Charley Rose

I'm a jazz player but also an artist open to different musical dimensions, from free improvisation to metal, crossing the boarders and trying to put together elements apparently incongruous.

Radiohead, Björk, Coltrane, Lovano, Chris Cheek, Prokofiev, Stravinsy, Bartok, Ravel, Chostakovitch, Ligeti, Meshuggah, Dillinger Escape Plan, Mr Bungle, Gnawa music, African music, Cezanne, William Turner, Salvador Dali, Magritte, Boris Vian, Malaparte, Paul Auster, Gombrowicz, Michel Tournier, David Cronenberg, Wes Anderson, Gaspard Noé, Paul Thomas Anderson, Ridley Scott.

The Meshuggah Quartet, how to apply Meshugga's composition techniques to a quartet

It seems that a big gap exists between some kinds of music. It's probably difficult to imagine a cross-over made out of a mix of two styles that apparently are very distant at a level of culture, sound and places of existence. Despite appearances, it is possible to bring back from a totally different musical environment, rich elements that would help us to renew our language and progress on an original ground.

Meshuggah is a Swedish extreme metal band, formed in 1987 in Umea. They have succeeded in obtaining a personal sound due to their relentless work throughout the years. Their music can appear to be hardly accessible because of the violence released in both the music and lyrics. However, someone who can take some hindsight, can appreciate the incredible hard work of their composition expecially in terms of their composed rythms which are very relevant for a jazz musician.

Jazzmen as Dan Weiss, in his Ode to Meshuggah or composers as Derek Johnson in his composition Frozen Light, have been inspired by Meshuggah, for they are working on the same idea in terms of the rythm and construction of the songs. It is therefore common for a jazz musician, who is usually open to a lot of different cultures, to at least have heard about this band.

For this work I have resumed the different techniques extracted from my transcriptions and explained how I applied them to my arrangements and compositions, but also how I deviated this language to create a different one, straddling Meshuggah's language and my own composition techniques and visions of harmony.

Overige projecten

Larchey Zore and his Cheerful Cheerfuls, Gabacho Maroconnection, Freeda Trio, Los Wachisneis.