Eclipse Music – ECD-201213 – 2011
Anni Elif Egecioglu: vocals, glockenspiel, cello, grand piano
Pauli Lyytinen: tenor sax, effects, synthesizer, toy piano
Tatu Rönkkö: drums, percussives, aqua drum
Interview to Elifantree
For its second album the Elifantree’s music has reached the point in which the previous musical ideas displayed in their debut Love and Trees has taken a more rounder shape and enriched its sonorities. In Time Out, indeed, the music of the Finnish band experiences a “popish” turn, but stay faithful to the previous release’s aesthetic in which each member adopts a creative approach on its own instrument. The album’s “pop” side, meant in its higher sense, comes up from tunes like Tic Toc, Where’s the Courage, How About a Little Love and Time Out, while the most “experimental” front is represented in the visionary approach of That Girl or in the elegiac Nordic mood of She’s Changed.
The Vocalist Egecioglu, author of all the lyrics and most of the music, use her prismatic, aetheric voice to take the listeners to surprising and always-changing musical territories. Her skill to write and articulate deeply emotional lyrics, equipped with an effective rhythmic valence, confirm her capability to magnify and elevate the music of Elifantree.
Lyytinen, careless about the usual maneuver room of a tenor sax, divides himself between a rhythmic (Puppet Show) and harmonic (Waiting) approach, displayed with his complex breathing and tonguing techniques, soaring as an unavoidable element in the sonic architecture of the music. The triangle is completed by Rönkkö’s restless rhythmic creativity who fits very well with the moody musical attitudes of their partners.
Both of them crawl and stumble up the edge of Egecioglu’s voice in The Eye, turning the tune into one of the album’s best and most representative of the band’s style. The cohesion the Finnish band reached in this album shows all its potentiality making even an usual setting like voice, sax and drums as the most natural of the musical vehicles.
Elifantree’s music is one which doesn’t align, but lives and prosper on the balance of the different inspirations that today animate the most modern forms of jazz.