Black Flower and Shake Stew, Brussels Jazz Festival, January 13-14

Lurking amid the expectedly jazzy programme of the Brussels Jazz Festival were a pair of bands that radiate stylistic elements from a variegated set of global music forms. Black Flower usually craft an individualist interpretation of Ethiopian jazz, but the premiere of their audiovisual work ‘NanoKosmos’ settled down into a much softer tonal zone, with Nathan Daems spending much more time blowing sensitively around his selection of ney flutes.

Nele Fack created the visuals, which were projected onto a row of frames stretched with diaphanous material. There was also image-spillage onto the wooden walls of Studio 1, down in the basement of Flagey, the old 1930s Art Deco radio building which has been a cultural venue for the last two decades. These shots of microscopic organic matter became part of the moody, dimly-lit atmosphere, which was presumably a deliberate decision, matching the band’s mostly understated compositions.

Geologist Michiel van der Meulen is a friend of Daems, and also the source of these micro and nano images collected from his colleagues. The entire combination possessed a mood that took the familiar Black Flower style down into an intimate hush, where instruments were suddenly highlighted, or found blooming outward. Simon Segers and Karel Cuelenaere melded electronic beats and tinny retro keyboard sounds, blended in with the acoustic drumkit. Daems and John Birdsong upped the activity with overlapping baritone saxophone and cornet parts, eventually manoeuvring into some weighty grooves. Daems returned to slinking on ney, as Birdsong shook a clutch of small cowbells, above what sounded like extremely stripped gamelan progressions. The climax of the set came with a dub-stepping Ethio-pulse, Daems briefly soloing in the baritone’s highest range, then slipping ultra-low.

The Austrian large ensemble Shake Stew usually operate on a complex, riff-heavy level, but their Studio 1 set unveiled a fresh approach, veering towards a less frenetic delivery. A pair of drummer/percussionists crammed a podium with large skins, gongs and log drums, behind a healthy-sized horn frontline of trumpet, alto and tenor saxophones.

Lukas Kranzelbinder (bass, leader, storytelling ironicist) also played Moroccan sintir, getting deeply into pulsating low-string repetitions. Highlighting their recent Heat album, the set soon eased into a pair of long numbers that explored new ground for the Stew. Firstly, with a freewheeling tenor-driven Afrobeat heat, then with ‘Lucidity’, an extended shimmer of Indonesian gamelan, as well as ghostly gong gestures arriving from other parts of South East Asia. Let us hope that Shake Stew continue on this path, which is leading them into a mysterious jazz-land of global folk discoveries.