# CD review: Matthew Shipp – The Intrinsic Nature Of Shipp – 2023: Video, CD cover

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2023/08/27/cd-review-matthew-shipp-the-intrinsic-nature-of-shipp-2023-video-cd-cover/
- Published: 2023-08-27T00:04:03+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**Both album of the week and track of the week this week by complete coincidence
land in the avant-garde domain. But neither album of the week Kairos nor track of
the week ‘The Intrinsic Nature of Shipp’ belong to a one size fits all dimension.**

Take the true original, who has contributed a great deal to modernistic developments
in improvised music for decades, pianist Matthew Shipp new in track of the week 
with the title track of September release The Intrinsic Nature of Shipp.

Anyone who knows the uncompromising work of the American’s will realise that he 
is a one-off. It’s the tenderness that attracted us here, and for such a modernist
there is too in Shipp the grandeur of a lost Ellingtonia, an unwritten parallel 
text accommodating a world since Ellington left us that needs expression.

Massively prolific – in recent years Codebreaker and Signature appealed to us most,
recently a fierce intensity underpins the raw passion of We Speak (Relative Pitch)
a fine new duo album with the alto saxophonist-clarinettist Frode Gjerstad – this
upcoming album by contrast issued by another US label Mahakala Music is a solo piano
affair comprised of 10 improvisations.

Shipp says: “I believe a pianist’s intrinsic nature comes out in the solo idiom”.
Who’s to disagree? So far this track proves a formidable introduction to the full
record, a track we have had on repeat play for days.

The way Shipp packs clusters of notes into cell-like structures to embellish his
melody lines keeps you guessing as you try to discern what the sound of the resolution
of each phrase is likely to be. Shipp constantly comes up, within the space of this
introductory track in not much more than five-and-a-half minutes, with conclusions
to phrases that are both satisfying but also indicate that the story he is so adept
at telling is never complete nor easily shaped into one short piece.

As ever given his maximalist vision Shipp seems to contradict the saying that ”you
can’t put a quart into a pint pot.”

![](https://i0.wp.com/f4.bcbits.com/img/a0050060364_16.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)

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