UFO Info Week-End

First a string quartet set the mood then the band built up melodies that were stratospheric and ethereal but

First a string quartet set the mood, then the band built up melodies that were stratospheric and ethereal but had a precision and structure more usually associated with classical music. No one in the group says anything, and beyond what’s needed to play the instruments, the only movement on stage comes from the candles that flicker at the back. Kjartan Sveinsson appears to be nodding off at the keyboard as he picks out funereal organ parts; Orri Páll Dyrason favours soft beaters and brushes for his drumming; Georg Holm strums chords on his bass; and Jón Birgisson strokes the strings of his guitar with a violin bow.When he lifted the instrument up to his face, those of a nervous disposition in the audience must have thought: Oh my God, he’s going to play a solo with his teeth. Instead, the Tintin-quiffed, barefoot frontman sang directly into his guitar pick-ups, and his angelic keening became a far away, eerie lament.

His lyrics are a mixture of Icelandic and “Hopelandic”, his own invented language, and while it’s possible that he’s secretly chuckling to himself, because he’s actually reciting a bus timetable, this mystery only deepens to the otherworldly ambience. The surroundings help, of course, but I suspect that even in a Burger King, Sigur Rós would sound sublime.. ANDREAS SCHOLL | Vivaldi – Nisi Dominus, Motets (Decca)

ANDREAS SCHOLL | Vivaldi – Nisi Dominus, Motets (Decca)
Vivaldi’s sacred music for solo voice and orchestra is among the most beautiful he wrote: liturgical Latin texts set mostly for castrati, counter-tenors and trebles because high pitch suggested angels, and women in 18th-century Venice had no part to play in the church. Arguably the pre-eminent counter-tenor of our time, Andreas Scholl is on sensational form, his voice a miracle of purity, limpidity and control, his phrasing deft and detailed, especially in the haunting siciliana of the Nisi Dominus, with its hypnotic, pulse-like bass drone. Paul Dyer, conducting the period-instrument Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, opts for some deliberate, even exaggerated speeds, but the effect is a revelation. Claire WrathallSUSANNE RYDEN | Strozzi – Cantates (Harmonia Mundi)The Venetian Baroque composer and singer Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677) studied with Cavalli and published her first book of madrigals a year after Monteverdi’s death. Her compositions are captivating: richly melodic, dramatic and beguiling in their originality and ambition.

And this recital of arias, laments and cantatas – the latter ingenious fusions of recitative and arioso – by the Swedish soprano Susanne Rydén, makes a powerful case for them. Rydén’s voice has luminous clarity and thrilling agility, negotiating the florid vocal lines with breathtaking facility – Strozzi was writing for singers as virtuosic as she reputedly was herself. And the early music ensemble Musica Fiorita play with uplifting verve and exactitude CW. DAVID MURRAY OCTET | Octet Plays Trane (Justin Time)

DAVID MURRAY OCTET | Octet Plays Trane (Justin Time)
At last, a great new jazz album that actually sounds like jazz.

Murray is one of very few contemporary saxophonists able to invoke the hallowed name of Coltrane without inviting sneers, and he does the master proud here with suitably bluesy re-arrangements of six classics. Opening with a joyous version of “Giant Steps”, in which Trane’s original solo is sliced up between the various personnel (Murray regulars Craig Harris, DD Jackson, Ravi Best and James Spaulding), the set also features a truly stunning Murray solo on “Naima”. The album ends with an epic re-working of the first part of “A Love Supreme”. You’re left elated, but also uncomfortably aware that Murray’s genius – unlike Coltrane’s – seems destined to go unheeded. PJTONY BENNETT & BILL EVANS | The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album (Original Jazz Classics)Even if you think Tony Bennett is less the heir to Sinatra than he is an unusually gifted pub singer, it’s hard to find a reason to dislike this marvellous album recorded for Fantasy Records in 1975. The reliably superlative Bill Evans on piano may be throwing Bennett some easy pitches, but the nonchalance with which the vocalist reacts to the minimalist setting is enough to earn serious respect. The stereo balance of the recording comes over as rather surreal, with Evans’s vamps spread across the two speakers while Bennett croons in the background, but the sense of their presence is remarkable.