Assif Tsahar & Hamid Drake - Soul Bodies, vol.1

Magnus Eriksson, Svenska Dagbladet

Assif Tsahar is nervy in his tenor saxophone playing. On a recording from New York, issued by the Swedish label Ayler Records, he meets the drummer Hamid Drake.
Tsahar's tone is often broken, with a torn intensity which is full of pain and joyful happiness.
He varies between lacerated phrases and billowing solos which mirrors a more active wiliness to build forms, but all of it is coordinated in a artistic consummate expressive force.
Assif Tsahar searches for a balance between dissolution and a harmonically ended synthesis. But for the latter there are always conditions laid down, temporary. Beyond the form there is emptiness, a negation.
It is the research of this emptiness which gives the free jazz its unique properties like mystery and aesthetics.