French-Algerian bassist Michel Benita may not be well known to most jazz fans, but his bona fides are impeccable. He served as the original bassist in France's Orchestre National de Jazz, worked with artists such as Marc Ducret, Peter Erskine, and Erik Truffaz, and was a member of Andy Sheppard's group on Trio Libero. He has led the Ethics quartet since 2010; they appeared on his 2015 ECM leader debut River Silver. Looking at Sounds features Benita leading a modified quartet with flugelhornist Matthieu Michel and drummer/electronicist Philippe Garcia from Ethics. Joining them is Belgian Fender Rhodes pianist and electronic experimentalist Jozef Dumoulin, himself a bandleader. In addition to bass, Benita employs a laptop. His methodology in using electronics is unobtrusive, unlike many of his peers. His electronics add space, dimension, subtle textures, and nothing else. Benita composed or co-composed all but one of the 11 selections on the date.
His flugelhorn is usually employed as the lead voice here, a carrier of melody and harmony and the hub for the other players to interact and improvise around. Opener "Dervish Diva" finds him traveling down an Eastern modal path while Garcia uses his cymbals and hand percussion in a hypnotic yet syncopated beat. Benita accents the tempo flow while finding his own mysterious path along Michel's lines, as Dumoulin emulates a guitarist's sound and role on the Rhodes. Garcia integrates real-time sampling into his percussive work creating hushed loops. Throughout, Dumoulin processes his Rhodes through many effects boxes and pedals, using various types of reverb to create a luminous quality in his sound. The title track provides evidence even as he emulates the spirit of Joe Zawinul from the first two Weather Report albums. Benita finds a minor-key lyric melody and touches the intersecting point between Benita's bass pulses and the pianist's moody chord progressions. The group interplay gets darker; it moves further afield and is more complexly integrated as melodic improvisation meets sonic extrapolation. "Barroco" is a gorgeous illustration of post-bop lyricism and gentle abstraction, with Benita's under-melody illustrated alongside Benita's primary melody in an intimate exchange. There is a seamless approach to the development of a collective musical language as displayed on "Body Language." Its textures and sounds wrap around one another; they're analogous to Pat Metheny's playing on Secret Story, and Metheny's playing with Jon Hassell on
Fourth World, Vol. 2: Dream Theory in Malaya. "Islander" offers a fully formed folk melody introduced by Benita and then elegantly embellished by Dumoulin's rhythmic, EFX-laden chords and Garcia's graceful snare and hi-hat fills. Benita finds the harmonic center and offers an exploratory hypnotic vamp that emerges from and speaks to the tune's lyric core yet hovers just outside it. Despite its gentility and restraint, the music on Looking at Sounds is rich in color, nuance, and mystery. This is group interaction at its most intimate, focused, and perhaps even profound; it results in a poetic, obsessively listenable, and truly unforgettable outing.
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