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HASHIMA
Igor Mišković Guitar Vanja Todorović Double Bass Aleksandar Hristić Drums Srđan Mijalković Tenor Saxophone Featured artist Susana Santos Silva Trumpet
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01 Dance No. 3
Susana Santos Silva Trumpet
11’02
02 Iris of the Eye 07’17 The Haywain Triptych 03
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Ray of the Microcosm 06’24
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II The Haywain 05’14
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III Satantango
09’27 Total Play Time: 39’28
All works composed by Igor Mišković Arrangements by Hashima 3
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BIO Hashima is a Belgrade-based jazz quartet which combines varied artistic experiences into new music, defined by well-known jazz critic Thomas Conrad (JazzTimes) as “a unique confluence of classicism, avant-garde racket, lyricism and Balkan folk forms.” Hashima was a finalist in the Best New Jazz Ensemble category at the Avignon Jazz Festival, 2018. Among the many musicians and styles which inspire them, they are particularly influenced by Wayne Shorter, John Zorn, Igor Stravinsky and Pink Floyd, as well as free improvisation, post-rock and folklore. Hashima’s second album, The Haywain, features one of the most respected contemporary free jazz trumpeters, Susana Santos Silva, on the first song. The album was mastered in the French studio La Buissonne, by engineer Nicolas Baillard (known for mastering more than 30 ECM records for artists including Avishai Cohen, Jack DeJohnette, Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin, Charlie Haden, Joachim Kuhn, Ahmed Jamal). The band has been hailed by Jazz Music Archives as: “One of the biggest discoveries of the last years. Balkan jazz has its heroes now…”
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Igor Mišković Guitar
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Susana Santos Silva Trumpet
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The introduction to the first theme of Dance No. 3 already lasts longer than the classical piano miniature piece by Vasilije Mokranjac that inspired it. The first cautious attempt to start the dance is violently interrupted by Susana’s manic scream, calling into action Mišković’s guitar and Vanja Todorović’s bass. Srđan Mijalković and Silva pick up the theme from there in a ‘question and answer’ manner, using doubling and canon. The sense of deep distress at the beginning of the album is marked by the Balkan minor scale. Susana plays the solo: her trumpet is unconsciously steeped into the sorrow of our South like a prayer to gods, rising above the heavy metal of the guitar, bass and drums, and, at the end the saxophone, a powerful machine that would propel her to the skies and make her loud enough to be heard. Between proper melodies
and atonal extravaganza, cry and flutter, tranquillity and anxiety, this lady from Portugal emits sheer passion, while Igor’s guitar stirs up the same storm that managed to launch Since I’ve Been Loving You from Madison Square Garden straight up to White Blues heaven. After the first energy drop, all together they burst out with the second part of the theme, and after Mišković’s soft-toned bridge, they perform the final attack with a short and passionate coda. The rich, wooden sound of double bass opens the next composition, Iris of the Eye. This is a meticulously written étude where Mišković and his fellow musicians get to showcase their skills. Their favourite 3/4 time signature appears and disappears with rubato. Swaying and staggering is achieved with great authority, displaying not only perfect understanding
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between musicians, but Igor’s bandleader skills, too. At first, the warm-toned saxophone is in the foreground, before the swing flash pushes it into a swift jazzy action. Then, the guitar takes the lead, fluctuating between soft and hard sounds, string picking and riffs. However, the saxophone returns at the very end, completing the picture with a quote from the ballad My Funny Valentine (just as they quoted Over the Rainbow on their debut album): the melody is bound to make you smile – like a sentimental lover’s dance under a disco ball before sunrise. The Haywain Triptych suite is inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s eponymous panel painting. With literature and film also incorporated into this work, Mišković builds a piece on four basic pillars of modern art, demonstrating his eclectic
interests and prompting the listener’s awareness about this work’s programmatic nature along with its purely aural qualities. The first part of the suite, Ray of the Microcosm represents, like the left panel, the creation of man and his fall into sin. This piece is also influenced by the Njegoš poem The Ray of the Microcosm. The composer paints the innocence of creation with flageolets, ending it with a thunderous statement from the entire band and leading into a lyrical melody on saxophone as a prelude to the original sin. There are distant echoes of Pink Floyd. The sin has been committed and the band continues to rock on with a repetitive judgment from the angels. The kinetic groove of Haywain creates a soundtrack for the large wagon of hay in the central panel of Bosch’s triptych. The saxophone
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and the guitar catalyze seven deadly sins: at first they sound timidly comical, then gradually they become more expressive and turbulent, mocking the steady rhythm of drum and bass until they shut it down completely, and finally they jointly deliver another of portion of shame and rage. Finally, we find ourselves in hell. The finale, Satantango, named after the seven-hour film directed by the Hungarian director Béla Tarr, places us in the present day and represents, just like the extraordinary film saga, criticism of the society in which we live. The band cross-matches eerie, soft sequences with the extremely effective device of Igor chanting into a microphone set inside the guitar’s F hole, as well as Srđan’s piercing saxophone. The album closes the circle by returning to the Balkans and its harmonic modes accentuated by Aleksandar
Hristić’s floor tom as if starting a shota, a traditional folk dance. The Garden of Earthly Delights by Bosch made great cover art for the Deep Purple III album. Half a century later, it is time for the art of this Dutch painter to be of service to popular music again, leading us into this album by this Serbian quartet. I can’t wait to listen to April and Lalena before I go to bed, but I’d rather wake up to our Hayvans* in the morning. Vojislav Pantić
* Used as a game of words Haywain/Hayvan Hayvan is a turkish word used in Serbia to describe a person who behaves in a wild manner.
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Text by Vojislav Pantić (translation: Zvonimir Ivanov) / Odradek Records, LLC is licensed under a Creative Commons AttributionNoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.odradek-records.com
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Vanja Todorović Double Bass
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Srđan Mijalković Tenor Saxophone
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Aleksandar Hristić Drums
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www.thehashima.com www.odradek-records.com
Recorded at Digimedia Studios, Serbia 2017 Mixing: Goran Crevar Sound and mastering engineer: Nicolas Baillard Mastering: La Buissonne Studios, France Produced by Hashima
Liner Notes: Vojislav Pantić - Jazz Critic, Artistic Director of the Belgrade Jazz Festival Translation: Zvonimir Ivanov Dance No. 3 inspired by Piano Miniature by Vasilije Mokranjac Photo p. 4: Bojana Janjić Graphics: A.M. Leka Man is encumbered with a heavy sleep In which he dreams of dread visions And scarcely can he decide Whether his being be not part of them (The Ray of the Microcosm 1845 – P.P .Njegoš)
℗ & © 2018 Odradek Records, LLC, Lawrence (KS) USA. All rights reserved. Unauthorized copying, hiring, lending, public performance, and broadcasting of this sound recording are strictly prohibited.
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