Castle And Sun (VETO-EXCHANGE 020) features tenor sax work of Sebastian Strinning and drumming of Tim Daisy, another instance of Europe-meets-USA in the ongoing project of this Swiss label Veto-Records. Sebastian Strinning lives in Lucerne and is described here as Swiss-Swedish, and he studied music in both Lucerne and Stockholm. Lots of team-ups, lots of live playing and festival appearances, and he even organised concerts himself. A few records from Wide Ear, Leo Records, Creative Sources, Unit Records, and others. All this led to a residency award in Chicago, and while there he met Tim Daisy. This drummer has been described as “a turbulent weather system”, which might be the highest accolade available to a player in that part of America known as “the windy city”. The strength of this duo might be demonstrated on the three long pieces, ‘Turning Over’, ‘Pictures’ and ‘Afternoons’, all very productive instances of free-form improvisation very dense in activity and rarely pausing to take stock of the view outside the window. Strinning is very adept at changing moods, speed, and direction of travel as needed, and does so with the very clean and precise mode of playing we often seem to get from Swiss free-jazzers; there seems to be a tendency to shy away from raw notes, overblowing, or too much passion. There’s a strand or two more meaty substance in Daisy’s work, although quite often the surface is very “busy”, perhaps reflecting a very sporty “game on” approach to playing the drums, where he throws his whole body into the task. (11/09/2023)
