Bram De Looze – ‘Spotting Gateways’

By londonjazz on 8 January 2024 • ( Leave a comment )

Bram De Looze – Spotting Gateways
(Dox Records Dox663LP/CD, Review by Frank Graham)

Barely into his thirties, the career of Belgian pianist Bram De Looze (b.1991) has covered a lot of ground. First catching my attention with the energetic electro-jazz with LABTRio, his reputation became truly international with MiXMONK, where along with saxophonist Robin Verheyen and drummer Joey Baron he took a fresh look at one of jazz’s most iconoclastic
pianists and composers. More recently he formed Vice Versa with Eric McPherson and Felix Henkelhausen, and the much acclaimed trio is due to release a second album in 2024.

Yet it’s as a solo artist that I think De Looze really comes into his own, often setting self-imposed challenges to stimulate creativity. With 2017’s Piano e Forte De Looze approached three historic grand pianos from the collection of mentor Chris Maene from a contemporary perspective.

2018’s Switch The Stream found him grappling with Maene’s unusual Straight Strung Grand Piano, and on 2020’s Colour Talk De Looze played an unequally tempered instrument designed by Uruguayan architect Rafael Viñoly. With Spotting Gateways the challenges this time are perhaps more mental than physical. Each of the eight pieces is a figurative page from his sketchbook, and De Looze’s aim is for these kernels to serve as ‘gateways’ into different musical zones.

The unfinished nature of the material really allows us to observe his creative process in action at close quarters, and although the playing time is relatively short the programme is nicely balanced. The title-track opens in a somewhat romantic vein, its lyrical and tightly-drawn theme scarcely hinting at the tensions which lie just beneath the surface. A strong repeating left-hand figure heralds a shift, taking De Looze into somewhat darker territory. “Back Roads Only” barely seems to offer any gateways at all, its zen-like theme leading to a place of inward contemplation. De Looze uses piano preparations on “The Chair”, a ruminative piece which increasingly tends towards abstraction, while “Leaps On Drift Ice” grows enigmatically from an insistent melodic fragment into a jagged landscape with echoes of mid-‘70s Jarrett.

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Already released as a single, “Bow” is a deliciously melodic piece, a crossing place between Jarrett and the neo-classicism of Nils Frahm. At just under eight minutes in length “What We Carry With Us” is the longest piece of the set, a sombre improvisation which once again carries a hint of romanticism. The contrasting “I Throw The Kitchen Sink At You” is an real adrenaline rush, abstract shards eventually cohering in harmonious resolution, while the closing “Keeping
Up With Hank” may have been better named “Keeping Up With Monk”, De Looze teasing us with hints of Thelonious.

Drawing deep into his inner reserves to create a music which is at once challenging, refined and uniquely personal, Spotting Gateways is another remarkable achievement, and a great place to start if you’re yet to discover De Looze’s solo art.