990 - Sainkho Namtchylak et Evan Parker "Mars Songs"

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To my knowledge this is the first time Evan Parker has recorded with a vocalist (both musicians appeared on a 1993 Leo double-CD, Synergetics / Phonomanie III, but performed together only briefly, and not in a duet setting). But don’t expect Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Evan Parker Songbook. Like Chick Corea, now Namtchylak sings, now she sobs. Not metaphorically, but really. Now she cries, growls, hums, chatters, chirps, and, yes, throat sings, producing a weird high tone in harmony with herself. Anyone expecting anything resembling conventional Western singing need not look into this one.

Yet it is a striking artistic statement. Parker’s playing is precise and empathetic. Namtchylak produces a huge array of sounds that intertwine with the sounds of Parker’s instrument to create a hypnotic tapestry. A thousand moods and emotions are evoked and transmuted. Parker is a paradox: he always sounds like himself, and to the casual listener might seem to be forever recycling a few formulas. And yet the intricacy of his attentiveness to whomever he is playing with, and his adaptibility, is on a level with the very greatest tenor and soprano players, even his mentor Coltrane. While Mars Song is not for those who cannot do without established song forms and traditional patterns of tension and release, it is an immensely rewarding musical document

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