Was diesem geschmackvoll unterkühlten Duo an den Drums und Keyboards des Norwegers Thomas Strønen und den Saxofonen und der Elektronik des Briten Iain Ballamy den entscheidenden Kick gibt, ist die Mitarbeit von Christian Fennesz […] Seine rauschende Abstraktion bot sich vermutlich auch deswegen an, weil Strønens perkussive Orientierung vordergründiger als bisher zum Einsatz kommt. Entsprechend schwebt das Blasinstrument hier mehr atmosphärisch, mit meist zerfließenden Konturen über Fennesz‘ warmmetallisch schimmernden bis glasharfenen Flächen und den distanzierten, trockenen, geräuschig offenen Grooves der Drums.
Markus Schneider, Rolling Stone Germany
Food has altered its recipe again, and the results are delicious. The experimental jazz group has been a quartet and a duo with guests, now it’s sort of a trio. The two leaders and founding members – British saxophonist Iain Ballamy and Norwegian drummer/keyboardist Thomas Strønen – return with their favorite Austrian guitarist, Christian Fennesz, for the eigth Food album and the ensemble’s third on ECM, ‘This Is Not A Miracle’. All three musicians are also credited with ‘electronics’, and this is important, for Food’s music relies as much as ever on electronic manipulation and alteration […] ‘This Is Not a Miracle’ is dreamy, effervescent and constantly shifting – waves bobbing on oceans, tree limbs swaying in breezes. Rarely has the marriage of acoustic and electronic seemed so natural.
Steve Greenlee, Jazz Times
The duo of Norwegian percussionist Thomas Stronen and UK saxophonist Iain Ballamy - with Austrian guitarist and electronics performer Christian Fennesz as their featured guest - find a new direction here on this compelling release. Stronen takes the leading role, for he wanted to create an album which gave Food a new, more focussed approach to the music they create. [….] Stronen's concept for the album has worked to perfection. Here are all the elements that have made Food performances so absorbing in the past - from the early days as a quartet with trumpeter Arve Henriksen and bassist Mats Eilertsen, to collaborations with musicians ranging from trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer to guitarist Eivind Aarset - yet presented in a powerfully cohesive way. […] a milestone for Food, and I recommend it highly.
John Watson, Jazzcamera
The guest musician, Austrian Christian Fennesz’s ghostly yet stormy overdriven guitar is coloured with Strønen’s delicate nuances of electronica combined with a pulsating sonic texture of acoustic drums and crackling percussion. In a reversal of more familiar instrumental roles, Ballamy’s minimalist long-tones on sax seem to aim at creating a backdrop for the chilled yet imaginatively penetrating rhythms and beats created by Strønen instead of the other way round.
Selwyn Harris, Jazzwise
To call the work jazz might be fibbing a bit; these pieces aren’t concocted in real time. Each member of Food is a skilled improviser, and together, the trio hit the studio to cut its initial sketches. But this time out, Strønen tried to capture something slightly more focused than the inspired ramblings of the past, and he brought the files back to his home studio for editing. Fragments were looped and phrases realigned to concoct new textures or recontour melodies. Call it a 2015 extension of Teo Macero’s work with Miles Davis’ electric stuff and deem the result a second cousin to Brian Eno’s ‘Music for Films’.
Jim Macnie, Tone Audio
Ballamy is a saxophonist who, whether he is playing this ‘future jazz’ or English folk melodies with the superb Quercus trio, can invest the simplest phrase with warmth and meaning. His plangent horn, floated over Strønen’s industrial grooves and Fennesz’s layers of processed guitar, is like a distant sun breaking through the dark clouds.
Cormac Larkin, Irish Times
Food bieten endlose Assoziationsräume, mal jazz-nah, dann wieder in der Klangelektronik der Siebziger Jahre verankert, oft nach Unerhörtem suchend und dies auch findend […] Jazz als Option, als Wahl und Mittel, nicht als Stil. Das ist echte Musik für das 21. Jahrhundert.
Wolf Kampmann, Eclipsed
