Ultramarine: Nebocry
Review by Rafał Zbrzeski
Ultramarine
Nebocry
(For Tune, 2015)
Ultramarine is an international quartet comprising vocalist Uliana Horbachevska and bassist Mark Tokar (both from Ukraine), Lithuanian saxophonist Petras Vysniauskas, and German drummer Klaus Kugel.
The album 'Nebocry' features a recording of the band's concert, which took place in 2012, at St Lazarus Church in Lviv. The sacred space resounded with sounds whose origins are very clear. The musicians based their repertoire on Ukrainian folklore and traditional music. However, not for a moment are we dealing here with so-called folk music. Around the poignant melodies drawn from tradition (beautifully led by Horbachevska's voice), the three other members of the line-up build an openwork improvised structure. The tone of Vysniauskas's saxophone may evoke associations with third-party music or new-age meditations, but at the same time, it brilliantly establishes a dialogue with the vocalist's voice.
Tokar and Kugel are quite cautious most of the time, perhaps even a little too restrained in their actions, but this has the effect of giving the music a huge amount of space. Despite a distinctly improvisatory bent, Horbachevka's songs do not lose their original character and mood. And the Ukrainian singer sings about things that are both very simple and very important: life, growing, passing away, death... An eternal closed circle, which in the story of these four musicians thrills exceptionally strongly.