Dominic Miller

LP version. Absinthe is the second album for ECM by the guitarist Dominic Miller, and the first on which he leads a full band. After the solo and duo settings of Silent Light (2017), he writes ten compact pieces for a quintet built around the bandoneon. The mood comes from French Impressionist painting, which Miller, who lives in the South of France, links to sharp light, mistral winds and the green spirit of the title.

Miller was born in Argentina and has played guitar in the band of Sting for some three decades. Beside him on drums is Manu Katché, a long-time ECM leader and a colleague from the Sting band. The bandoneon player Santiago Arias comes from Buenos Aires, and Miller wrote the music with his sound in mind. Mike Lindup, known from Level 42, plays keyboards, and Nicolas Fiszman is on bass. The quintet recorded at Studios La Buissonne in Pernes-les-Fontaines in February 2018, with Gérard de Haro and Nicolas Baillard as engineers and Manfred Eicher as producer.

Miller switches between nylon- and steel-string acoustic guitars, and Arias's bandoneon carries much of the melody. The title track opens on guitar and swirling cymbals before the bandoneon enters, while Lindup's synthesizer adds what Miller called "an absinthe-induced wooziness". Mixed Blessing features a synth solo, and on Étude Lindup's piano becomes the foundation as the band builds towards an intensity close to rock. Saint Vincent is dedicated to the Cameroonian guitarist Vincent Nguini, a mentor of Miller's, rather than to Van Gogh. Verveine is a short miniature named after the herbal tea that is said to cure hangovers.

Reviewers praised the space in the music and the sound of the recording. Mark Sullivan in All About Jazz heard the bandoneon as "a significant new timbral color in the ensemble, as well as a nod to the avowed Argentinian influence". Frédéric Goaty in Jazz Magazine wrote that under Eicher's guidance Miller's music had perhaps never breathed so well. Doug Ramsey of Rifftides admitted that a planned quick listen "became five times in a row".

LP edition, ECM 2614, released together with the CD on 1 March 2019.