Christy Doran: Media
New CD – 2026: Christy Doran & Imran Khan – Disambiguation: Review, Video, CD cover
https://JazzBlues.EU September 22, 2026
Where Guitar, Tabla and Memory Become One Language!!!
There are musical encounters that seem to have been waiting for one another for years. Sometimes they emerge from carefully planned collaborations, from the meeting of musicians whose careers have followed parallel paths. And sometimes they happen almost naturally: two musicians play together, listen to one another, discover an immediate understanding, and realize that the space between them is already filled with music.
Disambiguation, the new album by guitarist and composer Christy Doran and tabla player Imran Khan, belongs to that second, more mysterious category. It is a record built from listening. It is also a meeting of histories. Doran brings with him a lifetime of searching through jazz, improvised music, rock, blues, contemporary composition and Irish musical memory. Khan brings the extraordinarily detailed rhythmic language of Indian tabla, rooted in the Delhi Gharana and shaped by a tradition in which rhythm is not merely accompaniment but a form of speech, architecture and movement.
Between them there is no attempt to construct an artificial musical border. Instead, Disambiguation allows the borders to become porous. The guitar can sound like a fragment of a song remembered from childhood, then become a sudden electric eruption. The tabla can be pulse, ornament, heartbeat, conversation or landscape. A melodic phrase can suggest Ireland before dissolving into improvisation; a rhythmic figure can appear to come from another continent and yet feel completely at home inside Doran’s musical vocabulary.
The result is intimate, restless and beautifully open-ended. Released by Between the Lines, the album contains eight pieces and runs for just over fifty-one minutes. The repertoire includes “Disambiguation,” “Ode to Johnny Doran,” “The Day They Came,” “Continuum V,” “Taal Pravaah,” “Mantra on an Irish Stream,” “Haute Savoie” and “Dark Slender Boy.” The album was recorded in April 2026 at WERFT in Switzerland, with Doran on acoustic and electric guitar and Khan on tabla.
A lifetime of listening
Christy Doran’s musical identity has never belonged comfortably to a single category. Irish-born and long based in Lucerne, Switzerland, he has been deeply involved in the Swiss jazz and improvised-music scene while retaining the sounds and atmosphere of his Irish heritage. His career stretches back approximately six decades, and his musical vocabulary has been formed by an extraordinary range of influences: Jimi Hendrix, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, John McLaughlin, Joe Zawinul and György Ligeti are among the artists he has identified as important inspirations.
That combination matters when approaching Disambiguation. Doran does not arrive at Indian rhythm from outside his own musical personality. Nor does Imran Khan enter Doran’s world simply as an exotic rhythmic colour. Their encounter works because both musicians possess highly developed individual languages.
Doran has spent his career exploring what a guitar can become when it is released from conventional expectations. His instrument can carry melody, harmony, noise, rhythm, atmosphere and physical energy simultaneously. Khan’s tabla possesses a similar multiplicity. Its rhythmic vocabulary can be precise and intricate while remaining extraordinarily expressive.
The duo therefore does not need a large ensemble. There is nowhere to hide. Every gesture is exposed. Every silence matters. Every response becomes part of the composition. Doran himself has described the duo as a particularly direct vehicle for communication, emphasizing the importance of listening, reacting and proposing. That principle is fundamental to the character of this album.
Two traditions, one conversation
The fascination of Disambiguation lies in the fact that its two central traditions remain audible without becoming museum pieces. Irish musical memory is present, especially in the compositions connected with Doran’s heritage. Indian rhythm is present through Khan’s tabla. But neither tradition is presented as a static quotation. Instead, both become raw material for invention. This is what makes the album feel contemporary. The music does not say: here is Ireland, here is India, and here is jazz connecting the two.
It says something much more interesting: Here are two musicians listening to each other. And from that listening, something new begins. Doran’s interest in Indian music is not new. His earlier work included collaborations with Indian musicians, and he had already performed with Trilok Gurtu in the 1980s and worked with the late Muthuswamy Balasubramoniam around the turn of the millennium. His meeting with Imran Khan came through the project Optickle, led by Swiss multi-instrumentalist Jan Galega Brönnimann. The musical compatibility between Doran and Khan was immediate enough to suggest a duo of their own.
That history gives Disambiguation an important depth. It is not a sudden experiment. It is another chapter in a long process of curiosity.
“Disambiguation” – opening the door
The title track establishes the central idea immediately. Disambiguation is a word associated with clarification: separating meanings, making distinctions, bringing something into sharper focus. But in musical terms, Doran and Khan achieve almost the opposite effect. They do not eliminate ambiguity. They make it productive.
The opening piece places guitar and tabla in a space where rhythm and melody continually change their functions. Doran’s guitar does not simply float above Khan’s rhythm; it interacts with it, sometimes following, sometimes resisting, sometimes provoking.
The music seems to ask where one voice ends and the other begins. That question becomes one of the album’s recurring themes. There is clarity in the playing, but also mystery. There is structure, but also risk. The title therefore becomes more than a name. It becomes a poetic key to the entire recording.
“Ode to Johnny Doran” – memory becomes melody
If there is a particularly intimate centre to the album, it can be found in “Ode to Johnny Doran.” The title carries a double meaning. Johnny Doran was an important Irish uilleann piper, but Johnny Doran was also the name of Christy Doran’s father, an Irish tenor and ballad singer.
That coincidence of names gives the composition an emotional resonance that extends beyond musical homage. Here, family memory and Irish musical heritage become intertwined. The uilleann-pipe tradition is not reproduced literally. Instead, its melodic spirit is transformed through Doran’s guitar language. The sound of the guitar can suggest the long breath of a traditional melody while remaining unmistakably contemporary.
Khan’s tabla adds another dimension. Rather than placing the Irish material inside a fixed traditional frame, the rhythmic conversation allows the melody to travel. It becomes memory in motion. There is something tender in this idea: a musician looking backwards without becoming nostalgic, carrying an inherited sound into a new musical landscape.
“The Day They Came” – tension and movement
“The Day They Came” introduces another aspect of the duo’s personality. The music feels less concerned with heritage and more interested in momentum. Guitar and tabla become physical forces, creating tension through repetition, acceleration and interruption.
Doran’s playing has always possessed an element of danger. Even when a phrase begins lyrically, it can suddenly break open into something sharper. The guitar becomes percussive; rhythm turns into texture; silence becomes a dramatic event. Khan responds with extraordinary rhythmic awareness. The piece illustrates one of the album’s essential qualities: neither musician is simply accompanying the other.
They are listening for possibilities. A phrase creates an opening. A rhythmic answer changes its meaning. A pause creates anticipation. And the music continues.
“Continuum V” – the art of remaining in motion
“Continuum V” suggests movement without a final destination. The word continuum is particularly appropriate for this music because Doran and Khan refuse the idea that one musical state must replace another. Acoustic and electric colours, composed material and improvisation, melody and rhythm, stillness and intensity can coexist.
The guitar becomes a constantly changing surface. One moment it is sharply defined. The next it seems to dissolve. Khan’s tabla provides a centre of gravity, but it is not a conventional metronomic centre. His playing breathes, responds and shifts. The result is music that seems to be permanently becoming something else.
“Taal Pravaah” – rhythm as a flowing language
The album’s only composition credited to Imran Khan, “Taal Pravaah,” occupies a special position within the programme. The title itself points toward rhythm and flow, and the piece gives Khan an opportunity to establish the rhythmic environment from within his own musical tradition.
But Doran does not simply enter that environment as an outsider. His guitar listens. It answers. It bends around the rhythmic structures. The piece becomes a meeting point rather than a demonstration of difference.
This is perhaps one of the most important qualities of Disambiguation: cultural exchange here is not treated as decoration. It is embedded in the mechanics of the music. The rhythmic language shapes the guitar. The guitar reshapes the rhythmic space. Both musicians change because they are playing together.
“Mantra on an Irish Stream” – two landscapes flowing together
The title “Mantra on an Irish Stream” almost describes the album’s philosophy in miniature. A mantra suggests repetition, concentration and spiritual continuity. An Irish stream suggests landscape, movement, memory and inherited song. Put them together and the title becomes a musical image: a repeating rhythmic idea flowing through an Irish landscape.
The music does not need to explain the connection. It simply allows the two ideas to coexist. This is where Doran’s Irish heritage and Khan’s rhythmic world meet most poetically. The guitar can evoke a folk melody without becoming folk music; the tabla can create a cyclical rhythmic environment without turning the composition into a conventional Indian-classical performance. The two traditions are transformed by proximity.
“Haute Savoie” – landscape without borders
“Haute Savoie” shifts the geographical imagination once again. The title evokes the Alpine region of southeastern France, bringing yet another landscape into a record already moving between Ireland, India and Switzerland. But geography in Disambiguation is never literal.
These are musical landscapes. Doran’s long residence in Switzerland is part of his artistic history, just as his Irish childhood remains part of his sound. The music carries those places without needing to illustrate them. “Haute Savoie” can therefore be heard as another example of the album’s central principle: identity is not a single fixed point. It is accumulated. It is layered. It moves with us. “Dark Slender Boy” – the folk memory transformed
The closing piece, “Dark Slender Boy,” returns to Irish musical memory. Like “Ode to Johnny Doran,” it draws attention to Doran’s growing interest in bringing elements of his musical heritage into his contemporary work. The melodic world associated with Irish traditional music is transformed rather than reproduced, becoming part of the guitarist’s highly individual language.
As a closing statement, it is fitting. After all the rhythmic encounters, the improvisational tension and the movement across continents, the album ends by turning towards something deeply personal. The journey outward leads back inward.
Guitar and tabla: intimacy instead of spectacle
The greatest strength of Disambiguation may be its simplicity of instrumentation. One guitar. One tabla. That is enough. In a larger ensemble, musical identities can remain partially concealed within the collective sound. Here, every note is exposed. The listener can hear the musicians negotiating space in real time.
Doran’s acoustic guitar offers intimacy; the electric guitar introduces electricity, grain and physical force. Khan’s tabla supplies a remarkable rhythmic vocabulary capable of being both delicate and commanding. The two instruments possess very different histories, yet they share an important characteristic: both can speak with extraordinary nuance. A single guitar note can imply an entire harmonic landscape. A single tabla stroke can change the direction of a phrase. Together they create a music in which small gestures acquire enormous significance.
The meeting of rock, blues, jazz and Indian rhythm
It would be easy to describe Disambiguation simply as a world-jazz collaboration. That description would be too narrow. Doran’s musical background includes rock and blues as much as jazz and improvisation. The energy of Hendrix, the exploratory language associated with McLaughlin, the openness of free improvisation and the melodic memory of Ireland all exist somewhere inside his playing.
Khan brings a rhythmic discipline of a completely different historical origin. The remarkable thing is that these elements do not appear as separate ingredients. They have become part of a single conversation. This is why the record can move from lyricism into intensity without sounding like a stylistic exercise. The changes are organic because they emerge from the personalities of the musicians.
A record about listening
At its deepest level, Disambiguation is a record about listening. Not passive listening. Active listening. The kind that requires one musician to leave space for another. The kind that turns a rhythmic gesture into a question and a melodic response into an answer. The kind of listening in which improvisation becomes a form of trust.
That is particularly important in a duo. There is no orchestral cushion, no rhythm section to stabilize the performance, no harmonic instrument sitting behind the guitar. Doran and Khan must continually negotiate the architecture of the music themselves. And that makes the recording feel alive. The music breathes because the musicians breathe with one another.
Six decades later, still searching
There is something quietly remarkable about the place Disambiguation occupies in Christy Doran’s career. After approximately sixty years of musical activity, the guitarist is still looking for unfamiliar doors. His discography and collaborations have repeatedly demonstrated a refusal to settle into one definition of himself. AllMusic’s biography places his career in the history of Swiss improvised music while also noting his work with musicians from experimental and free-jazz circles.
This new album continues that trajectory. But it does so with unusual intimacy. There is no need for a large ensemble to announce the scale of the ambition. The ambition is contained inside the dialogue. Doran and Khan have created a musical space where different histories can touch without losing their identities. Irish melody does not disappear into Indian rhythm. Indian rhythm does not become merely an ornament around Western harmony. Jazz does not function as a neutral middle ground. Instead, everything remains audible. Everything remains alive.
Beyond the boundaries of genre
Disambiguation is ultimately difficult to place inside a single category because its very purpose seems to question those categories. Jazz is there. Improvisation is there. Rock is there. Blues is there. Irish music is there. Indian classical rhythm is there. But the album does not sound like a checklist. It sounds like two experienced musicians discovering how much space exists between definitions.
That is where the title becomes particularly beautiful. To disambiguate something is to clarify its meaning. But these musicians discover clarity through complexity. The more they listen, the more possibilities appear. The more traditions meet, the less necessary the boundaries become.
A conversation that remains open
There is no sense on Disambiguation that the meeting of Christy Doran and Imran Khan is intended as a final statement. Quite the opposite. The album feels like an opening. An opening toward further rhythmic exploration, further encounters with Irish melody, further possibilities for acoustic and electric guitar, further dialogue between composition and improvisation.
The music is complete, but it is not closed. Perhaps that is the most appropriate way to understand this remarkable duo. Christy Doran brings a lifetime of experience without allowing experience to become limitation. Imran Khan brings a deep rhythmic tradition without allowing tradition to become confinement. Together they create a sound that is both rooted and restless. There are memories in it, but no nostalgia. There are traditions, but no museum glass.
There are structures, but plenty of air. And there is, above all, conversation. Disambiguation is music born from two artists listening closely enough to hear the possibilities inside difference. Guitar and tabla become voices in a shared language, while Ireland, Switzerland, India, jazz, blues, rock and improvisation pass through the music like changing currents.
The album does not ask the listener to choose between worlds. It invites us to hear how worlds can coexist. And in that space between the clearly defined and the mysterious, Christy Doran and Imran Khan find something wonderfully alive.
By Lauren Wulff
Christy Doran, Imran Khan: Disambiguation
By Tyran Grillo
For Christy Doran, disambiguation does not entail stripping music of its mysteries. Clarity arrives through a lifetime of wandering, six decades of guitar compressed into a language whose elements have ceased to observe their ancestral borders. Blues and rock pass through jazz and free improvisation until each tradition becomes a translucent chamber inside the others, retaining its contour while admitting foreign light. Even at his most abstract, Doran remains devoted to the physical pleasures of the instrument: the bite of a riff against silence, the gleam of a harmonic and the electrical flare that briefly gives sound a body. His playing thinks through touch. Every chord carries the pressure of a hand that has crossed immense distances without mistaking arrival for completion.
On Disambiguation, that language enters the gently shifting gravity of Imran Khan's tabla. Doran does not attempt to inhabit Indian music or treat it as an exotic annex to his own vocabulary. He allows its rhythmic imagination to disturb his habits, loosening the scaffolding beneath his phrasing until melody emerges restored. Traces of Irish music also surface, drawn from sounds heard in his childhood home and encountered anew decades later. Memory moves here as an active intelligence, revising the present from somewhere beneath it. The traditions carried by both musicians become currents within a single speculative body, rooted deeply enough to risk becoming unmoored.
The title piece establishes that body through Doran's jangling guitar, whose open resonance invites the tabla into immediate, fiery conversation. A country inflection flashes across the strings before the melody reaches further backward, toward a folk antiquity belonging to no settled archive. One senses an undiscovered songbook dreaming itself into existence, its blank pages already crowded with harmonic implications. Doran seems to excavate the composition while performing it, releasing chords that have spent centuries waiting inside the wood. Khan answers by giving each discovery a pulse and a horizon. Their dialogue unfolds through mutual provocation, with every gesture altering the significance of what came before. The music feels fresh because its age cannot be measured. Its beauty bears the marks of having traveled through hands, circuits, inherited melodies, and unnamed rooms of attention.
That sense of ancestral motion deepens in "Ode to Johnny Doran," where tenderness widens the spaces between events. The piece enters a territory mapped through emotional pressure, each phrase opening an interior distance that cannot be translated into geography. Doran's lines linger without settling, holding memories whose original circumstances have vanished while their charge remains fiercely present. When Khan enters, the tabla does more than establish regularity. It gives time permission to continue. Rhythm becomes an act of release, carrying private remembrance beyond the enclosure of the self.
"The Day They Came" turns that inwardness toward play. Its rhythmic charm carries a bright, mischievous grace, inviting the listener into motion without dictating the steps. Doran and Khan display an astonishing ease here, yet the ease contains constant negotiation. A guitar figure tilts the floor; the tabla restores equilibrium by inventing a new center. Their delight comes from refusing to secure the ground for long. Beneath the whimsy lies an intricate intelligence, agile enough to conceal its labor and generous enough to make difficulty sound welcoming.
With "Continuum V," the electric guitar opens a more futuristic chamber within the album. Its mid-tempo movement grants each detail an unusual clarity, allowing small decisions to acquire architectural force. Doran's tone glows from somewhere between circuitry and nerve, while Khan articulates a rhythmic field whose boundaries keep quietly migrating. Each musician appears attuned to an interior mechanism within the other, anticipating impulses before they become audible. Their rapport turns difference into propulsion. The continuum promised by the title emerges as a living exchange between distinct forms of knowledge, one carried through voltage and the other awakened through skins.
Khan steps fully into the foreground on "Taal Pravaah," the album's sole composition not written by Doran. His solo tabla piece is less an interlude than a revelation of the rhythmic consciousness animating the entire project. Patterns divide and reassemble with lucid authority. Accents produce hidden corridors; resonance enlarges them. Khan's mastery resides partly in the way he transforms precision into spiritual amplitude, drawing the listener toward a self that has not yet acquired a name. The performance seems to understand that rhythm precedes biography. Before we know who we are, something within us is already counting.
"Mantra on an Irish Stream" carries that intuition into stranger terrain. Doran begins alone, turning time and place into unstable materials that bend beneath contemplation. Reversed apparitions and digital enhancements drift through the guitar, loosening causality until an ending can appear to remember its own beginning. Khan's percussion eventually seems to generate Doran retroactively, as though the guitarist were emerging backward from a story the tabla has already told. The familiar geometry of a heroic journey collapses. Instead of advancing toward revelation, the piece approaches the instant before descent, that suspended threshold where consciousness has not yet decided whether the unimaginable constitutes danger or birth.
The pressure released there ignites "Haute Savoie," the set's most energetic performance. Frenzy gathers without sacrificing coherence, assuming the agency of a creature that knows its strength and has no appetite for conquest. Doran's guitar surges through the piece with muscular radiance as Khan shapes velocity into articulate motion. Their command is thrilling because it never closes around the music. Control remains porous, receptive to accident and sudden redirection. The duo sustains an extraordinary tension between abandon and exactitude, revealing virtuosity as the capacity to remain lucid inside combustion.
"Dark Slender Boy" draws the arc toward an almost hymnal intensity, with the suggestion of raga voiced through distortion and intimate devotion. The guitar carries worship to the edge of language, where proclamation dissolves into vibration. Khan's presence gives that vibration an earthly axis, though the piece keeps leaning toward a border beyond which names lose their authority. Its final poise contains neither surrender nor triumph. Doran and Khan hold the music at the brink with closed eyes, trusting the radiance pressing against them from an unseen direction.
The title Disambiguation finally reveals a beautiful mischief. Identity does not become clearer through the removal of uncertainty. It deepens as its borders grow permeable and its histories begin speaking through one another. Doran's many lives gather here without forming a retrospective, while Khan continually redirects their momentum toward futures unavailable to either musician alone. An old vocabulary discovers fresh organs of perception. Tradition escapes the museum of itself and resumes its unfinished labor upon the human nervous system.
Doran's ear for detail remains astonishing throughout, yet detail never becomes decoration. Each inflection opens another dimension within the composition, and Khan meets those openings with rhythmic intelligence of rare suppleness. Together, they make music whose intricacy produces freedom, whose rigor produces wonder. Their musicianship shines because it reaches beyond virtuosity toward a more difficult achievement: the creation of a shared consciousness that belongs wholly to neither player.
Track Listing
Disambiguation; Ode to Johnny Doran; The Day They Came; Continuum V; Taal Pravaah; Mantra On An Irish Stream; Haute Savoie; Dark Slender Boy.
Album information
Title: Disambiguation | Year Released: 2026 | Record Label: Between the Lines
Victor Aaron on SOMETHING ELSE
https://somethingelsereviews.com/2026/10/02/christy-doran-imran-khan-disambiguation-2026-oct-2/
October 2, 2026 by S. Victor Aaron
Christy Doran + Imran Khan – ‘Disambiguation’ (2026)
Probably best known for co-founding and playing guitar in the groundbreaking free rock/jazz group OM in the early 70s, Christy Doran has made a career taking the guitar to challenging, provocative places and shows the same sort of adventurous drive as a composer. His latest in a string of stimulating collaborations is a duet with tabla ace Imran Khan titled Disambiguation.
Khan comes from the Delhi Gharana school of Hindustani tabla playing — one of the oldest styles of table playing — but he’s very modern-minded, making him a great partner for Doran’s forward-looking outlook on guitar.
Disambiguation (Challenge Records) defies neat characterization because it’s a little bit of a lot of things. The long-time Swiss resident Doran makes nods to his Irish roots on a few tunes, and both his rock and jazz sides invariably come out as well. Obviously, there’s a South Asian flavor to this as well, but all of these streams come together naturally, no one is forcing genres into the music. It just happens.
If Ralph Towner and Collin Walcott had spun off from Oregon to form their own duo, you might be in the ballpark of what Doran and Khan had done here. But Doran and Khan aren’t interested in chamber-like new-age atmospherics or hippie ‘n’ sandals jazz (not that there’s anything wrong with that); they attack their material with enough vigor to take up the sonic space of a full band at times. The tabla being both a tonal and percussion instrument makes that possible and Khan takes full advantage of that.
“Disambiguation” charges right out the gate, both participants locked in together on the galloping groove. Even for the winding “Ode To Johnny Doran” Doran assumes an aggressiveness that at times recall early John McLaughlin but it’s ultimately Doran’s own style with sharp rhythmic punctuations, rapid runs and attention to melody. Further, traces of the Uilleann pipe melodies popularized by the song’s famous Irish namesake can be heard here.
“The Day They Came” transits through several tempos, Doran easily adapting to the mood changes cued up by Khan. Doran introduces an electric guitar for “Continuum V” (and goes electric from here on out), continuing to use arpeggiated chords and circular figures to add notes to Khan’s rhythm. Somewhere along the way, Doran introduces a new melodic fragment before returning to the original motif.
Khan gets his own time for solo tabla, called “Taal Pravaah,” showing off extraordinary preciseness and pliability. The electric guitar of Doran takes the full stage for the first couple of minutes of “Mantra On An Irish Stream” before Khan edges his way in. At that point, Doran deftly manipulates the pedal effects of his guitar to resembles a saraswati veena, creating Indian Carnatic music with Khan and his tabla. “Haute Savoie” on the other hand, leans into hearty, 70s-styled Western rock-jazz fusion.
“Dark Slender Boy” is another traditional Irish-type strain, where Doran applies a Hendrix-ian stream of consciousness and the closely-attuned Khan is going with Doran’s rubato flow.
Christy Doran’s encounter with tabla player Imran Khan made genre-less music that can best be described as guitar and tabla music of the highest order. Best of all, they made all this virtuosity fun to listen to.
Disambiguation is set to go on sale October 2, 2026 and the CD can be ordered from here.
Author Recent Posts
S. Victor Aaron
S. Victor Aaron
A drive-by observer of the jazz scene S. Victor Aaron was a long-time SQL demon for a Fortune 100 company by day before advancing to popcorn factory laborer. His musings are strewn across the interwebs on jazz.com, AllAboutJazz.com, a football discussion board and some inchoate Amazon customer reviews of records from the late 1990s under a pseudonym that will never be revealed. Follow him on Twitter: @SVictorAaron. Contact Something Else! at reviewsbysomethingelse@gmail.com.
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Tags: 2020s, Christy Doran, Imran Khan, World Fusion
https://www.er-em-online.de/2026/09/27/review/audio/disambiguation/
"Musik an sich":
Der Schweizer Gitarrist Christy Doran wird zwar in der Besetzungsliste von Morpheus Trance als Erster genannt, doch in der Pressemitteilung zur aktuellen Veröffentlichung, In Trance We Trust, stellt er einleitend sofort klar: "Es gibt keinen Chef." Weil er sieht diese Trioformation als ein Kollektiv.
Zuletzt hatte ich von Doran in Verbindung mit der Zusammenarbeit mit dem Maler Stefan Banz berichtet, Aerosols hiess das ungewöhnliche Werk, doch nun geht es in eine andere Richtung. Nun, der Gitarrist ist mir ja bereits bekannt für seine individuelle gefärbte Musik seit jenen Tagen, als er mit der Band OM spielte.
Man wird insofern sicher nicht überrascht sein ob der Klänge, die auf uns zukommen. Nein, ich bin nicht überrascht in diesem Sinne, aber dennoch, nämlich angenehm überrascht! Rasch haben mich diese schwebenden Soundscapes gepackt, man kann sich direkt in diese Atmosphäre hineingesogen fühlen. Sicher steht die Gitarre mit ihren verschiedenen Spielarten im Vordergrund, doch kann man hier absolut sicher sein, von einem Kollektiv zu sprechen. Denn Jeder der Beteiligten füllt das aus, was die Anderen nicht vermögen darzustellen. Und wenn man sich die Mühe macht, und sei es nur für einen Song, sich lediglich auf einen einzigen Musiker zu konzentrieren, dann wird man das feststellen können.
Läßt man diese Einzelparts dann auf sich einwirken und nimmt sie als Ganzes wahr, dann kann man, sofern man zugeneigt ist, diese wunderbaren und mitreissenden Klanglandschaften verinnerlichen, das ist ein wahrhaftes Erlebnis der besonderen Art, eines, das mich emotional unglaublich stark anspricht. Denn trotz der eingesetzten Technik steht emotionale Kreativität im Vordergrund. Laut Pressetext hat sich der Albumtitel
ergeben, als Doran auf Besuch auf Bali war, und er diesen Spruch an einer Mauer hat prangen sehen. Im Song "Bali Sketches" kann man dieses Erlebnis dann gewiss nachvollziehen. Mithin ist es diese Trance-artige Stimmung, die für Faszination sorgen kann, jedenfalls hat es meinen Nerv sofort getroffen. Folkloristisch einbezogene Elemente stoßen mitunter auf satten Rock, dann wieder sind es die "devices", die sich mittels
moderner technischer Elemente einschleichen.
Peter Rüedi / WELTWOCHE
Christy Doran, Stefan Banz: Aerosols. Between The Lines. 0608917125122
Von nichts kommt nichts, auch nicht im spontan improvisierten Jazz. Jeder Musiker steht in
einem Kontinuum seiner Musik, seiner Person; seine Kunst ist auch das Resultat von
Erfahrungen und Einflüssen, auch wenn er jede Verbindung zwischen seiner Biografie und seinem Genie in Abrede stellt.
«Was wären unsere Leben ohne irgendeine Form von Inspiration und Einfluss?» Die Frage
findet sich im Booklet einer ungewöhnlichen CD des Gitarristen Christy Doran mit dem Titel «Aerosols». Es ist ein Soloalbum mit Dorans vielfältig kaleidoskopisch gebrochener Gitarrenkunst, und doch nennt sein Cover gleichwertig einen zweiten Namen, den des
Malers, Fotografen und Videokünstlers Stefan Banz. Von ihm kam die Initiative zum Projekt dieser «Aerosole».
Ausgehend von fünf Stücken Dorans, wollte Banz fünf Bilder malen, und Doran würde sich
von fünf Werken von Banz zu fünf Erfindungen inspirieren lassen. Entstanden ist also nicht ein spätes Pendant zu Mussorgskis «Bildern einer Ausstellung», sondern ein paritätisches work in progress. Banz’ Werke sind mit assoziativen Begleittexten im Booklet zu besichtigen, aber mehr als behelfsmässige Dokumentation eines interdisziplinären Experiments sind sie in diesem Miniformat kaum. Dessen Vollendung hat der Maler noch erlebt, aber im Mai dieses Jahres ist er mit nur sechzig Jahren an einem Herzinfarkt gestorben.
Wir dürfen das Resultat dennoch als das hören, was es auch ist – das Soloalbum eines sozusagen grenzenlosen Gitarristen, der auch dann, wenn er von malerischen Anregungen
ausgeht, keine Programmmusik im Sinn hat, nicht einmal Klangtableaus im Sinn des Impressionismus, sondern Gitarrenmusik, die sich selbst genug ist: von ebenso intensiven wie gelassenen, technisch brillanten Pieces für die akustische Gitarre mit elektrischen Aus- und Rückführungen bis an die Grenzen der Geräusch- und Noise-Ästhetik, von tiefen Brummern bis in viergestrichene, stratosphärische Höhenlagen, wie wir sie unter anderem aus Dorans Arbeit mit der Electric-Jazz/Free-Music-Gruppe OM kennen.
Der Gegensatz ist nicht wild and mild, sondern radikal nachdenklich und radikal entfesselt. Das schliesst sich nicht aus. Beides macht erst den ganzen Christy Doran aus. «We look at him from both sides now.»
Christy Doran & Stefan Banz: Aerosols BY IAN PATTERSON November 11, 2021
1,356 Views
Irish-born, Lucerne-based guitarist Christy Doran's fifth solo album in a career which began in the early '70s, and his first since Acoustic Isles (Creative Works Records, 2006). That CD/DVD was an intermedia collaboration with visual artist Susanne Dubs. In similar vein, Aerosols sees Doran respond musically to five paintings by Swiss multi-media artist Stefan Banz. In turn, vla his own medium, Banz answers to five pieces of music composed by Doran. The paintings—with accompanying text—adorn the CD booklet, inviting contemplation while listening to the music. Doran's multifaceted compositions, however, are absorbing in and of themselves.
Doran plays acoustically, although his basic palette is augmented throughout by electric guitar, pedal effects and loops. On "Cat Care," where fragmentary motifs, pizzicato
melody and strummed riffs flow into one another, Doran loops multiple lines before unleashing a gutsy, blues- edged solo at pace. The blues is never far from Doran's vocabulary, rearing in his solos on the spiky, multi-layered "From The Ballad of Affection" and again on "Alexander," where acoustic and electric guitar dialogue in
clean, unencumbered exchanges. If Doran's blues-rock vein stems from Jimi Hendrix—
an avowed influence—then he also shares the latter's appetite for genre-bending and
technological experimentation.
On "Venice" Doran mines the percussive nooks and crannies of his acoustic guitar's body
and strings, producing knocking, scratching, damped strumming and bowing techniques to both rhythmic and atmospheric effect. Short, fluid bursts are met with looped counter runs which overlap like peeling echoes. Drone and gently sculpted electric guitar lines shape "Kaleidoscope in a Blizzard." Outré soundscapes drawing on feedback, spacey,
pedal-derived textures, loops and anarchic guitar-grunge bring greater abstraction, in
varying degrees, to "White Fields of Diamonds," "Defence of Defeat," "Lactus" and the loosely psychedelic title track, which would have made a terrific alternative theme tune to The Twilight Zone.
Yet for all the dissonance, distortion and sonic manipulation on show there are equal measures of melodic development, rhythmic pulse, lyrical finesse and natural,
unadulterated textures from Doran's strings. The gently pastoral "Upgrading Equality" is a case in point, closing the set on a quietly arresting, acoustic note.
Sadly, Stefan Banz died quite suddenly of a heart attack in May 2021, though he lived
long enough to hear the completed music. Aerosols stands as a fine testament to Banz'
vision and creativity, and also ranks as one of Doran's most compelling musical statements.
Track Listing
Cat Care; Venice; Kaleidoscope in A Blizzard; White Fields of Diamonds; Defence of Defeat; Lactus; From The Ballad of Affection; Alexander; Aerosols; Upgrading Equality.
Personnel
Christy Doran: guitar.
Additional Instrumentation
Christy Doran: acoustic, electric guitar, electronic devices; Stefan Banz: acrylic on
cotton.
Album information
Title: Aerosols | Year Released: 2021 | Record Label: Between the Lines
Reviews
Christy Doran / Stefan Banz
Aerosols
2021 hatte der in Irland geborene Schweizer Gitarrist Christy Doran bereits ein Duo-Album mit dem Gitarristen Franz Hellmüller veröffentlicht ("Beady Beast"), und nun scheint ein zweites gefolgt zu sein. Doch die Angabe Christy Doran / Stefan Banz täuscht, weil es sich bei Stefan Banz (*1961 - † 2021) nicht um einen Musiker handelt. Vielmehr war er als Maler tätig, aber auch in den Bereichen Installation, Fotografie und Video.
Fünf der zehn Songs des Albums Aerosols waren Inspiration für fünf Acrylbilder, die Banz schuf. Andererseits waren fünf seiner Acrylbilder wiederum der Anlass für Christy Doran, Stücke zu schreiben. Damit die gegenseitige künstlerische Befruchtung für den Hörer nachvollziehbar bleibt, sind alle zehn Bilder von Stefan Banz im Booklet der CD abgedruckt. Doran ist sowohl an der akustischen als auch an der elektrischen Gitarre
zu hören und lässt zudem elektronische Effekte in seine Musik einfliessen.
Bei den ersten fünf Songs handelt es sich um Doran's Five Suggestions For Five Paintings und bei den Songs 6-11 um Five Music Compositions To Five Of Banz's Paintings. Entsprechend hat Banz seine Bilder benannt, mit den gleichen Songtiteln. (Five Paintings To Five Of Doran's Music Compositions / Banz's Five Suggestions For Five Music Compositions)
So enstand eine gegenseitige Inspiration und Befruchtung der beiden Künstler. Inwieweit die malerische Tätigkeit nun auf das Gitarrenspiel Einfluss gehabt hat, ist natürlich für mich als Hörer schlecht nachzuvollziehen. Dass Doran im Laufe der zehn Songs ein hohes Mass an Einfallsreichtum und Virtuosität vorlegt, ist unbestritten. Dabei bedient er sich des ganzen Spektrums der verwendeten Gitarren, er zupft leise und verhalten vor sich hin, lässt es aber auch einmal ordentlich scheppern ("Venice") und scheint wohl auch einen die Saiten streichenden Bogen zu nutzen.
Bilder an sich malt auch Doran auf seine Weise, so ganz wunderbar und breitflächig gestaltend mit "Kaleidsocope In A Blizzard", das im Übrigen, von "Banz" gemalt, als Teil des CD-Covers dient, Titel des Bildes Christy Doran / Stefan Banz - Aerosols - Musik an sich https://www.musikansich.de/review.php?id=22863
1 von 2 10.01.2022, 14:47
Trackliste
1 Cat Care (7:23)
2 Venice (5:22)
3 Kaleidoscope In A Blizzard (5:54)
4 White Fields Full Of Diamonds (4:36)
5 Defence Of Defeat (5:14)
6 Lactus (5:21)
7 From The Ballad Of Affection (4:33)
8 Alexander (3:07)
9 Aerosols (3:40)
10 Upgrading Equality (3:31)
Christy Doran (electric and acoustic guitars, electronic devices)
Stefan Banz (acrylic on cotton)
hier: "Broken View". "White Fields Full Of Diamonds" verwendet elektronische Zubereitungen und inspirierte den Maler zu "Precious Sky". Doran lässt die Gitarre heulen und es knattert und rumpelt, das ist etwas, das mag so manchem Zeitgenossen an den Nerven zerren.
Die Tracks 6-11 hat der Gitarrist nunmehr aufgrund der Malerei von Banz komponiert, "Lactus" schwebt elektronisch durch den Raum, inspiriert durch eine abstrakte Malerei. So scheint die Gitarre hier als Pinsel wild mitzustreichen. "Alexander" ist dem durch einen Autounfall verstorbenen Bruder des Malers gewidmet, ein sehr gegenständliches Porträt von Alexander, das gitarristisch nachvollziehbar umgesetzt wurde. Durch die Erklärungen zu jedem einzelnen Bild im Booklet kann man sich die musikalische Umsetzung erschliessen. Den
Schluss überlasse ich Christy Doran mit den letzten Worten seiner Widmung an den Verstorbenen, der das Ergebnis des gemeinsamen Werkes noch erleben konnte. He was very happy with the tunes. Without Stefan asking me, I would not have produced another solo album. Now I am extremely happy with the result, and I believe it is one of my best works. Too bad Stefan had to leave us; may he rest in peace.
Wolfgang Giese
Lothar Trampert
GITARRE & BASS
JAZZ TIPPPPPP !
CHRISTY DORAN / STEFAN BANZ: AEROSOLS
Da ist er schon wieder: Der 1949 in Irland geborene Christy Doran ist seit seiner 70s-
Band OM einer der interessantesten europäischen Jazz-Gitarristen, und er konnte immer wieder mit neuen Bands, Projekten und Produktionen überraschen. Er hat mit internationalen Größen wie John Surman, Dom Um Romao, Jasper Van't Hof, Carla Bley, Charlie Mariano, Ray Anderson, Irène Schweizer, Hank Roberts, Wolfgang Dauner, Sonny Sharrock und Albert Mangelsdorff zusammengearbeitet, und die freiere europäische Gitarrenszene mit seiner extrem Dynamik immer wieder fein durchgelüftet. Nie machte ein Album-Titel mehr Sinn als ,Aerosols‘ ...
Erst vor ein paar Monaten haben Christy Doran & Franz Hellmüller unter dem Namen
"Beady Beast" ihr Gitarren-Duo-Album ,On The Go‘ veröffentlich, jetzt ist Doran alleine das Duo – dank Multitracking. Der zweite Interpreten-Name des Albums ,Aerosols‘, Stefan Banz, ist eine Widmung: Denn der Maler, Fotograf und Videokünstler, mit dem Doran eng zusammenarbeitete, ist am 16. Mai dieses Jahres mit 59 Jahren verstorben und konnte den Abschluss dieses Projektes leider nicht mehr erleben. Eine ganz eigene Art der Zusammenarbeit hatte hier stattgefunden, bei der sich beide Künstler wechselseitig
inspirierten: Fünf der hier zu hörenden zehn Doran-Gitarrenstücke waren Anstoß für Banz' Acrylbilder, und fünf andere Acrylbilder des Malers waren wiederum für den Gitarristen Ausgangsbasis für weitere eigene Improvisationen und Kompositionen. Die kann man jetzt auf ,Aerosols‘ hören und regelrecht erleben, denn der experimentierfreudige Christy Doran füllt mit seinen diversen A- und E-Gitarren plus einer Menge Elektronik ganz gewaltig den Raum; mit entsprechender Anlage ist diese Musik auch ein faszinierendes Surround-Erlebnis voller Überraschungen. Doran war nie als II-V-I-Fetischist mit Handschuhton bekannt, er stand schon immer auf Kollegen wie Jimi Hendrix und Sonny Sharrock und ging dementsprechend mit allen Freiheiten zur Sache. So sind hier ganz schön schräge und brachiale Sound zu hören, aber auch konventionellere, harmonische Passagen. Soundtrack des Lebens, würde ich mal sagen. Was man von einem Gitarristen wie Christy Doran lernen kann, ist dass die Grenzen der Gitarre nicht nur ganz weit weg liegen können, sie sind auch noch offen. Ganz wichtig: ,Aerosols‘ ist Tonträger-Musik. Spotify-Sparfüchse verpassen nämlich die zehn Bilder von Stefan Banz, die im Booklet der CD abgedruckt. Und sie verpassen auch, einen tollen Künstler zu unterstützen. lt
22 kulturtipp 26 l 21
CD-TIPPS
FRANCESCA PFEFFER
Hochsensibler Musiker: Christy Doran
JAZZ
Kunst und Musik im Einklang
Es mag erstaunlich bis gewagt erscheinen, Ende 2021 ein Album mit dem Titel «Aerosols» vorzulegen. Doch die hier anklingenden Luftpartikel sind weniger angri!g als ergreifend. Sie dokumentieren die Zusammenarbeit von Christy Doran und Stefan Banz. Der Gitarrist und der Maler aus Luzern hatten sich seit Dezember 2020 wechselseitig zu zehn Songs und zehn Gemälden inspiriert. Mitten in der Arbeit starb Banz überraschend, doch dessen Sohn hat Christy Doran bei der Vollendung von «Aerosols» begleitet. Dorans zehn Solosongs zeigen den grossartigen Gitarristen in seiner ganzen künstlerischen Bandbreite auf akustischen und elektrischen Gitarren, mit oder ohne Efektgeräte. Vor allem aber als hochsensiblen Musiker, der auf Impulse – hier Banz’ im Booklet zu sehende Acrylbilder – mit eigenen
Kunstwelten reagiert. Ein sehr intimes Album, das vielstimmig nachhallt.
Frank von Niederhäusern
Christy Doran,
Stefan Banz
Aerosols
(Between the Lines
2021)