Same Moon in the Same World Queen's Hall Edinburgh 15th June 2024 Review
Same Moon In The Same World at the Queen’s Hall Edinburgh tonight was one of those musical events which does not really fit into any of the neat little boxes that all too many people still try to categorise music by. To start with, the name of the band and the title of their album released in November 2022, take their name from a line in Haruki Murakami’s 1999 novel 'Sputnik Sweetheart'.
Watching “the band” tonight, I think of them more as a musical collective with Ant Law (Guitar) and Alex Hitchcock (Saxophone) being at the forefront of this project. Both Ant Law and Alex Hitchcock are not only well established musicians in the contemporary jazz world, but also composers with an always inquisitive and open mind as to where their music can take them. Equally as important though in creative terms, and on-stage tonight, were two more highly respected composers and musicians, Korean drummer Sun-Mi Hong and Danish double bass player Jasper Høiby.
Every member of this quartet has the ability to take a musical thread and endlessly improvise to create new soundscapes, new textures, and along the way captivate their audiences with musicianship at the highest level. With Same Moon In The Same World on-stage there is that sense of being on a journey with them in music and sound and sometimes that destination is a theme, or a place, but at other times it is a journey not to anywhere in the physical world, but instead to your inner self. There was often something strangely soothing, very calming, and at times almost meditative about their music tonight, something that connected everyone together by sound.
This was, however, not an evening to promote the “Same Moon In The Same World” album and although one track from it, “Don’t Wait Too Long” has become almost a live performance anthem for the band, there were so many other moments of musical creativity in this set, including the opening song “Blue and Gold”, in which Ant Law explores how the same object or event can be seen from different perspectives with a different interpretation of them by the viewer. Is truth then truly in the eye of the beholder?
As individual musicians and as a band, there is an almost cultural magpie approach to their music and inspiration is taken from many different cultures. Weaving its way through music tonight, influences of Indian and Polynesian rhythms and sounds merged seamlessly with European jazz to create something that simply could not be categorised and labelled, and that is good, because music and creativity in general should always be allowed to run free and explore any path that it wants to.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
Watching “the band” tonight, I think of them more as a musical collective with Ant Law (Guitar) and Alex Hitchcock (Saxophone) being at the forefront of this project. Both Ant Law and Alex Hitchcock are not only well established musicians in the contemporary jazz world, but also composers with an always inquisitive and open mind as to where their music can take them. Equally as important though in creative terms, and on-stage tonight, were two more highly respected composers and musicians, Korean drummer Sun-Mi Hong and Danish double bass player Jasper Høiby.
Every member of this quartet has the ability to take a musical thread and endlessly improvise to create new soundscapes, new textures, and along the way captivate their audiences with musicianship at the highest level. With Same Moon In The Same World on-stage there is that sense of being on a journey with them in music and sound and sometimes that destination is a theme, or a place, but at other times it is a journey not to anywhere in the physical world, but instead to your inner self. There was often something strangely soothing, very calming, and at times almost meditative about their music tonight, something that connected everyone together by sound.
This was, however, not an evening to promote the “Same Moon In The Same World” album and although one track from it, “Don’t Wait Too Long” has become almost a live performance anthem for the band, there were so many other moments of musical creativity in this set, including the opening song “Blue and Gold”, in which Ant Law explores how the same object or event can be seen from different perspectives with a different interpretation of them by the viewer. Is truth then truly in the eye of the beholder?
As individual musicians and as a band, there is an almost cultural magpie approach to their music and inspiration is taken from many different cultures. Weaving its way through music tonight, influences of Indian and Polynesian rhythms and sounds merged seamlessly with European jazz to create something that simply could not be categorised and labelled, and that is good, because music and creativity in general should always be allowed to run free and explore any path that it wants to.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
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