The last time that we were able to sit down and write about the music of Dakota Suite was the incredible collaboration with Frenchman Quentin Sirjacq, “The Other Side of Her Inexhaustible Heart” — a double-disc effort on Glitterhouse Records that reached a height of emotive expression that is rarely achieved by any artist and that stood as one more monolithic example as to why the minimal approach is often the most effective. With the surreal quality of composition and performance on this aforementioned album, we felt the need to explore the music of Chris Hooson and friends further and were able to attain a copy of both the preceding albums in “The Hearts of Empty” and “The North Green Down”, the latter of which is a collaboration with the Italian composer Emanuele Errante. This trio of albums from 2011, when looked at as a bit of a personal trilogy for Hooson, seem to mark somewhat of a climactic point in the career of Dakota Suite that was reached by focusing on human dedication, pure visceral emotion, and an unwavering love that passes through the hearts of family and, in the end, finds a home within, and gives life to, the music that stretches over these three releases.
We’ll start with “The North Green Down” as it was the first of the two to be released. Much like how “The Side of her Inexhaustible Heart” was a tribute to Hooson’s wife and how she had helped him through life’s many struggles, “The North Green Down” manifests its nature on the other side of existence as a tribute to his late sister-in-law Hannah Jemimah Dyke whom passed away at the relatively young age of 37 years old. Whereas TSOHIH was reflective with a modestly uplifting sentiment, TNGD, quite understandably, takes a darker, more melancholic approach through compositions that are not as minimal in composition but still exist within subtle confines. Piano melodies desperately ring out in solitary sustained tones, echoing the distant thoughts and cradled memories of the soul which they have been created to represent. These notes have been crafted through a carefully structured and intimate portrait of sincerity and fragility, occasionally moving outwards to the borders of worldly consciousness by sweeping by introverted subjects such as the post-modern Japanese author Haruki Murakami and “Wat We Kwijt Zijn” — a Dutch phrase simply translating to “What we have lost”. It’s impossible to know why such intricacies are important, but it is, in part, this vague understanding from the side of the listener that gives “The North Green Down” such a personal spirit — we can hear the music and intensely feel the emotion, but we are forever outside of the understanding of the relationships at work here.
Even through these outward reflections and themes, we are always brought back to the heart of the release in the recurring seven chapters of “The North Green Down”, the inherent emotive backbone of the album that we are able to walk away from for fleeting moments but are led back to as a central presence and guiding light. “The North Green” itself is a part of Southwold in Suffolk that holds a very significant importance to Hooson and his wife in regards to the last holiday that they took with Hannah. It seems that walking back through The North Green from the ocean was when her inevitable death finally truly hit Hooson, with every step ringing out a reminder that you cannot stop the progression of time. These seven tracks are like prayer, solemn and made at a point of sombre existence, but sacred and full of meaning from the heart of the originator. Again, we can understand from the point of perspective and we can feel the emotion that pours out, but we cannot take part in that enclosed moment of love and light. At the end, Hooson describes Hannah as “a beautiful, selfless and nurturing woman”. That description finds a fitting home with this release as well, capturing her personality, from Hooson’s definition, in significant completeness.
Of course, this is obviously equally the work of Emanuele Errante, and the music found here would not be nearly the same without his subtle ambient synth and electronic influence, but his role as a collaborator here feels more like a crutch to help Hooson complete the compositions in a way that would better reflect his intentions.
“The Hearts of Empty” showcases and all together different side of Dakota Suite, stepping away for a moment from the dedicatory neo-classical approach found on “The North Green Down” and “The Side of her Inexhaustible Heart” and into a territory of unique classically-influenced modern jazz. Strangely, you still can’t seem to get away from the mindset that this is still inherently Dakota Suite. The sombre mood is still there, the piano-laden compositions still present and the air of introspective themes still dominate the underlying ideas in the music. However, this time around, it’s a grooving rhythm that drives the music through minimal brush-stroke percussion and grooving bass riffs. A sense of minimalism is still present, but there is certainly a definitive progressive quality that comes out primarily in the melodic and rhythmic work of the guitar as can be exceptionally witnessed in the track “How to Stop a Moving Body”. Things get a little more chill around “Vermont Canyon Road” with the most all-together traditional jazz track that features a brilliant performance in all respects and an emotionally driving rhythmic breakdown towards the end with accented shots and a thriving piano line.
Experimentalism is also present through the middle of the album, starting with the track “The Ladder” which takes on an ambient-like atmosphere through shifting tones and a simplistic melodic line. This experimentalism is echoed in “Eskimo Nebula” with its strange but complex percussive structures that end up lining the most jazz-laden and moving piano performance on the album. Even this performance progresses into an outright ethereal ambiance before returning to its original form. “M-theory” comes through afterwards, taking the weirdness represented on the album to a new height through bulging wet, almost digestive electronic sounds for a mere minute and eight seconds. I don’t quite understand the direction from here, as the album doesn’t proceed into experimental territories but rather slams the door with this track, going back into the more traditional style of the opening songs. Unfortunately this breaks up the flow of the album in a negative way.
Through these two albums and their eventual heir in “The Side…”, Dakota Suite showcases a complexity that transcends simple compositional prowess. Though this is, of course, the most important aspect of their creations, they manage to traverse the mental psyche from the heights of love all the way to the depths of melancholy and desolation and still somehow explore at length the vast and nearly surreal area that exists between. Where Dakota Suite will go from here, I’m not sure. There certainly seems to be a tension that built up to this point in career and, beyond this trilogy, it may be hard to get back to this level. Only time will tell.
Track List:
“The North Green Down” (with Emanuele Errante)
01) The North Green Down
02) Leegte
03) A Hymn to Haruki Murakami
04) Le Viti del Mondo
05) The North Green Down II
06) The North Green Down III
07) A Worn out Life (with Cello)
08) Away from this Silence
09) The North Green Down IV
10) They could Feel the End of all Things
11) Nobody is ever Safe
12) A Loveless Moment
13) No Greater Pain
14) The North Green Down V
15) The North Green Down VI
16) A Worn out Life
17) Wat we Kwijt Zijn
18) The North Green Down VII
Rating: 5/5
Label: Lidar (GER) / LIDAR003 / Digi-CD
Genre: Modern Classical / Ambient
“The Hearts of Empty”
01) Easy Steps
02) Cataluna
03) Namiko
04) The Hearts of Empty
05) How to Stop a Moving Body
06) The Ladder
07) Eskimo Nebula
08) M-theory
09) Underpowered
10) Vermont Canyon Road
11) Congruences
12) The Black Pyramid
13) Legend of the Skies
14) The Basin
Rating: 3.75/5
Written by: Sage
Label: Karaoke Kalk (GER) / KALKCD59 / CD
Genre: Nu Jazz / Experimental
Double Features are only written on albums that are released separately from one another.
