electronic heaven. I'm not sure if Vu is dealing in metaphor, but with music organized and chaotic, at once over-the-edge and strangely engaging, he's created an apt tone poem for the 21st century. - Ron Netsky, Rochester City News
|
 |
|
|
I first heard him on recordings by Pat Metheny Group; his stuttering whispering solos on last year’s The Way Up were, for me, the emotional highlights of that great album. When he’s on his own, Vu composes and plays a kind of music that is both jazz and not-jazz, post-rock without the pretention, metal without the cookie monster voice. Whatever it is, it’s brilliant…but it’s going to take me the whole review to explain what it sounds like. Because the problem is that Cuong Vu hates jazz. Of course, he also loves it. This ambiguity is how we get our best music. It’s fair to say that this is pretty freakin’ great. - Matt Cibula, popmatters.com
Since much of what passes across a music reviewer's desk is the sonic equivalent of hyenas gnawing on the bones of long-dead jazz styles, the arrival of something new that's both original and great gives twice the reason to celebrate. Vu is capable of some intense, headlong improvisation, as is clear on the aptly titled "Expressions of a Neurotic Impulse" and "Brittle, Like Twigs," but his real strength is the extended, gorgeous lines that he unspools on the other cuts. The title track, in particular, offers a melody that seems to take measure upon measure to reach its culmination – it's stately, elegiac, and yet not in the least mournful; one could only describe it as the sound of someone looking back on a glorious love affair that has ended without bitterness. This is all a way of saying that Vu's playing has an emotional resonance that's rarely found these days without having to sift through layers of hokum. - Edward Batchelder, Signal to Noise
Vu's exploring new territory, and he's fortunate to have sidemen able to keep up with him. "It's Mostly Residual" is a refreshing dose of forward-thinking music from an artist confidently exploring a personal vision of creativity. - Ben Taylor, Time Out Chicago
[Vu's] ability to blend a historical frame of reference with a forward-thinking vernacular and his uniquely textured sound processing techniques has seen him emerge as a player of incredible depth and breadth. With advanced textural explorations an equal part of his overall melodic conception, It’s Mostly Residual finds him continuing to expand on the direction he’s been pursuing all along. [His] writing, which can combine legato melodies with freer explorations, running the gamut from delicate and spacious to dense and aggressive, has never been better. - John Kelman, All About Jazz
It's Mostly Residual is a sonic record, to date, of trumpeter Cuong Vu's musical trip through life — a life conceptualized as dense urbanized noise-scapes[...]intercut with advancing and receding episodes of pastoral calm. Vu's music is a living residue of journeys taken and journeys returned from, in sound. A sound picture-within-a-picture, filled with brimming memory and emotion, it bears the audible traces of a various human life - a life, lived today. - David Fujino, www.thelivemusicreport.com
|
|