Jan Garbarek: In Praise Of Dreams (LP)

In Praise of Dreams issued for the first time on vinyl, features two musicians with whom the great Norwegian saxophonist shares some history - American-Armenian violist Kim Kashkashian and African-French drummer Manu Katché. Garbarek, Kashkashian and Katché span a lot of idioms between them, but the music sings with a focussed sense of purpose, in the context that Jan has shaped for it. If dreams are movies for the mind, the album is aptly titled - its atmospheres are evocative and decidedly filmic. From the very first track ... the saxophonist serves notice that this is going to be a very different album to anything he has done before. The haunting electronically generated sounds seem to hang in the air like an early morning mist and are penetrated, like the early morning sun, by the sharp, almost crystalline definition of Garbareks saxophone, and, on subsequent tracks by Kashkashian on viola. The multiplicities of meaning conjured between them on pieces like Knot in Time And place or scene from Afar take this album to a place where no Garbarek album has gone before. A major statement, possibly among his finest, by a major artist." - Stuart Nicholson, Jazzwise