Bortone,matteo / Travelers

Time Images Bortone,matteo / Travelers

Two years after his 2013 debut album, and marking his comeback to his home country, Italian double bass player and composer Matteo Bortone presents his second album as a leader, Time Images. The Otranto-born, Paris-raised, and Rome-based musician leads his French-Italian quartet Travelers (Antonin-Tri Hoang, Francesco Diodati, and Ariel Tessier), who also appeared on his debut album. Following the critical success that welcomed his first album (awarded "Revelation Jazzman" and "Jazz Decouverte" in France, and named one of "2013 Best Records" by Italian magazine Jazzit), Bortone confirms the musical direction he showed in his previous work, exploring all the connections between improvisation and avant-garde rock with electro-acoustic moments and rarefied atmospheres, always emphasizing the collective sound over the individual. The album title hints at Bortone's love for film (the idea of "image-temps" in neorealistic cinema was first introduced by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze). The album's energetic and well-structured pieces ("Sunday Supermarket," "Just Play," "Broskar") and introspective ballads ("Crackle", "Olvidao") are enriched with more instruments, such as electric bass, synth, and clarinet (in addition to alto sax and bass clarinet), adding new shades to improvisations ("Intro Crackle" was written for four voices with double bass, synth, clarinet, and bass clarinet). The synth has a co-leading role in some improvisations ("Sunday Supermarket" and "Locked Room") and it also acts as a main voice in "Tourne" and "Olvidao #1." With the exception of Led Zeppelin's "Houses of the Holy," these pieces are all Bortone's compositions.