Simon Moullier: Spirit Song
Outside In Music

“Best vibes player I've heard,” opines Quincy Jones of Simon Moullier, also the beneficiary of a glowing endorsement from Herbie Hancock, his one-time teacher at The Thelonious Monk Institute. Yet however much Spirit Song captures Moullier's virtuosity on vibraphone and balafon, his debut album is more noteworthy for its ensemble performances and fresh concept. The music presented by the Nantes, France-born and now Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist is nominally jazz but leans towards fusion, with a few passages even recalling Weather Report during its Tale Spinnin' period. Part of that is due to the music's percussion dimension but also the inclusion of a vintage Roland Jupiter 8 synthesizer, sometimes used to double vibraphone lines.

Joining Moullier are bassist Luca Alemanno, drummer Jongkuk Kim, pianists Simon Chivallon (on the 2017 session) and Isaac Wilson (on the 2020), and saxophonists Dayna Stephens (on two tracks) and Morgan Guerin (three). As strong a mark as the pianists and saxophonists make on the music, it's the three-headed bottom-end that's pivotal. Moullier's music often glides with a high-velocity mobility that makes it feel airy by jazz standards; at the same time, the cumulative mass of the rhythm elements gives the music a weight that makes it feel solidly grounded. Further to that, his use of the custom chromatic balafon, a gourd-resonated wooden xylophone, lends the material a strong African flavour. In referencing the spirits of earth and sun, wind, moon, water, and the human, on compositional terms Spirit Song is likewise distinguished by a highly personalized musical vision; with that kind of focus in place, the cover of “I'll Remember April,” as elegantly singing (and swinging) a treatment as it is, can't help but feel a tad anomalous.

The title track introduces the album with seductive thematic material, the music's dramatic aura offset by the robustness of the vibes and Guerin's saxophone. Even at this early stage, the energy stoked by Alemanno and Kim is impossible to miss as the two generate a fluid, mutating base for the soloists. With the leader on balafon (a tenor-wielding Stephens doubling its melodies), Chivallon providing harmonic ballast, and the bassist and drummer contributing kinetic thrust, a pronounced West African feel informs “Acceptance.” Alemanno, Moullier, and Kim's playing is at its most intensely dynamic on “Wind Chaser,” with their light-speed radiance countered by the slow unfurl of Guerin's lines and the sci-fi dimension bolstered by synth flourishes. That quality resurfaces in “Prophecy” when synthesizer and vibes work together to give the interlude a ‘floating through space' feel.

With Stephens' tenor soaring breezily across a synths-sweetened backdrop, “What If”' evokes in moments the sound of Wayne Shorter doing something similar alongside Zawinul during Weather Report's glory days. With the leader and Wilson's solo-trading one of its attractions, “Beings of Light” is Moullier's music at its most infectious, especially when the tune's buoyed by an effervescent rhythm attack that's irresistible. Whereas much of the album oozes high energy, “Kenyalang” slows the pace for a sensitively wrought, rest-inducing meditation, after which the solo setting “Bala” concludes the release with a loop-based exercise in African-inflected melodies and dance rhythms. As densely layered as the performances are on the album, the music breathes clearly, with all of the elements cohering into a smooth, ever flowing mass. There's certainly nothing tentative about this preternaturally assured debut.

October 2020