Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Latchepen: Love Letters

13

Latchepen: Love Letters

By

Sign in to view read count
Latchepen: Love Letters
Meet LatchepenLondon-based gipsy jazz band consisting of four brilliant musicians (three of them being conservatory graduates). Full of passion for Django Reinhardt and 30s swing, their debut album Love Letters translates into a contemporary reflection of the era that saw jazz hit heights in popularity never to be seen afterwards, even though the particular type of jazz articulated by Latchepen never came to be a mainstream attraction during the time.

Gipsy jazz has always seemed an extremely exotic variable in jazz history, since its origins lie outside the United States, i.e. France. Because of its French origins, gipsy jazz tends to be very melodic, extremely flamboyant, and harmonically saturated. It can also sound extremely romantic when performed in a chamber-type setting. This, of course, is an oversimplification of this peculiar niche sub-genre in jazz history. Yet, judgment values should be established, even though most of them (if not all) are very arbitrary, especially when addressing jazz.

The amount of flamboyance exhibited on Latchepin proves is crucial to the encapsulation of an authentic mood found in gipsy jazz. The rest, however, is a mixed-bag that falls into the typical debut album syndrome in jazz, where a band tries to show its versatility by sacrificing the content's coherence or its conceptual unity.

The album features both jazz standards and original compositions that are too far apart. It's not that one of the disparate parts is better than the other. Both are full of romanticism and nostalgia, although some of the band's original compositions sound even more exotic than most gipsy jazz, evoking the mood of Balkan and Mediterranean regions, which are both geographically and culturally situated further away from the gipsy jazz country of origins—France. It's not that one (standards or originals) sounds less gipsy than the other. Holborn's violin intonation is remincent of a self-taught travelling musician rather than a conservatory graduate, which significantly enhances the atmosphere for the better in terms of the sub-genre's authenticity. Yet, it doesn't seem to be coherent both conceptually and in terms of overall musical dynamics.

As a result, it is difficult to evaluate Love Letters as an organic unit, which an album should be. It doesn't, however, diminish the potential Latchepen retains throughout their debut release. If only one direction (either original compositions or standards from The Great American Songbook) was chosen, it might have worked better, and carried more excitement. The foundation is there; hopefully a second album by the band will carry a more linear approach.

Track Listing

Love Letters; Second Avenue; Chandra; I'll Be Seeing You; Thunkette; I Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out To Dry; Captain Summer; Whisper Not; Koo Koo; Our Laughing Heart.

Personnel

Matt Holborn: Violin; Kourosh Kanani: Guitar; Jeremie Coullon: Guitar; Simon Read: Bass; Dave Holmes: Mixing; Simon Trought: Mastering; Ray Davis: Album artwork; Agnieszka Rzesniowiecka: Design

Album information

Title: Love Letters | Year Released: 2017 | Record Label: Blind Lemon London

Comments

Tags


For the Love of Jazz
Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who create it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

You Can Help
To expand our coverage even further and develop new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for a modest $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination will vastly improve your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

Fiesta at Caroga
Afro-Caribbean Jazz Collective
Fellowship
David Gibson
Immense Blue
Olie Brice / Rachel Musson / Mark Sanders

Popular

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.