Liner Notes
The Bob Sneider & Joe
Locke Film Noir Project: Fallen
Angel
(Sons of Sound SSPCD031)
I once heard someone say that in film noir,
even the furniture is menacing. I’d add
to that, “and sad”. Melancholy and
menace: those are the feelings that all film
noir seems to exude like a vapor. I’ve
thought about this a lot, because, as for so
many other lovers of film, noir stands at the
center of that love. Why is that? What is the
seductive power of noir?
It begins, of course, with that pungent and
irresistible noir atmosphere, often made of shadows,
rain-slicked streets, blinking neon signs and
dimly lit rooms, shrouded by heavy drapes. This
strange, yet familiar world has the uncanny quality
of seeming to belong to some eternal, imagined
past, like a memory of a life you never lived.
This paradox, I believe, is the source of the
sadness and menace that invariably attaches itself
to the noir film: at its heart, noir resembles
the world as seen through the eyes of a child.
To the very young, the world is utterly mysterious,
filled with inexplicable events and ceaseless
enigmas, where the possibility of menace and
romance lurk in the darkened corners: the lingering
smell of a strange perfume; moving shadows on
a wall; whispers from behind a door; the distant
whistle of a train. This haunting child’s
world, whose meaning and content is the atmosphere,
is the stuff of film noir. It’s also the
very soul of a lot of jazz.
Like film noir, jazz moves in a world whose
meaning exists in a mood, where story and content
cannot be separated from the palpable atmosphere
in which they exist. It’s here where the
parallel universes of jazz and noir collide:
in the tension and suspense of an unknown and
uncertain journey; in the melancholy air of something
just out of reach; in the darkly romantic allure
of the pursuit of the forbidden. No other music
so naturally embodies these qualities and so
effortlessly sends them back out into the world,
drawing the listener ever more deeply into the
noir vortex.
This is where Fallen Angel succeeds
so brilliantly. Starting with impeccable choices
of classic noir scores, it then turns the extraordinary
Bob Sneider/Joe Locke Septet loose to improvise
around the themes. This alchemy, the inspiration
of producer Frank Aloi, brings together the best
of both worlds and results in something that,
like all great ideas, feels at once strikingly
original and at the same time, utterly inevitable—a
classic simply waiting to be discovered.
— Allen Coulter
Director Allen Coulter resides with his
wife Kim, in NYC; he is the director of many
of the most critically acclaimed episodes
of the Sopranos, and numerous other TV series
episodes and pilots, as well as the upcoming
feature film for Focus Films, "Truth,
Justice and the American Way", a drama
focusing on the mysterious death of actor
George Reeves, TV's "Superman".
The darkly beautiful scores of film noir touch
a universal - the yearning to be anywhere but
in one's own skin, to turn the corner and find
the dangerous love of a lifetime, and the big
score — but always, the evocative themes
have the aftertaste of menace. And the jazz of
the Bob Sneider/Joe Locke Septet is the perfect
vehicle to convey this mood — improvising
inside, and outside the core melody, around it,
all the endless variations, new melodies on the
main theme, as if it is the hero assessing his
chances, and then like John Sneider's brilliant
arrangement of Chinatown, the bullet that simply
could not be dodged, a due bill that blind fate
must collect, in the coda of the arrangement,
a dirge-like shuffle to the boneyard, and the
epitaph with the finality of an ending rim shot "It's
Chinatown Jake!"
I know this music will take you away. Joe Locke's
matchless playing and writing bring life to Fallen
Angel, a love that involves a line not to be
crossed, the bitter-sweet pleasure of it all,
and the gut wrenching pain of knowing that before
the dawn she'll be gone, with another. Paul Hofmann's "Last
Kiss" takes up where Joe Locke leaves off — she's
gone again, the fading filmstock of a love for
a lifetime that was but a snap shot, and now
nothing. The unique voicings of Bob Sneider's
guitar and Joe Locke's vibes playing over and
in the traditional instrumentation of the be-bop
quintet — an artistry that perfectly fits
the frame of each noir portrait to be painted.
Bob Sneider, already a master among his peers,
but a talent deserving far greater recognition
among jazz fans, can walk the walk in both solos
and arranging; in his thematic statements — feel
the Parisian cabaret of the 20's in his “Le
Modernes” arrangement, and solos, in the
idiom, always great jazz improvisation, outside
the box. Joe Locke's arrangement of “Mulholland
Falls,” complex, compelling, a massive
conspiracy in the desert at the genesis of the
nuclear age after WW II, and the cover up of
radiation sickness, and then the smaller, personal,
and more devastating conspiracy of the investigating
cop, a cheating husband, undone by blind chance
in the apparently unrelated homicide case that
propels the action. Phil Flanigan's bluesy boozy
portrait of Phil Marlowe in “Farewell My
Lovely,” perfectly portraying Robert Mitchum,
the quintessential private eye, standing behind
a dirty window in a flea-bag hotel in pre-war
LA, staring out at the neon washed boulevards,
lamenting a lifetime of tilting with the windmills
of human frailty at the price of growing old
with nothing more than a snap brim hat, trench
coat, and .38. John Sneider's re-harmonizing
of the Diva theme, the night walk in Paris, the "diva",
and the bike-messenger, finally in one surreal
moment, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, walking
as one, lost in an all too brief moment that
insulates them from inexplicable murder and mayhem.
The playing is superlative, every arrangement
darkly beautiful — the irresistible honey
trap of “Body Heat,” the danse
macabre of “Farewell to Maria,” the
gambler's soliloquy to love lost in “Hurricane
Country.” John Sneider's trumpet laments
perfectly capturing the gorgeous melodies. Grant
Stewart, a post bop tenor, comfortable in the
idiom, but with the big tone reminiscent of Lester
Young, Ben Webster, and Coleman Hawkins, carrying
forward the after-hours themes with short but
memorable solos. And Paul Hofmann, Mike Melito
and Phil Flanigan propelling every piece and
perfectly complementing the front line.
Listen, no happy endings here, but a bittersweet
beauty nonetheless — let the Bob Sneider/Joe
Locke Film Noir Project take you away — ENJOY! — it
was a pleasure being a part of this project.
— Frank Aloi
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