KHAM MESLIEN (France)
| Kham Meslien | double bass, percussion, effects |
Double bass player turned leader, Kham sat his double bass, a mixture of power and gravity, at the heart of a virtual band for which he occupies all the positions. Percussions hit on the wood of his imposing instrument, discreet sweepers or rhythmic double bass rhythmic bass handed over their spells to the printed circuits of a looper.
Looped and cadenced, each one was then played back on itself, for several bars. The time for Kham to install the deep tonality and warmth of the strings that resonate on the wood to become storytellers. From a music with images where the vibrations blacken the first lines, impulse melodies and themes, then leave the solos free to speak and to write the rest.
An intense, instinctive, emotional speech. Crossing a melancholic storm before finding the
immensity of a plain over which to float. To follow the novel of an of an Andean charango playing oriental melodies, blurring both places and and distances, mixing cultures to become one. Hanging on to the suspense of the notes that are being played, following the sinuous paths that lead to darkness as well as to light. Or to go the opposite way. To settle down next to Anthony Joseph to listen to a poem, the only vocal track on the album.
On the voluminous body of an instrument balanced on its the climates follow one another, the lively and swift fingers fade into the background to the benefit of the bow, which will search the strings for in the strings and buried feelings. “Ta Confiance”, “The Alarm” or “Le Saule Pleureur”, each track tells the story of Kham as much as it gives an indication of the path to follow. It’s up to each of us to go where we want to go where he wishes, the paths being different as the listening different paths as you listen and, above all, as the moment passes.
Kham Meslien – Fan
A festival organizer asked for a solo, and for Kham Meslien it was as much a revelation as an opportunity.
for Kham Meslien, and it was a revelation. Twenty years of loyal service in a band, and Kham left the artistic direction of his the artistic direction of his career to the strings of his double bass. From now on, his career should take the less coded route of music where freedom reigns.
That of jazz and its improvisations dictated of purely instrumental compositions. Written and practiced on stage, Kham’s compositions have taken advantage of an imposed quarantine to perfect and immortalize his songs on the album Fantômes… Futurs, his first solo album.
REVIEWS
A trip in complete intimacy, never demonstrative (he has passed his age), made of sounds and assonance, sensations and silence.
Libération
A statement of impressions of which the double bass is his brush. A vigorous double bass playing instinctively dark or luminous moments, imaging stories that transport the ear to climates without anteriority. […] a caravan of emotions […] an upward journey that we wish to repeat.
Jazz Magazine “Révélation !”
A belated and frankly miraculous first album […] Each piece of this Fantômes… Futurs is a piece of history that still resonates long after the end of this disc which wanders between styles with the wisdom of the one who knows what he wants. There is pure melancholic jazz, pop lines, bossa-nova, free digressions, rhythms from Morocco or Central America, cinematographic atmospheres and, everywhere, a real sense of silence which magnifies the record.
Les Jours
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