Two new discs arrived in this week’s mailbag: Lulo Reinhardt’s Latin Swing Project and the Bero Landauer Trio’s Comme Autrefois. Both discs are worth tracking down on their own, and together they speak to the long and varied history of gypsy jazz–where its roots lie, and how far its branches reach.

Of the two, the Angers-based Landauer is the traditionalist. Even the title of his disc–loosely translated, “Comme Autrefois” means “as it was”, or “as in the past”–speaks to his reverence for the sounds created by Django, Matelo, and their contemporaries. Most of the disc’s fourteen tunes will be familiar to jazz fans, including some of the less frequently recorded selections like Just a Gigolo and the classic Cesar Swing.
With a swinging rhythm section featuring guest guitarist Samy Daussat, the band creates a rich bed for Landauer to weave his lines over (perennial accompanist Daussat also grabs a few solos on the album). In Landauer’s hands, it’s a sound as welcome now as was it Django’s day. Here, guitar pyrotechnics are left at the door in favor of something harder to capture but much longer lasting: music.
Comme Autrefois also serves as a musical calling card for the Gipsy Swing Festival d’Angers; artistic director Michel LeFort had a hand in producing the album. The festival often flies under the radar of international fans of gypsy jazz–the more famous Samois is roughly a month later each year–but since its inception in the early nineties it has played host to a Who’s Who of Gypsy Jazz: names like Bireli, Fapy, Boulou, WASO, Titi Winterstein, Angelo and Hans’che have all appeared on the roster, along with a remarkable string of other artists from Rene Mailhes to Coco Briaval. This year’s event has already come and gone, but keep an eye open for the 2009 festival.

If Landauer reminds us of the roots of gypsy jazz, Lulo Reinhardt’s new album shows us where the music is headed. Stocked with Lulo’s original compositions, his Latin Swing Project draws together influences from all over the globe to create a more cosmopolitan music. Indeed, though its title calls to mind Bireli Lagrene’s Gypsy Project, to call it gypsy jazz would be to ignore much of what makes it unique. While there are certain unifying threads–the instrumentation of guitars, bass, and violin; the swinging lilt of minor-key ballads–it largely steps outside the more rigid styles of latinesque warhorses like Bossa Dorado to find its own world music niche.
The result is an infectious album of songs tinged with the flamenco of Sabicas and the insistent pulse of the tango. With dramatic arrangements in place of the standard head-solos-head form of most albums, Reinhardt and company (guitarist Doug Martin, violinist Daniel Weltinger, and bassist Harald Becher) avoid the single-note overload of many guitar-based groups. In addition, cajon player Uli Kramer adds a welcome percussive touch to three tracks, including the driving Lulo’s Tango, which seems to draw inspiration from the melody of Ma Premiere Guitare before twisting it into something new.
My only complaint about Latin Swing Project is that the recording quality could have been a tiny bit better, especially in the balance between lead and rhythm parts. On most tracks it’s a non-issue, but on one or two the mix seems a little raw; it’s just enough to notice, but it shifts attention off what should be the album’s focus: the considerable pleasure of the music it contains.
(To hear more samples of the albums or to purchase your own copy, click on the album covers above.)