Avishai Cohen Trio – From Darkness

The new trio of bassist Avishai Cohen went into the studio straight after a worldwide tour. Nitai Hershkovits on piano and Daniel Dor on drums complete the group for this new Razdaz Recordz release.

The central piece here is the almost eight minutes long “Ballad For An Unborn” which works with a lot of stop and go themes and quiet passages where you can only hear the brushes of the drums. Other tracks are very drum-heavy, like the title track or “Abie” where Daniel Dor sounds like a veritable rock drummer à la Steve Smith from Journey.

Most of the tracks are a very short, but intense affair (all but three of the tunes here clock in at under 4 minutes) and sound like a loose conglomeration of themes and topics where each member has his moment. There is a beautiful piano passage for example in “Almah” with its mournful motif accompanied by Cohen’s arco playing. The very short “Signature” is the intro to the very dynamic and hammering “Amethyst” which also includes a very diversified bass solo by the leader. There could have been a few more of those and in several cases I wanted the songs to go on a little longer. Some of them end too soon and unexpected.

All of the material was written by Cohen himself except for the final track, a loosely rendered “Smile” which again, has one of those abrupt endings which can have its charme, though. The playing here comes with a lot of soul and has a thick and rich sound thanks in part to the mixing of Lars Nilsson in Sweden where the whole album was recorded between May and July of last year. Cohen’s last trio album was the highly successful “Gently Disturbed” from 2008. And the trio is on tour:

3/10 Herzliya, Israel

3/11 Herzliya, Israel

3/13 Antwerp, Belgium

3/14 Issy les Moulineaux, France

3/19 Terni, Italy

3/22 Leiden, Holland

3/25 Heidelberg, Germany

3/27 Stuttgart, Germany

3/28 Madrid, Spain

4/01 Paris, France

4/03 Voiron, France

4/21 Innsbruck, Austria

4/22 La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland

4/23 Zurich, Switzerland

4/24 Zurich, Switzerland

4/25 Frankfurt, Germany

4/26 Berlin, Germany

4/27 Prague, Czech Republic

There is also a week-long concert series in Tokyo in May before Avishai is coming back to Europe in the summer.