One of Poland’s finest jazz exports recently, alongside Tomasz Stanko Quartet and Sing Sing Penelope which shares two members with CNQ and hopefully will be featured here soon. I’m sorry to have listened to this album in December and this month mainly, else it would have been in my 2006 list most definitely. I’m mostly being drawn to European Jazz, because of the free jazz compositions and break from the US tradition of jazz playing. It’s nice to see that artists are trying to redefine the forms of jazz because the concept of jazz is not limited to jazz forms. As is punk and ultimately all styles. It’s easy to see all styles everywhere now, even though it’s not in their original form.

Contemporary Noise Quintet, in contrast with their not-so-original name, has an original interpretation. The modal jazz composition is replaced with traditional song writing, albeit with no traditional song structure. Like Wibutee which I reviewed yesterday, they’re experimenting with song structure yet providing accessible songs with cinematic quality and dramatic melodies. Jazz purists may see works like this as watered down versions of jazz, yet I don’t agree with that and see CNQ belong to a new breed of jazz, which Esbjoern Svensson Trio or most of the Scandinavian Jazzheads are trying to achieve.

CNQ has integrated post-rock cinematics with a powerful sound and they’ve undoubtedly got some dramatic melodies. P.I.G has a dark sound overall, reminiscent of black comedy films from Poland, but I don’t think it was planned before and it only emerges after listening to the album. They seem to be channeling the contemporary life in their own country and individual experiences and that’s why the album is a honest work of art with virtually no skippable track at all. Out on their own Electric Eye records.

CN Quintet - Walking Sin
CN Quintet - Goodbye Monster
CN Quintet - Million Faces