I’m Not Telling You Anything

Jonathan Chung - saxophone, electronics & compositions

James Kitchman - guitar & electronics

Corrie Dick - drums

Release date - 28/06/2024

Available on VINYL/CD/DIGITAL

BUY HERE

'I’m Not Telling You Anything is the new album of post-rock jazz by celebrated London-based trio, Glasshopper.

Together since 2014, Glasshopper, who comprise Jonathan Chung [tenor saxophone, effects] James Kitchman [electric guitar, effects] Corrie Dick [drums and cymbals] make a joyful and unique rock-jazz noise. They are cleverly scripted yet improvise with abandon, haring off at tangents, sparking off one another, intersecting, overlapping. They trigger glimmering reminders of Jan Garbarek and Evan Parker, Radiohead and Polar Bear but the shapes they throw are theirs alone. Their latest album, I’m Not Telling You Anything crackles with their trademark exuberance but contains considerable emotional heft, even the occasional gut punch, with composer Chung affected by the pandemic, grief and the breakdown of of a longterm relationship.

Compact and meandering by turns, this album covers a range of moods, from the euphoric to the pensively subdued, often within the same track. So, “A New Thing” impacts immediately, like sunlight bursting through doors swung open, the trio showing all of their intricate skills and interplay - Chung’s playing has the most creamy, customised, exquisitely wrought tone, offset against Kitchman’s serrated, infinitely variegated guitars, all of it diced and beaten into misshape by Dick’s percussion. It’s a release of all suppressed energy of the post-pandemic when the world was finally let out to play again. However, it then slows, reflects in a manner resonant of Garbarek’s Paths, Prints, also notable for its atmospheric, deeply spacious interplay of guitar and saxophone. This is especially notable on “Take Out The Sun”, on which Chung wordlessly muses on the loss of his partner’s father. I’m Not Telling You Anything marks a change of direction for Glasshopper, as bandleader Jonathan Chung explains:

‘I wrote most of the music in a very short period of time just after the pandemic in 2022, just before the summer in the month of May. I went into a bit of a writing frenzy, spurred by a relationship break down with a long term partner. When I called the guys in for a rehearsal, they were pretty shocked at how much new material I had written in a short space of time. The new material set a strong vibe and gave them a clear idea what we were now going for. I wanted us to play ‘loud’ music. Especially, after the pandemic, I felt I needed a release, to share the pent up energy collected during that time. I also wanted to get across the fun we genuinely have the three of us, the long standing deep connection. Not only as musicians but as close friends. There’s a long standing camaraderie in the band that reflects in how we play and interact in the music. There’s a lot of humour when we hang out…I think I wanted to get some of that across, and mask some of the deeper stuff that balances it all out. I wanted this album, to be very different from our last record, Fortune Rules. It’s less ethereal and the approach is more direct. I’ve written these new pieces in a way that it doesn’t matter what they’re about, because when we play them it’s totally just about how we play as a band. It’s all about this music – right here, right now. The title is from my stubborn quick witted 92 year old Scottish Granny (who has an incredibly sharp tongue) said to my family once. When you ask how she is, she likes to respond in a myriad of different ways…but one of my favourites is - “I’m not telling you anything, it’s none of your business.”’

Glasshopper are informed by a wry, oblique sense of humour, as evidenced in their name, that of the album and tracks like “Major Hit”, which sarcastically retorts to a handful of criticisms of the group amid the praise with which they have been lavishly heaped. It plods along, deliberately lacklustre, with a deliberately “straight” guitar line. Its closest musical relative is Faust’s exaggeratedly linear “It’s A Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl”, in which the Krautrock group make their own response to the record company’s demand that they produce something a little more commercial. And then, their point made, the trio play up a storm.

There’s a real sense of gusto sweeping through I’m Not Telling You Anything - moments of real, weightless, Springtime pop happiness amid their more elaborate exchanges. Take “Grunge”, a piece of music that expresses its joy to exist, blossoms, transmogrifies into an electric, brassy wigout, or “When You Find”, which fleetingly reminds a little of The Beat in their pomp. This culminates in “I Go To Bed At 10pm”, a live favourite, perhaps the only celebration in jazz and rock annals of an early night. It bounces, fidgets with fun, lights up the room in which it is played, working up to a singular mode of excitement of which only Glasshopper are capable.