Noël Akchoté - Loving Highsmith

Daniel Yvinec, Académie du Jazz

 

This is a very special album.
Guitarist Noel Akchoté brings a kind of "broken poetry" to everything he does which like some of my favorite artists (Robert Wyatt comes to mind) still sounds open even after completed, almost as if they were unfinished and you could take them from there... Hard to explain... Anyway, this is a soundtrack to a movie directed by Eva Vitija on writer Patricia Highsmith.
Disc one is a duo session with Mary Halvorson, recorded in Antwerp, Belgium. Disc 2 is almost an epistolary exchange between Akchoté and Bill Frisell, each of them recorded their parts in their respective homes. Both discs contain alt takes from the sessions.
This record is unusual therefore quite hard to describe. It’s raw and subtle, harsh and sweet, full of light and sometimes darkness, a beauty...