Stereobass, by Makar Novikov & Hiske Oosterwijk

Stereobass

by Makar Novikov & Hiske Oosterwijk

supported by

	/

Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
10-track "StereoBass" on compact disc housed in a six-panel digipack with 12-page booklet and factory sealed.

Includes unlimited streaming of Stereobass via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

ships out within 5 days

9 remaining

Purchasable with gift card

$10 USD or more
Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Purchasable with gift card

$10 USD or more
Full Digital Discography

39

releases

Get all 39 Rainy Days releases available on Bandcamp and save 25%.

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Rainy Days Records 6 (Anniversary Edition Vol.2), Rainy Days Records 6 (Anniversary Edition Vol.1), E And J For Two, From The Crow's Nest, Bloody Belly Comb Jelly, Hyperfocus, Haute Culture Sessions, Haute Culture Sessions, and 31 more. , and , .

Purchasable with gift card

$215.99 USD or more (25% OFF)

1.	Yellow Car 04:11	lyrics	buy track
We are driving down the road. We don’t care where we’re going. Far or near. We don’t care where we’re going. Yellow is the color that we share, ‘Cause we care about each other. Mellow is the mood that we’re in, ‘Cause we’re good with each other Sunrise, sunset, proud. Moving like the clouds. Whether near or far. Precious yellow car. How the wheels touch the road. Like skin of our body. Thin, no heavy load. See the sky, so free. Yellow is the color that we share, ‘Cause we care about each other. Mellow is the mood that we’re in, ‘Cause we’re good with each other Sunrise, sunset, proud. Moving like the clouds. Whether near or far. Precious yellow car.
2.	Ûnrêst 05:14	lyrics
De tinzen yn my Dizich ljocht, kin d’r net by ‘k rûk in ûnrest, rûk in fjoer Frjemd gefoel, kin d’r net oer Swart as de nacht, komt it tsjuster tichteby ‘k hear geflúster yn myn hier Hieltyd swierder fiel ik my Swart as de nacht, it ljocht, sa dizig ljocht, ûnrestig frjemd gefoel, fiel ik my, ik fiel my ûnrestig, gefoel, it tsjuster komt tichteby Hieltyd swierder de gedachten, nachten lang, swier dizig ljocht, ik fiel, Ik rûk fjoer tichtby. Wyn raast foarby As de wyn raas ik om dy
3.	Come to me 05:22	lyrics
Come to me. I know you’re scared to just, let it be, and be embraced by my arms. Where you are, you know I’ll understand. That what you see with your eyes, hold my hands. I don’t know where you go. But slowly surely I’ll know, and be embraced your arms. Where you are, where I am, where you, where you are. Where I am, where you, where you are. Where I am, where you, where you are. Where I am, where you, where you are, where I am, where you are. Just come to me. I am also scared to just, let it be. And be embraced by your arms, my arms wanting you. To hold you close, come closer, just come to me. I’m here. I dare to let it go, and you’re here. Can’t you feel the loving for the love. The fire burns inside our hearts, in our minds. But the mind, as we know can be, a little bit tricky, ‘cause we tend to hold back to what we actually want. ‘Cause we’re scared to let go of our guard. We’re building a wall to protect what we fear, of who we are. So I must let go to make it possible, to embrace who I am inside. But you’re scared though. To let it … And I’m scared though. To let it… Go
4.	Chanson de l'amour 04:35	lyrics
Moi...étranger Toi...étranger Je vous ouvre mon coeur Venez... Moi...étranger Toi...étranger Je vous tends mes bras Venez... La main dans la main Pour chanter ensemble La chanson de la paix La chanson de l'amour
5.	Je voudrais te voir rire 07:18	lyrics
Je voudrais te voir rire Je voudrais te voir rire Rire aux éclats Chaque fois, quand tu me vois Aucun chagrin, pas une perte, sur ton visage Même si tu mens, ou est ce un mirage. Moi, je suis comme je suis Toi, tu est qui tu est Je crois, nous sommes mieux sans l'autre Avec le temps qui passe Nous sommes contente, je me sens jolie. (Mais) Tu sais, nous sommes mieux sans l'autre Je voudrais te voir rire Je voudrais te voir rire Rire aux éclats Chaque fois, quand tu me vois Aucun chagrin, pas une perte, sur ton visage Même si tu mens, ou est ce un mirage.
6.	Un Deux Trois 04:12	lyrics
Je suis au milieux de trois Es-tu la même chose que moi. Comment se démarquer Comment compter. Un, deux, trois. Le deux ç'est moi Un, deux, trois. Le deux ç'est moi Earth spins like I’m spinning in the middle, violin’s fiddle sounds, bound, but not. I do, I don’t. I’m the middle of three. Keep spinning around me. Moyenne, comment ne pas être en moyenne. Comment se démarquer, comment compter. Je tourne au milieux, comment te fair tourner comme la terre tourne. Avec l'herbe vert sous nos pied, sentir la liberté. Un, deux, trois. Le deux ç'est moi Un, deux, trois. Le deux ç'est moi Earth spins like I’m spinning in the middle, violin’s fiddle sounds, bound, but not. I do, I don’t. I’m the middle of three. Keep spinning around me. Keep spinning around (6x) Keep spinning around me. Keep spinning around me. (5x)
7.	Je suis comme je suis 06:54	lyrics
Je suis comme je suis Je suis faite comme ça que voulez vous de plus que voulez vous de moi Vole avec moi Sens mon âme Je ne peux pas changer et je ne le veux pas Je suis comme je suis Je suis faite comme ça que voulez vous de plus que voulez vous de moi acceptez-moi sens mon âme je ne peux pas changer et je ne le veux pas J´adore vivre Je vis pour l´amour J´adore vivre Je vis pour l´amour Comme je suis
8.	Haute Tension 08:44	lyrics
Voyage, très loin voyage je me suis retiré(e) loin de toi J'ai étendu notre amour Voyage, très loin voyage Qui fait monter la tension J'ai étendu notre amour Tu me hantes, tous les jours, dans mon coeur Tu me hantes, tous les jours, dans ma tête Je vois des signes dans les nuages J'ai besoin de savoir, sommes nous sur le même chemin Tu me hantes, tous les jours, dans mon coeur Murmurant des énigmes dans mes cheveux dessinant des signes dans dans les nuages J'ai besoin de savoir, sommes nous sur le même chemin Voyage, très loin voyage je me suis retiré(e) loin de toi J'ai étendu notre amour Voyage, très loin voyage Qui fait monter la tension J'ai étendu notre amour Tu me hantes, tous les jours, dans mon coeur Tu me hantes, tous les jours, dans ma tête Je vois des signes dans les nuages J'ai besoin de savoir, sommes nous sur le même chemin Tu me hantes, tous les jours, dans mon coeur Murmurant des énigmes dans mes cheveux dessinant des signes dans dans les nuages J'ai besoin de savoir, sommes nous toujours comme nous étions maintenant que les rondeurs de la terre nous cachent l'un de l'autre
9.	Father Time 04:58	lyrics
Father time, can you turn back time. I have said something wrong today. I have made a mistake in love, (that) I regret with all my heart. So father time, can you turn back time. And fix the choices I’ve made today. I can say, I won’t run away. Wish I could turn back time to see, what would happen, if I only could. But time has passed on by, I made him say goodbye. Foolish motion, heartbreak. So father time, can you turn back time. And make the sun, rise, for me again. Make the birds sing a song of joyful words, to bring back my love
10.	Jûnbea 03:18	lyrics	buy track
No is de dei ferrûn mei oer en stûne Oermits de sinn’ deldûkt yn wetter grûne Meitsje ús no, sliep, fan god ta rêsten jûne Deis lêst ûntbûne Kom swiete sliep, ús eagen feardig binne dat swierlik drôgjes net ûntstjoergje ús sinnen dat soarch en eangst ús rêstnju net oerinne noch free ferwinne Kom swiete sliep, mar wês ús fêste boarge dat gjin nachtgrime ús fettet by de loarge dat wy net reitsje yn fijâns weaze en foarge hâld wacht en soarge Mar jo boppe al Tsjerk-haad, jo wachters seine wol-sillige inglen, dat se al ûnrie weine dat jo sliep jo troch d’ hel net wurde ûntteine ûntskake of skeine As dan troch sliep ferwikke leave heare wy feardich moarn ta ús berop werkeare help, dat ús dwaan en litten ta jo eare wol wurdt regeare

about

"More important is the collaboration between the singer - she sings clear and flawlessly in French, English, and Frisian - and the 4 Russian musicians.

Hiske tells her stories and the musicians play a jazzy/poppy sound of a high standard.

The 10 well-composed tracks are from the singer's hand, some with the help of another band member. Here and there magic arises.

Well-crafted, fun-to-listen music with a jazzy twist."

— Jazz&Mo

"On StereoBass Hiske sings almost impossible melodies and harmonic changes in fast tempos, yet doesn't make it sound complicated.

And both bass players don't get in each others way, but enhance and support each other flawless."

— Hessel Fluitmann, Friesch Dagblad

— — — — — — — — — — — — — —

— Liner notes by Ted Panken:

For its second release, Rainy Days Records presents StereoBass, a project completely different in ambiance, orientation and context than the kinetic, modernist hardcore jazz heard on drummer Sasha Mashin’s Outside The Box, which launched the label. As implied by the title, the music revolves around Muscovite bassists Makar Novikov and Daria Chernakova, who pair off to frame the songs and melodies of Dutch vocalist Hiske Oosterwijk with a resourceful array of attacks, timbres, voicings and rhythms, complemented and inspired by pianist Alex Ivannikov’s well-conceived harmonic colors and pithy solos, and Mashin’s creative, authoritatively executed beats. As they did for Mashin’s music on Outside The Box, the protagonists illuminate Oosterwijk’s keenly observed stories and ruminations, delivered in well-turned English, French and Frisian. You could describe it as a Jazz-Alternative-Singer/Songwriter-Art Song hybrid, but the result is really, as Duke Ellington liked to say, beyond category.

The notion of StereoBass gestated around 2014 when trumpeter Alex Sipiagin asked Oosterwijk—his student in the excellent jazz program at the Prins Claus Conservatory in Groningen, Netherlands—to write and sing lyrics for a new project on which Novikov, Mashin and, more often than not, pianist Misha Tsiganov were revisiting and recontextualizing a cohort of his older compositions.

In a recent conversation, Tsiganov recalled Sipiagin telling him about Oosterwijk while on tour “somewhere in Europe.” “Alex told me, ‘She learned one of my songs and sang it,’” says Tsiganov, who emigrated to the United States from St. Petersburg in 1991. “I said, ‘No, that’s impossible.’ Alex’s tunes are extremely difficult; I would never believe someone could sing them.” In a 2016 conversation, Oosterwijk, then 26, acknowledged the challenge of making Sipiagin’s “crazy, sophisticated melodies and harmonies, big jumps, mixed meters, and fast lines not sound complicated, but rather like, ‘Oh, there’s the story.’”
Sipiagin opened his laptop and showed Tsiganov a video of Oosterwijk singing the lead on one of his pieces with a group of students. “I couldn’t believe it,” Tsiganov says. “He asked me if he should start a new project playing his music with her. I said, ‘Yes, do it because she is incredible.’ When we recorded Alex’s first New Path album, she could sing by memory the trumpet part or the saxophone part, no mistakes. In my opinion, she is one of the best singers on the planet.”

Over the course of several tours and three New Path recordings, Oosterwijk developed close friendships with Novikov and Mashin, and also Chernakova, who frequently played with Sipiagin during these years. By the spring of 2017, Oosterwijk recalls, “we were discussing that we only play together when Alex is around—‘Why not play when we want to?’ We enjoy playing together, and we have music that’s ready to be played. At first, we were hesitant about having two bass players, but we decided we’d make it work, and arrange the music to take advantage of the possibilities.”

The considerable skill sets of the bassists presented an abundance of possibilities. Novikov brings to any context experience accrued from joining Mashin on hundreds of occasions with such luminaries as James Spaulding, Lew Tabackin, Steve Slagle, Gary Smulyan, and, of course, Sipiagin. “Makar has really solid time, which is rare for Russian culture,” Mashin says. “His quarter notes connect perfectly to my quarter notes.” Tsiganov, a tough critic, encapsulates Novikov’s qualities. “He’s very flexible, creative, melodic and musical,” he says. “He’s a great sight-reader, and he can play mixed meters as easily as standards, straight-ahead music, and Latin stuff.”

If you’ve heard the final track of Outside The Box, Chernakova’s Afro-Brazilian inspired composition “Omulu Dance,” you’ve previewed the simpatico that she (left channel) and Novikov (right channel) display as StereoBass proceeds from beginning to end. Herself a graduate of Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Conservatory, Chernakova applies the calibrated touch and flawless bow technique of master classical practitioner to a sensibility informed by the will to swing—or, as Oosterwijk puts it, “to groove and pluck and have the jazz feel.”
Oosterwijk adds: “Makar plays the hell out of his bass, very musical and lyrical at the same time. When they play together, it’s like a dance. They’re not in each other’s way. They’re listening, having conversations, and enhancing each other, knowing when to play and when not to play—and how to play. It’s melody, not just a bunch of notes. For me, that’s beautiful to work with.”

“We just tried stuff, working together,” Novikov remarks. “Working together, we tried to complement each other’s strengths. During rehearsals and concerts, we found lines, exchanged ideas, and decided who would play what part.”

Oosterwijk composed the English language songs after the first StereoBass tour and decided to arrange them for the personnel. She titled “Yellow Car”—which opens both the CD and LP version s of StereoBass—for Novikov’s yellow Soviet-era vehicle “in which I’ve sat many times and even drove once—you’re driving down the road and you have no idea what’s going to happen, but you know it’s ok.” That metaphor of a speculative journey applies throughout this stimulating, adventurous date.

On “Je voudrais de voir rire,” note how the playful, ebullient unison riff and their solo exchanges after Ivannikov’s swinging post-Mehldau declamation complement Oosterwijk’s conviction that “sometimes people in a relationship can be great together, but decide to end it because they’ll be better off without each other—afterwards, when you see each other, you can ignore the other person or just accept it and smile.”

In response to the take-me-or-leave-me message of “Je suis comme je suis,” Novikov states a skronky, funky electric bass line—complemented by Chernakova’s insinuating vamp and Mashin’s ferocious backbeat—and then engages in well-wrought solo exchanges with Ivannikov that signify upon the lyric. Her spare double bass line counterpoints Novikov’s cello groove on “Un, Deux, Trois,” in which Oosterwijk, the second of three children, explores the subject of how to “how to stand out and become your own self if you’re in the middle.” The strings and Ivannikov’s vertiginous piano line represent the siblings, “free birds flying around, doing our own thing, but very close together.”

“Haut Tension” opens with a complementary melange of arco timbres and cymbal splashes (Oosterwijk calls it “the teardrop beat”) before the flow transitions to straight-eighth-land as she brings the lyric—“basically this cry, like, ‘what’s up, are we ok or not?’”—towards its anthemic emotional climax. Chernakova bridges that transition with an emotionally rich arco improvisation.

More pop-centric versions of the French language tunes can be heard on Oosterwijk’s 2016 leader album, EVA (Embrasser, Vivre, Aimer), inspired by her love for the music of Jacques Brel and other French music “when I was younger and more involved in theater.” She continues: “I love the French language—the sounds, its lyrical aspects—but I didn’t want to sing in the traditional chanson way or how other people had already done it. I started to arrange existing chansons in another jacket, so to speak, and then started to compose—that album contains only original compositions.”

A native of the province of Frisia in the northwest Netherlands, Oosterwijk researched “how to artistically compose jazz songs for the voice, based on Frisian language and poetry” when studying for her Masters Degree. One result is “Jûnbea,” which scores a night prayer by Frisian poet Gysbert Japicx; Chernakova’s heavenly bow (Oosterwijk composed the part) functions as a tone parallel to the singer. Oosterwijk adds that to enhance the sounds of the Frisian language, she “used Russian traditional vocal folk melodies as idiomatic material, as inspiration.” On “Ûnrêst” (“restlessness”), she fulfills her aspiration “to use the Frisian language on an artistic level of quality.” Novikov’s pointillistic lines and edgy solo on piccolo bass—supported by Mashin’s nuanced brushwork—complement her portrayal of a “strange, blurry light that you can’t really grasp and you start to feel heavy.”

The track that connects most palpably to the jazz tradition is “Father Time,” Oosterwijk’s regretful account (in English) of her wish to turn back the clock to correct “a mistake in love” that “made him say goodbye.” Composed to fulfill a school assignment to “write sort of a jazz standard,” it has the quality of an undiscovered Great American Songbook gem, not least because of Oosterwijk’s poetic use of reharmonized changes to “Body and Soul” within the flow.

Perhaps Oosterwijk’s path in composing “Father Time”—for a school assignment—is not so dissimilar in intention to Novikov’s usage of his aforementioned well-traveled yellow car—as a means to transport his tools of the trade to the various gigs that fill his calendar. However atavistic the yellow car’s appearance or the “Body and Soul” changes may seem on the surface, both entities serve an attitude animated by fulfilling the needs of the here-and-now. Throughout the date, the musicians eschew the same old-same old, finding fresh ways to address the various flavors in question, eliciting layers of nuance and surprise that reveal themselves with repeated listenings. “Hiske’s music is beautiful,” Novikov says. “I thought it would be interesting to do a project where she could do everything she wanted to do and could do—and she can do a lot of things.”

credits

released April 26, 2019

Hiske Oosterwijk - vocals, composition and lyrics
Makar Novikov - double bass (right channel), piccolo bass, bass guitar
Daria Chernakova - double bass (left channel)
Alexey Ivannikov - piano, wurlitzer
Sasha Mashin - drums

Produced by Makar Novikov.

Executive producer: Sasha Mashin, Eugene Petrushanskiy.
Co-executive producers: Andrey Agiyan & Dimitri Komedea
Package design by 271dsgn
Cover photo and liner photography by Eugene Petrushanskiy

Liner notes by Ted Panken
Video production by Arthur Bergart
Management by Roman Bergart

Recorded by Alexander Perfilyev at CineLab studio, Moscow;
Assisted by Igor Bardashev & Semyon Pechenkin
Edited by Alexander Perfilyev & Makar Novikov at Major studio, Moscow.

Mixed and Mastered by Alexander Perfilyev at Major studio, Moscow.

license

about

Rainy Days Tel Aviv Yafo, Israel

Rainy Days Records is a record label that is changing the global perception of modern jazz music in the global music landscape.

Acting as a platform for musicians around the world, Rainy Days facilitates the creation and presentation of innovative new works and fosters unique collaborations of the finest musicians from different parts of the world. ... more