Emile Parisien Quartet - Spezial Snack (2014)

Emile Parisien this year received the prestigious French jazz award Victoires du Jazz as "musician of the year" and in 2012 won the Prix Django Reinhardt . Such accolades are evidence of a supreme talent, now given an international platform by ACT. The saxophonist has appeared on ACT once before, in the Duo Series alongside Vincent Peirani, but his Quartet is a different beast altogether, honed over the course of three albums into a tightly cohesive unit which enables the musicians to tackle the abstract time signatures and swift changes with consummate ease. There's the same light sense of parody; and the same, playfully natural manner of mining quaintly outmoded chord progressions through elastic rhythms, micro-events and combinations of timbres. They have rapidly developed their own palette and playing mode, interacting and exchanging glances.