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Teis Semey — En Masse!
(Bandcamp Loumi Records LOU 42, 2024, CD / DL)

by Jon Davis, Published 2025-06-05

En Masse! Cover art

I saw that the music of Teis Semey had been described as “arguably very niche modern free jazz” and expected a fair amount of wildness from his album En Masse! As it turns out, one of the words in that description is not at all apt for this music — this is by no stretch of the imagination “free” jazz. Maybe some of Semey’s other music is free, but En Masse! consists of a number of inventive compositions interspersed with “field recordings,” which are brief, quiet improvisations based on the sounds of Cologne, Slovenia, Denmark, and Iceland. Semey is a guitarist, and his group consists of José Soares on alto sax and flute, Jort Terwijn on upright bass, SunMi Hong on drums, and Jesse Schilderink on tenor and bari sax. The guitar work straddles the worlds of rock and jazz seamlessly, but the prominence of the saxes keeps the overall thrust to the jazz side. Song titles like “Atlanta Airport Medium Rawdog,” “The Gun Wielding Power Queen of Rotterdam,” and “Please Welcome the Giant of Rotterdam” may imply a frivolous attitude, but the music is seriously well-crafted — and with instrumental music, track titles only make a difference if you read the credits. I’ll admit that my favorite tracks are the more energetic and upbeat ones, like the three I mentioned and “Hippity Hoppity Abolish Private Property,” which all combine up-front guitar parts and great saxes, but the more introspective pieces have a lot to offer as well, like “Too Scared to Say It Like It Is,” with its subtle energy and warped guitar sound, where Semey wields his pitch-bend pedal like Mary Halvorson. Teis Semey shows himself to be a distinct player and composer who combines jazz and rock in a way that sounds nothing like typical fusion music. It’s great stuff.

Filed under: New releases, 2024 releases

Related artist(s): Teis Semey

More info
http://teissemey.bandcamp.com/album/en-masse

 

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