SLAMCD251 Vladimir Miller & Ken Hyder – Counting on Angels

‘Counting on Angels’ is a unique album unleashing a new music form, which straddles Russian classical music and contemporary improvised music.

The album represents an accumulated experience derived from a decade of musical activity in Russia where drummer Ken Hyder and pianist Vladimir Miller played in main cities and out of the way towns, from Leningrad to Vladivostok and from Arkhangelsk to Tuva. They have played with a plethora of Russian contemporary musicians including Valentina Ponomareva, Vladimir Tarasov, Sainkho Namtchylak – and the late Vladimir Rezitsky with whom they recorded as the trio, Northern Lights.

‘Counting on Angels’ goes deeper into the Russian soul, strips down the music dramatically, presenting a sparseness and a clarity which is often reflected in the Russian landscape. At the same time you can hear echoes of Stravinsky, Moussorgsky and Shostakovich.

Vladimir Miller: piano
Ken Hyder: drums

“To me, Russian improvisation often seems to be characterised by the way in which it manages to combine classical music’s gravitas with folk music’s simplicity and a puckish native wit. The seven improvisations largely continue in that tradition…Hyder’s unusual pairing of shamanic beats with delicate percussion filigrees meshes so completely with Miller’s tightly-drawn harmonic repetitions that you forget there’s no bass player fleshing out the sound. Using the repetitively hypnotic left-hand vamps of a Mal Waldron and the forceful atonal right hand jabs of Cecil Taylor, Miller is both rooted and free, at once inviting us into his music whilst throwing down the shutters should we get too cosy.” – Fred Grand, Jazz Review

“On the suitably bellicose “Siege of Leningrad”, Hyder creates quasi-martial snare drum beats from what seems to be the centre of his snare, Miller’s heavy touch builds power chording to flashing arpeggios. Soon he’s laying siege to the 88 keys in quadrants, working his way up the scale emphasising both single notes and their sympathetic vibrations. Miller operates with the left-handed power of a boogie woogie pianist, while Hyder decorates the siege with cymbal smacks and rim shots…Romanticism, that purportedly inhabits the Russian soul, is dramatically exposed on “Angel’s Son”, the more than 13-minute longest track. Miller tries out a two-handed, quasi-Swing style replete with strummed chords and doubled overtones, then builds up Chopinesque patterns of uneven note clusters. Hyder intermittently strokes his snares and cymbals, and maintains his version of a swinging pulse with rebounds, ratamacues and doubled bass drum entries. Finally the pianist unfolds arpeggios like so many flower pedals, sweeping over the keys with a featherlight touch.” – Ken Waxman, Jazz Weekly

Music composed and produced by Vladimir Miller & Ken Hyder.
Recorded at Oor Wullie Studio, London, 2002.

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