Detailed Reviews [Jazzcomputer.org - 2011-c - "The Best of JCO"]

Prolusion. JAZZCOMPUTER.ORG is Yves Potin, a musician from France. Click here for more details.

Analysis. This “Best of” compilation is a collection of the best music as selected by the artist himself. And just like on his most recent production, the music is best described as ambient. Touches and traces of jazz can and will be found, to a greater or lesser extent, but the dominant aspect of all these excursions are soundscapes of a gentle and relatively tranquil quality. Fluctuating synth textures, slowly surging sound layers, wandering electronic percussion and swirling noises are key elements throughout. And in this case these are of a tone and timbre that evoke associations towards deep space, bottomless ocean pits and desolate planets – cold, longing, dream-laden constructions with few organic qualities to them. Dystopian would be a fit description, and on that note I often found myself associating this music with Vangelis’ soundtrack to the classic cult science fiction movie Blade Runner, on which the Greek master of ambient music did include a fair bit of jazz details. A further similarity is the inclusion of Asian folk motifs, but where Vangelis utilizes vocals and plucked instruments, Yves Potin opts for rhythms and plucked strings in his Jazzcomputer compositions. I’d also note that Potin isn't quite at the level of Vangelis in terms of quality either. What Yves excels at is to construct pleasant moods, often with fairly advanced arrangements sporting multiple textures, and he's skilled at using resonating notes and echoing tones to add enticing details to his arrangements. The occasional use of plucked Asian string instruments and jazz-oriented sequences, up to and including his very own take on Ellington's Isfahan on this disc, also add another dimension to his creations. And he incorporates these additional features with relative ease. But from a personal point of view I feel that his constructions don't really have a goal in sight. To use a bit of allegory, if film students had been given the assignment to make a movie covering the topic forests, this one would have been the odd one out focusing on an individual tree, slowly wandering up the tree, carefully covering all the branches and then moving down to the ground again. Others may of course experience this music in a different manner altogether, but as a subjective description this one pretty much covers mine.

Conclusion. Ambient music appears to be the main focus of Yves Potin's creations while using the Jazzcomputer.org moniker, and he is good at assembling textures and motifs into pleasant instrumental excursions of a dark, dream-laden variety, occasionally flavored with Asian inspired or jazz oriented themes, but always with a firm foundation in musical journeys of a more tranquil nature. I'd suspect that those who enjoy artists like Vangelis and Kitaro would be a key audience for this production, and possibly with fans of the former more so than followers of the latter.

OMB=Olav M Bjornsen: January 15, 2012
The Rating Room