Living Being II

Vincent Peirani is a jazz musician who is equally at home in world music, or classical music, chanson or pop. Yet what the listener will hear on "Night Walker" is that he has transformed the accordion into the baddest of rock 'n' roll axes. Recorded in just four days, this album shows the quintet channelling it's energies even more powerfully and consistently. The mix by sound engineer Boris Darley took several months of experimentation to get it right. As Peirani says, "it was like being in a musical laboratory." Whether seen from a jazz or a pop perspective, the combination of instruments is unique. "This album is more of a collective trip," he explains. "The accordion is even less at the center. It is only if you were to remove it that you would realize quite how much has suddenly gone missing." The art of Peirani is to play rhythmically and at the service of the tune, adding layers to each piece, as others could only attempt with a vast array of keyboards. The melancholy of chanson, the elegance of classical music, the sheer power of rock - his virtuosity pulls them all together. Living Being take a kid-glove approach as they start off the album; they play Sonny Bono's "Bang Bang" with the tenderest possible feel. On "Enzo", Peirani plays the accordina. His powerful version of the aria "What Power Art Thou" by the English composer Henry Purcell, from the 1691 opera "King Arthur", preserves the triumphal power of the original, yet could hardly be further removed. The pivotal point of the album is the three-section "Kashmir To Heaven", which references two songs of the legendary hard rock band Led Zeppelin. The energy levels in the band, as it carefully builds this mini-suite, are quite staggering. When Vincent Peirani says his band wants to be a 'chamber rock music orchestra', it may sound like "Rock meets Classic" bombast. But Living Being, this powerful beast of a jazz band, is exactly the opposite. It is a supple little animal that moves elegantly on any terrain without ever leaving the path, but can grow into a muscular carnivore at any time.