10. Poeji – Nant

Mongolian singer Enji’s debut collaboration with German jazz drummer Simon Popp is a masterclass in vocal range and control. Largely wordless and laden with reverb, Enji’s intricate vocalisations span everything from the percussive whispers of sharp breath on Akin to yearning, drawn-out phrases on Cathedral and the sprightly rhythms of Ybbs. Popp, meanwhile, accompanies with melodic drum textures, including interlocking patterns on toms and tuned percussion. Recording almost entirely in single, improvised takes, Enji and Popp produce a remarkably expansive and imaginative sound from just two instruments, sitting somewhere between enveloping ambience and spiritual improvisation.

Poeji setzt sich zusammen aus den Namen des Drummers Simon Popp und der Sängerin Enji, die man schon zuvor auch außerhalb der experimentellen Münchner Jazzszene gehört haben dürfte. Für ihr gemeinsames Album-Debüt »Nant« haben sie ihre jeweiligen Haupteinflüsse aus afrikanischer Polyrhythmik und mongolischen Volksliedern gerade so weit zurückgeschraubt, dass eine atmungsaktive Mischung aus Free Jazz und zärtlicher Zeit-Raum-Forschung entstehen konnte. Dass die sehr poetisch klingt, ist wohl in Anbetracht des Namens des Duos auch kein Zufall.

At once calming and unsettling, meditative yet intentionally disquieting, this debut work by new collaboration Poeji gets under your skin and stays there. A duo comprised of Mongolian jazz and ceremonial singer Enji and the ever-experimental German drummer Simon Popp, both leaders in their respective avantgarde f ields, their freeform creations f loat on a bed of spacious, spaced-out invention informed by everything from dub and traditional Mongolian singing to the raw electro-acoustic found sounds of musique concrète. Vocals and percussion are the main instruments on this album, with Enji’s voice weaving between anything-goes jazz vocalese and tremulous and melismatic urtyn duu long-song, as she’s done in previous solo recordings including 2023’s also Squama-released and acclaimed Ulaan [a Top of the World in Songlines #191]. But where that record’s original songs came buoyed by bass, drums, guitars and f lute, Nant’s otherworldly soundscape is furnished more sparsely by a solitary drum kit deployed with coiled minimalism, and a steel tongue drum whose visceral wallop lends gasp-inducing texture to what feels like a brave new shadow world.

As Poeji, Mongolian Jazz vocalist Enji and German experimental drummer Simon Popp are devoting themselves to „creating music without borders or constraints" They have certainly achieved that on their debul 'Nant", which uses Popp's Instinctive rhythms and Enji's intimate, abstract vocals to create free-flowing avant-gard pieces. Inspired by dub, downtempo and musique concrete, the tracks here are both genuinely distinctive and oddly mesmeric, and the more you hear boundary-pushing pieces like 'ybbs', the more you find yourself being pulled into this pair's wonderfully idiosyncretic world.

Making good on their cryptically coordinate-like coded 031921 5.24 5.53 EP from 2022, German drummer extraordinaire Simon Popp and the Ulaanbaatar born vocalist Enkhjargal Erkhembayar (shortened to Enji) have combined their individual disciplines and scope of influences to venture even further into uncharted territory.

For his part, the Bavarian Popp uses an extensive apparatus of hand drums and worldly sourced percussion to conjure up an atmosphere of both atonal and rhythmic (sometimes verging on a break or two) West Africa, Tibet, gamelan Indonesia and Japan. This in turn evokes a transmogrified vague sense of the avant-garde, of Kabuki theatre, of Shinto and Buddhist mysticism and mystery.

Popp’s collaborative foil Enji is a scion of the old Mongolian tradition of the Long song, a form of singing that emphasis and extends each syllable of text for long stretches of time. It’s said that a song with only ten actual words can last hours. Strong on the symbolism of the Mongolians much dependable horse, the long song form can be philosophical, religious, romantic or celebratory. Now, in a different century, Enji channels this heritage to voice, utter, accent, assonant, woo, and like breathing onto a cold glassy surface, exhales the diaphanous, gauzy, ached and comforting – the truly mysterious hummed ‘Buuwein Duu’ sounds like a lullaby.

Although much of the wording is linked to those roots, there’s an ambiguity to much of the carrying style vocals. For instance, the duo’s appellation of Poeji was chosen because it can be translated into various languages: meaning “sing” in Slovenian and roughly “poetry” in Japanese. The album title, Nant, is itself old Welsh in derivation, and can be translated as both “stream” and “valley”.

A fourth world dialect is achieved; a communication that needs no prior knowledge or understanding as the meaning is all in the delivery, emotion the cadence and largely extemporized feels and mood of the moment.

Described as working in the vernacular of post-dub and the downtemp, Nant reminded me in parts of the “tropical concrete” of the Commando Vanessa label pairing of Valentina Magaletti and Marlene Riberio, Hatis Noit, Steve Reich and Werner “Zappi” Diermaier’s various drumming experiments as part of the faUSt duo with fellow original Faustian Jean Harve-Pèron. It is a unique conjuring of tones, textures, atmospheres, the avant-garde, the spontaneous (wherever the mood takes them) and the esoteric that won’t scare the horses. Instead, it sets a wispy, shrouded course to ventures into new realms of improvised communication; a bridging of cultures that reaches into new spheres of worldliness and the realms of new dimensions.