Ninni Morgia & William Parker

Our review
Customer reviews
Press release

4...according to our Brett on Thu 04 Nov, 2010.

This record's like a breath of fresh air compared to most of what seems to pass for 'free' improv these days, it's total 'anything goes' type shit (alas, not in a Cole Porter sorta way) with a sound palette that'll have you scratching your head in disbelief, baffled at how two men can produce such a wide variety of sounds. Upright bass dude extraordinaire William Parker (who's played with countless famous names throughout the years (perhaps most notably Cecil Taylor, David S. Ware and Peter Brotzmann) does far more than merely provide a bedrock - although he does that more than ably when required - with his bowing technique out in full and frequent force, managing to give me visual impressions on both a large scale (seismic land-shifts conjured by low frequency rumbling) and a small one (the chaos of molecules dancing blindly with one another). Ninni Morgia's extraordinary guitar explorations provide similarly rich results and rarely sound anything like the instrument he's using as his source.. Quite how anyone can conjure such bizarre cosmic squiggles and ghostly electronic melodies from the humble six-string is beyond me. Well, I guess he's got a pedal or two but you know what I'm saying. A veeeeery interesting release.. And a genuinely exploratory one!

"Prism" is the result of the collaboration between upright bassist William Parker and Italian guitarist Ninni Morgia.
William Parker needs no introduction; a master player of his instrument, Derek Bailey described him as "one of the few ones left who play pure Free Jazz".
Ninni Morgia, after proving his talent and versatility on his previous works (Control Unit with Daniel Carter, The Right Moves, Quivers...) here reaches the top-level of avant guitar, his sounds ranging from Stockhausen's tape experiments, to the saxophones of Anthony Braxton and Evan Parker. Such an alien guitar sound has rarely been heard, and still stays pure in its essence.
Parker also plays the slide whistle and a strange Spanish reed instrument called Gralle. During the making of this recording, Parker asserted: "This is the music I have always had in my mind, the music I have been dreaming about. Music that inspires me with visions of colours, like the light reflecting through a prism".

"This double vinyl slab features Italian guitarist Ninni Morgia, in duet with free jazz bassist William Parker.
Listeners expecting standard jazz chords, or even skronk that obeys the rules of 21st Century avant improv,
will be thrown off stride by what they hear.
Morgia pushes his sound through pedals and devices until it's a
shrivelled set of electronic pulses; the sound of fingers or plectrum on strings is absent. It sounds like he's
playing a theremin sometimes, and other times it doesn't sound like anyone's playing at all. Instead it's like
listening to a conversation between two old dial-up modems.
Parker, for his part, doesn't always play bass, he blows a small whistle that's ready and almost kazoo-like.
...when the bass is deployed, it's with a thick, resonant rumble that anchors anything the guitar and/or
electronics might come up with...
Parker's plucking is emotionally weighty, and Morgia's guitar work, even at its most abstract and
non-guitarish, has real beauty. You won't hear anything else like this anytime soon." -Phil Freeman, The Wire, November 2010