Phresoul The Word Was Made Phresh

"The Word Was Made Phresh" is the name of Phresoul’s new album, out on March 22nd on Hyperjazz Records. Seven instrumental tracks, tight and essential, which bring into sharp focus the talent and versatility of one of recent years’ most interesting groups in the jazz, hip-hop, and alternative-rock scenes. The new project by the trio, which is one third English and two thirds Italian, formed by Charlie Stacey (piano, fender rhodes, synthesizer), David Paulis (double-bass) and Enrico Truzzi (drums), dismantles jazz’s traditional rules, absorbs influences and contemporary sounds and portrays with lucid irony the contradictions and conflicts of our times. This record comes two years after their debut Metempsychosis, and solidifies Phresoul’s sound, where noise-rock improvisations coexist with neo-psychedelia, abstract hip-hop and space-jazz. Just like in “Monitor Lizard,” a syncopated piece which introduces us with immediacy to an energetic jazz interference, able to capture a single moment, moving as rapidly as a reptile, never in straight lines. The melancholy beats of “Institutional Violence” punctuate the piano’s melody, which slowly transforms into synth and the futuristic slow-funk of “Sphere Alliance,” anticipating the accelerated beginnings and pauses of “Lithium,” an undoubtedly hip-hop jazz 3.0 track. The liquid atmospheres and irregular drumming of “Hipster Antichrist” bring to a close with amused hysteria this rhythmic ellipsis which looks at the West with melancholy and little confidence (“Trump-Pence”). The tension built by the continuous changes in rhythm is released in the torrential “Blended Family,” in which Stacey’s keys progressively conquer space between the noise-guitar and the powerful and irregular beats of drum’n’bass, for an epilogue to a fresh and original record that is inspired equally in its inception and its execution.