This month’s excursion through some forgotten corners of contemporary and historic New Zealand music for New Zealand Music Month has featured a fair number of voiceless pieces, or, as we used to refer to them in simpler times: instrumentals. Here’s another voiceless piece, this time from CL Bob. It features my favourite jazz instrument; the bass clarinet. Fittingly it is called “Unheard Voice”:

“Unheard Voice” is from the Wellington experimental jazz ensemble’s 2005 album “The Great Flash”.

Having initially formed in 1994 to play a surrealist party in Wellington you can expect the unexpected from CL Bob. As noted here back in February the ensembles music covers all the experimental jazz basses and beyond, like when they veer into Henry Cow/ Art Bears experimental avant-rock territory, working dissonances, rapid unexpected shifts in dynamics, layers of electronics, slabs of noise into the groove of the music.

This piece caught my ear because it’s not in any way extreme and is a more contemplative piece stretching out around Nils Olsen’s bass clarinet, forming a slow ruminating meditation with almost folk music melodies at times.

There has been a lot of bass clarinet echoing around PopLib HQ this year courtesy of British jazz musician John Surman who, at 79 years old, has released the extraordinary album “Words Unspoken” earlier this year. The soft woody tones and creaking low end of the instrument put the “wood” into woodwind.