This Slovenian picnic of Eastern European, Central Asian and Middle Eastern musical fares entails drinking jazz wine from Primorje, cutting some black hash from musky and sticky harmonic and melodic blocks, gingerly and excitedly placed on the bowl of a communal water pipe filled with rose and mint water for a refreshing smoke. As the picnic and the day ebb towards twilight, friend, family, foe and even animals share a hearty and meaty jota meal of outstanding grooves as is the one found on “Strange Logic Of A Strange Logic.”

The worldly funk bass tang from the hash, as well as the aromas of the well-done guitar, rise amidst gold-toothed laughter and mirth as the spiced goat cheese is served on flat breads, precious and pungent kmecka pojedina (farmer’s feast) cooked with fingered percussion, against a strumming background entertaining around an open pit fire… Welcome to Slovenian jazz, Ansasa style.

Arabian Picnic is a production featuring the reinforced Ansasa Trio with strong-willed jazz proclivities, played mostly in relaxed tempos, with odd and familiar meters, novel rhythmic and percussive facilitations. The melodic enchantment and challenging depth borders into festive human jazz ethnicity, as on “The Judgement Tower.” Therein Vasko Atanasovski burns refreshingly hot on the soprano, while Samo Pečar lays on nasty bass funk, with Andrej Hrvatin’s high-leveled drumming bracing all within the elegant and fragrant guitar lines from Šalamon. It is a musical gift of great beauty, as is its opening counterpart, “Leeloo.”

As refreshing as a dandelion salad, this recording is a fine example of how much jazz there is to hear out there as its future is now, and has been for a while now…

Visit Ansasa Trio on the web.

~ Javier Antonio Quiñones Ortiz

Track Listing: 1. Leeloo (Šalamon) 2. Fat Pakistani (Šalamon) 3. Ten Camels (Šalamon) 4. Arabian Picnic (Šalamon) 5. On A Sunday Afternoon At 3 PM (Šalamon) 6. Strange Logic Of A Strange Logic (Šalamon /Hrvatin) 7. The Judgement Tower (Šalamon)