SoSaLa - 1983 - Live at Montreux Jazz Festival and Rathausplatz Bern (DooBeeDoo Records, 2025)

By Hrayr Attarian

Saxophonist Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi, stage name SoSaLa, is a composer, a musician’s rights advocate, and label owner. He is also somewhat of a world citizen as he was born in Switzerland to Iranian parents, spent several years in the late 20th century working in Japan, and is currently based in the United States.

In 2024, he released a captivating live album from his archives, 1994-Live at CBGB (DooBeeDoo Records, 2024). Less than a year later, he released an earlier recording from two Swiss dates from July 1983. The provocative 1983 - Live at Montreux Jazz Festival and Rathausplatz Bern features the SADATO GROUP that includes, in addition to the leader (known in Japan as Sadato), guitarist and bassist Mutsuhiko Izumi and pianist and drummer Hitoshi Usami.

The heavily improvised music is a seamless fusion of energetic No Wave and Free Jazz. This is not a simple pastiche of genres but an exploration of the spontaneity and delightful dissonance common to both styles. “Confusing World”, for instance, starts off with an electronic drone that creates an otherworldly ambience. Simmering keyboard phrases, bent guitar notes, and angular piano chords mix, creating an absorbing mood. The track dovetails seamlessly into “MJF's When I'm Crazy, I'm Normal” with Sadato’s whimsical repartee with the audience alternating with his fiery saxophone solos that Usami’s thunderous drumming and Izumi’s muscular refrains support.

The interaction with the audience is not only in spoken words, which Sadato does in both English and German. It is also in the musical form. The way the trio involves the attendees in their creative process is both elegant and effortless. On “Paul Klee’s Musical Colors” from the Bern date, Izumi’s reverberating strings echo against Usami’s rapid-fire beats, creating a thrillingly riotous rhythmic framework. Izumi deftly coaxes out of his instrument energetic, almost voice-like phrases that Usami punctuates with his polyrhythms. At the climax of this riotous performance, the leader enters with his wailing sax. Thus, the musicians blur the lines between verbal and instrumental addresses to the audience.

This becomes even clearer on the following “Zehn Vor Vier in Bern”. Sadato goes from blowing his horn with abandon, delivering a monologue in German, and playing atonal phrases on a harmonica. The concertgoers can be heard responding and clapping enthusiastically. Izumi and Usami lay down a percussive, tempestuous groove that hints at rock-ish backbeats with a swinging sense. Sadato concludes with a melancholic chorus before bidding everyone farewell.

In addition to the superb music it contains, 1983 - Live at Montreux Jazz Festival and Rathausplatz Bern is an intriguing historical document. It highlights the extemporized experimentations in which artists like the SADATO GROUP were engaged. Hopefully, more will be available from SoSaLa’s “vault” for modern listeners to enjoy

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Christian Lillinger & Elias Stemeseder: NF I (FEDERND)

Listen to the beats ... so precise, so quantized, so clean. Listen to the melodic snippets as they seemingly fall off the piano's keyboard. There is nothing quite like the duo of Elias Stemeseder (piano, spinet, synthesizers, electronics) and Christian Lillinger (drums, percussion, synthesizers, electronics). Their latest, Penumbra II, is out on Plaist Music. Here the track 'NF I (FEDERND)' filmed by Johannes Brugger:

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Introduction to Today’s Unconventional Polish Jazz Scene (Part II)

By Irena Stevanovska

See Part I here.

Błoto – Grzybnia (Astigmatic Records, 2025) 

Błoto is one of the best-known bands on the Polish jazz scene, with tours around the world. The band is one of those that you fall in love with on your first listen.

The out-of-the-ordinary harmonies make every kind of listener curious to check out what the next thing will be. Their name, Błoto, meaning “mud,” connects with the story of the band’s creation — they formed it during a tour with EABS, just jamming when they had a day off between concerts. I’ve noticed that often the most accidental bands become the most interesting ones; the universe probably just puts things together so we can get great music.

Błoto is one of those bands that you are thankful exist. Every time they announce something new, everyone gets excited to hear it. Their innovative approach creates an immersive experience for many different types of listeners.

Their last album — named Grzybnia, meaning “mycelium,” the hidden underground brain and stomach of fungi — sounds exactly like a hidden underground mind of a fungus. Organic, yet still abstract. That’s been their style since their first album: a pure Slavic underground band with a trailblazing twist.

The band consists of four members: Marcin Rak on drums, Marek Pędziwiatr on piano and keyboards, Olaf Wegier on saxophone, and Paweł Stachowiak on bass. Their distinct playing sets them apart from the rest because you can tell they’re able to create very different types of music. That’s why they combine genres here, but a lot of the time different instruments play different styles. The drummer has an extremely eccentric way of playing, which constantly makes the other instruments feel like they’re broken apart while they play really cleanly. The bass often holds a sub line that comes in from time to time. Meanwhile, the keyboard instruments always create confusing, unexpected sounds — not typical for what people would usually combine with this type of music. The saxophone, meanwhile, just plays a straight-up jazzy harmony.

Their music feels as organic as the mycelium itself, so if you’re ready to be taken through a magical forest, encountering all types of different creatures and having a unique sonic experience, I highly recommend this album. 

BLED – Terra Incognita (Alpaka Records, 2024)

 

Terra Incognita is an ambient/electronic work with a hint of contemporary jazz. Like the favorites of many of us here (especially me), it starts with a slow lancing toward an area far removed from the ordinariness of life. Terra Incognita - meaning “unknown land”, is the term once used on old maps for places yet to be discovered. The album takes you to one of those. It gives a one-of-a-kind experience of stepping into a place still undiscovered at least for you.

In my imagination, it brings me to certain areas of the steppes. I remember reading in a book by Eric Faye, Mes trains de nuit (“My Night Trains”), where he writes about his travels on trains through Europe and Asia over the years. There is a part where he describes the journey through Russia toward Mongolia, where the train enters the steppes and everyone aboard, not native to those lands, feels a deep awe. It’s the feeling of a place we’ve never seen anything like before. The beginning of the album, paired with its title, brings the same sensation. The music manages to transport you into a space that feels untouched, unexplored by humans.

It’s one of those albums where the track titles perfectly fit the music within. The third track—after “Mare Tranquilities” and “Wanderer”—is called “Then and Now.” It starts with organic, natural sounds and ends with a more electronic feel. It carries the same exploratory mood but shifts toward the otherworldly. The next track, “Turbulent,” captures the very turbulence one might encounter in unknown lands.

The band blends acoustic and electronic instruments, giving them the freedom to create both the natural and the cosmic. The trumpet, played by Emil Miszk—who also plays Mood Rogue and ocarina on the album—is fairly consistent, adding an atmospheric background presence. The other member, Sławek Koryzno, leans into the organic textures, playing most of the percussion: drums, congas, and a Hohner Automatic Rhythm Player. To summon the more unearthly tones, he also uses modular synthesizers and an Echocord 100. With these tools, one can easily imagine the many travels the music evokes.

The journey of this album calls to mind the animated films of René Laloux, like Fantastic Planet or Time Masters. It’s a kind of futurism one might have imagined in the 20th century—not the destructive visions of the future we often imagine now. An album full of dreaminess and imagination. 

Królestwo - Patho Jazz (self-released, 2024) 

A band that originally began through math-rock, post-punk, noise, and the essentially Polish term Yass (jass), which arose in the ’80s in the avant-garde Polish scene, explaining the fusion of genres played together (especially jazz, improvised music, punk, rock, and folk).

This is the third release of this quartet, and it’s the most jazzy one they’ve put out so far. Their first two LPs lean more toward math rock and post-punk. In this release, it begins with a clean sound—the kind people say tickles parts of the brain that can’t normally be reached. The extremely clear mixing immediately gives a sense of what’s to come. Everything just falls into its right place. It contains a deep, very clean bassline, a sound that somehow gives stability—the ability to exist. The drums don’t rush into chaos or dominate everything; they’re there just as much as they should be: minimalistic but with great rhythm.

Since the band consists of only four members—double bass (Sebastian Goertz), drums (Paweł Rucki), synthesizer (Joanna Kucharska), and piano, Rhodes piano, synthesizer, guitar (Max Białystok)—on this album they’ve brought in a few guests who add to the jazz feeling: trumpet (Dawid Lipka), saxophone (Patrycja Tempska), clarinet and bass clarinet (Robert Dobrucki).

The drone sounds of the synths are almost constantly present in the background, while the wind and brass instruments slowly emerge. At one moment there’s a combination of a distorted sound with a trumpet layered over it. It sounds wonderful, because it’s rare to hear something like that. The jazzy trumpet against the dark, distorted texture gives a strong sense of duality, making it hard to choose in which feeling to lean into. Do you bring out the dark, demonic parts of yourself, the ones that scream to come alive? Or do you let yourself be playful and fun, while your soul is being caressed by the sound of the trumpet?

Most of the album carries this duality. It feels as if a jazz track is happening, but at the same time another chaotic, noisy force is running alongside it. Your body moves with the jazz, but your mind is being swirled by the other sounds.

This is the most experimental yet most put-together thing I’ve ever heard. It’s the kind of listen you need to sit with and fully absorb, just letting the sound itself overwhelm you. In every track, they take their time to build toward what’s coming. Each track is its own story. With each one, you’re carried from one world to another, but every world feels deeply and vividly shaped. It’s a place where time doesn’t exist, where the only flow is the flow of instruments and the sounds they make.

So much is said with this album, without a word spoken. Even the things that are said don’t feel like they were created by the band themselves; it feels like they open a space for your own voice to speak inside, carried by the beauty and intensity of sound. 

Wood Organization – Drimpro. (Gotta Let It Out / Love & Beauty Music, 2021)

This duo earns its place on the list for its uniqueness. Though based in Coppenhagen, one of its members brings Polish roots into the mix, so I’ll take the liberty of including it here. Founded by well-known free-jazz bassist Tomo Jacobson and drummer Szymon Pimpon Gąsoriek, Drimpro is a haven for rhythm-section enthusiasts – myself included. Beyond bass and drums, both musicians incorporate electronics, adding another layer to their sound.

Their debut album in 2017 was well received and featured other great artists like Franciszek Pospielszalski, Freya Schack-Arnott, and Lars Greve. On this album, it’s hard to tell if there are guest musicians because some tracks sound so rich and layered that it feels like a whole orchestra is at work.

The album eases in with a slow drone ambient intro before morphing into a deep trip-hop infused jazz groove, with playful drums weaving through the background. It flows into broken beats and deep rhythmic basslines, keeping a hypnotic pulse. Midway through, a transitional track signals the shift into the album’s second half where the free jazz fully takes over. Electronics become more noticeable, connecting to the album’s name, Drimpro, a fusion of Dream and Improvisation, as described in their  Bandcamp notes.

The second, lengthtier section opens like a dream, drawing you deeper into its atmosphere. Shamanic drums pulse underneath, anchoring a mix of unpredictable percussions. For the next 30 minutes, the album drifts through layered soundscapes before closing with a track that introduces vocals – adding yet another unexpected texture.

Throughout the album, Drimpro creates diferent moods: organic, dreamy, and by the end, feverish – but the kind of fever dream you’re happy you’ve experienced.

While compiling this list, I realized that, even though I was focused on the new wave of Polish jazz, Polish artists have always been incredibly creative in this area. As I mentioned in the review of Królestwo above, the Yass (Jass) movement emerged in the 1980s, led by avant-garde musicians who developed a frequently arrhythmic and highly improvised style of jazz. This reminded me that the examples on this list represent only a small slice of what the Polish jazz scene has to offer. Countless artists continue to push boundaries and create new forms of jazz, making it one of the most vibrant jazz scenes in the world. Listening to their radio Jazz Kultura from Kraków, for example, reveals a wide range of innovative musicians and projects. Many remarkable artists didn’t make it onto this list, but I hope it inspires readers to dive deeper into Polish jazz and discover the vast universe of creative minds it holds. 

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Introduction to Today’s Unconventional Polish Jazz Scene (Part I)

By Irena Stevanovska

Jazz has always played an important role in the Polish jazz scene. Since its beginnings, when jazz was forbidden by the Soviet government, it was used as a form of rebellion against an oppressed society, being played in underground, hidden places. During those long and difficult times in the country’s cultural history, there were many important jazz releases, which the label Polskie Nagrania Muza decided to reissue in 2016 in a particular order, across different volumes. The goal was to gather in one place all the releases that have been very influential for many people. 

If you listen to the volumes in order as they were released, you can hear the shift between different types of jazz. It starts with swing, continuing to bebop, with the most interesting experimental fusion period emerging around the late ’70s and ’80s. At that time, musicians began to create their own unique styles that also reflected the areas they came from, releasing all their thoughts, shapes, and feelings outside of themselves. During that time, the scene grew with great artists who are well known among jazz fans. One of the main figures on the Polish jazz scene since its early years has been Krzysztof Komeda, experimenting since the ’60s, along with other important artists like Tomasz Stańko, Zbigniew Namysłowski, Jan Wróblewski, and others. This led to a different kind of experimental music appearing in the ’90s and 2000s, of course fitting its times but still influenced by the experimental forms of their predecessors—forms of jazz mixed with hip-hop. 

One of the most noticeable duos was Skalpel, wildly important to fans of trip-hop and instrumental hip-hop. And there were other forms—some unusual fusions between punk, electronic, and jazz—from bands like Pink Freud. This leads to the next chapter and the natural evolution of jazz in Poland: today’s scene, shaped by all these strong influences. During the 2010s, the scene exploded with new artists weaving fresh forms of jazz, bringing us to the enormous and vibrant Polish jazz scene of today. After spending years listening and discovering new music from one of the greatest scenes in Europe for this kind of music, it was hard to decide which artists to review here, so I will continue to do so in a few volumes.

EABS – Reflections of a Purple Sun (Astigmatic Records, 2024)

EABS was one of the first bands of this kind on the Polish jazz scene in the late 2010s, with their Puzzle mixtape EP and their debut album dedicated to the legendary Polish musician Krzysztof Komeda. The name of their EP reflects the combination of the underground with the classics of jazz — that’s how all of the freshest bands and scenes came into existence, through the fusion of different genres.

The Wrocław-based quintet released their latest album, Reflections of Purple Sun, in 2024. This album, similar to their debut, is a re-imagination of an album by another great musician of the Polish scene, Tomasz Stańko. The album begins immediately and comes in strong. What’s interesting about EABS, compared to most other musicians of the new wave of jazz, is that they still carry the sound of traditional jazz — they just play an upgraded version of it. Probably that’s why they call it “re-imagined.” I read in an interview that the idea behind the debut album was to show respect toward legendary musicians like Krzysztof Komeda, but not just to play his music — to build something upon it. That’s what they do with all of their music: building their own work on what their predecessors left behind.

It also seems their legacy is built on spirituality. They have an album called Slavic Spirits, for which they said they got the idea from the Slavic melancholy present in the music of earlier Polish jazz musicians. The spirituality continues and can also be felt in an album they released together with the Pakistani quartet Jaubi, In Search of a Better Tomorrow (2023). In that album, both ensembles bring the spirituality of their own roots and combine them together.

Besides Polish jazz, they constantly dig for inspiration from works of legendary musicians from all over the world. They also created an album, 2061 (2022), where they built their music based on Sun Ra.

When it comes to Reflections of Purple Sun, even the cover photo evokes the spirit of Slavic ambience from the past. After the energetic intro, there is a track called Flute’s Ballad, which is ambient and slow. The calmness flows into a track that one might say is quite untypical for this kind of band and music: it completely transitions into a techno track. I’ve heard this before on some of their albums — in the middle of an album, continuing their flow, they just turn completely electronic. This gives a different perspective on their abilities and emotions.

After the seven-minute break from jazz, with techno played on instruments, the next track returns to their signature jazzy sound. Seemingly composed for traditional jazz instruments — trumpet (Jakub Kurek), tenor sax (Olaf Węgier), piano, synths and sometimes vocals (Marek Pędziwiatr), bass (Paweł Stachowiak), and drums (Marcin Rak) — they allow themselves to play the flow of traditional jazz. It’s kind of refreshing: having a rhythm section with breakbeat drums and bass for electronic music, while the rest of the instruments sometimes play traditional jazz.

Their latest album is a delight for every kind of jazz listener. It leaves those who love the traditional sound happy and satisfied, while also engaging younger listeners searching for blended sounds. The combination of the inspirations they draw from and their own ideas — re-imagined — contributes to the uniqueness that EABS has brought to the world jazz scene. 

ńoko – Aurora (self-released, 2023)

 
Ńoko is one of those bands you find and think – how are they not touring everywhere? Pretty unknown outside the Polish scene, and not one of the first names you would find across when getting into Polish jazz – which is wild, because they’ve got that energy right from the start. From the first track of the album, it hits – a kind of futuristic traditionalism, so well-blended you barely notice the transition. The four-member group drifts between dark jazz, psychedelia and electronica.

They’ve written on their Instagram profile that jazz is dead, and they buried it in distortion and reverb. I’d go with that – it really does describe their sound. It’s a good description for someone listening them for the first time.

What’s interesting for me on this album is that it starts with total chaos, but sometimes it has that Toshinori Kondo trumpet feel. I’d say the brass is mostly calm, while the drums are chaotic. Sounds like this is a thing in contemporary Polish Jazz – the intense, extremely rhythmic drums combined with deep bass lines, often sounding electronic.

The quartet brings an energetic vibe – every track has this fast pace, with distorted and raw textures. Beside the drums (Tomasz Koper), bass (Maciej Sadowski), trumpet (Dawid Lipka) and Sax (Michał Jan Ciesielski) moog and synth sounds can be heard underneath, played by the bass and the sax player – always in the background, always present.

In the middle of the album there’s a track (Dark) that starts, slower, with lower energy – but even there, the depthness of the sound still stays. This, to me, perfectly captures what the new wave of Polish Jazz sounds like: energetic and alive, yet carrying the persistent darkness. It’s a heaviness common in to contemporary jazz from much of the Slavic world – fast and intense, but never quite joyful. Instead, it carries the weight people hold inside without even noticing.

Aurora is an album I’d recommend to all kinds of jazz listeners. It’s got something from every corner of jazz in it, but also feels like something people outside jazz might love too. 

 

Immortal Onion – Technaturalism (U Know Me Records, 2025) 

This trio leans more toward the exprimental-electronic side of nu-jazz. Less traditional, more exploratory. They’re contributing to the shaping of futuristic jazz, the post-jazz sound that’s unfolding in our generations.

The group - Wojtek Warmiak on drums, Tomir Śpiołek on grand piano and e-piano, and Ziemowit Kimlek on double bass, bass guitar and electronics, pushes out the boundaries of what’s considered classical in every genre they touch. This latest album weaves in elements of jazz, classical, electronic, ambient and even deep-sub freequencies. The piano often carries the more classical sensibilities (when it’s not creating 8bit sounds), layering textures on top of eachother. The drums stay true to the jazz roots, with the influence of the electronic breakbeats beat, marking the jazz influence of this era, while the bass and electronics bring in a contemporary edge sticking everything together.

It’s hard to capture all the emotions the album evokes, each shift in sound brings a new wave of excitement, with every element adding something fresh and unexpected. One track I’d set apart is Zeitgeist, which comes around the middle of the album. The combo of everything happening in that track pretty much shows how the band functions together. It begins with an electronic swirl and a drum pattern that has that J-Dilla looseness to it – off-kilter, stretched in time. A quiet, hesitant piano comes in, broken into fragments, and then the track starts to expand. The drums grow bolder, the electronics morph into something more organc, and suddenly, you’re in a state of flow. The background becomes a kind of ambient wash, the sub-bass rumbles underneath, and the piano steps out of its shyness, pushing into something more fluid.

Their style feels like a bunch of new generation musicians came together, mixed all the fresh directions nu-jazz has taken, and shaped into their own, unique, sublime sound.

Feels like a great way to explore where sound can lead you, and all the places it might open along the way.

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Amir ElSafffar - New Quartet Live at Pierre Boulez Saal 2 (Maqām Records, 2025)

By Stef Gijssels

American trumpet player with Iraqi roots Amir ElSaffar brings us his second album of the year, after "Inner Spaces" (Ornithology, 2025) with  Lorenzo Bianchi Hoesch. This album, a quartet with Ole Mathisen - from Norway - on sax, Tania Giannouli - from Greece - on piano and Tomas Fujiwara - from the US - on drums, is equally rooted in Middle-Eastern scales, yet leaning closer to jazz. 

The compositional material was penned only three days before the performance, sketchy outlines of each piece, rehearsed with the quartet for two days, and then performed. Not only the musical ideas in the composition, the spontaneity with which they are performed, but also the tightness and freedom of the interaction are excellent. It's one of those albums that you can listen to again and again, that is full of surprising sounds, with a great variety between contemplative and extraverted moments, always intense and with a story to tell. Especially the longest piece, "Orientations I -V" is wonderful, which in its suite-like structure, also allows for dissonant chords, a-rhythmic percussion and other sounds that counter the core narrative, yet through the many voices and moments of distress a theme emerges, powerful, infectious and compelling. 

On "Le Marteau de la Maîtresse" (the mistress's hammer) the rhythm is mesmerising and the playing extremely sensitive, and also on that level all four musicians can demonstrate their natural sense of lyricism and subdued playing. "For the Victims of Genocide" is a calm, deeply emotional and sad piece, an atmosphere which is continued in the even sadder "Ghazalu" on which ElSaffar sings his beautiful Arab music, and even if you do not understand the language, the voice and the sound say it all.  

The normal sequence of the album ends with "10.23 am", an upbeat piece, both rhythmically and emotionally, with strong and fast unison lines and exuberant soloing, a live piece which is rewarded by a - rightfully - enthusiastic audience. 

Three of the tracks get alternate takes, which is fun to compare how and where they differ. 

Next to the incredible skills and interaction between the four stellar musicians is the wonderful sound quality of the "Pierre Boulez Saal" in Berlin, a modular space built in a 360° around the musicians, allowing almost equal distance to the music for all listeners. 

Enjoy!

Listen and download from Bandcamp 

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Abbey Rader (1943 - 2025)

Abbey Rader (still from Get Free)

  

By Paul Acquaro

 

His Bandcamp page description lays out the fundamentals: "Abbey Rader is an avant-garde jazz drummer whose "free" approach is heavily influenced by Buddhism. Since the 60s, he's worked with Dave Liebman, John Handy, Billy Bang, Mal Waldron and many others."

 

Born in NJ in 1943 and growing up the Bronx, Rader, Rader took early to the drums as well as to spirituality. Formed by the golden age of jazz. Rader talked about hearing Philly Jo Jones and Papa Jo Jones, as well as John Coltrane, and playing opposite Jimi Hendrix at the Filmore East during his early life in New York. It was seeing Coltrane, however, that provided an inflection point. "The capper for me was seeing Coltrane at the Half Note. When I heard him say 'Love Supreme,' 'Acknowledgement,' 'Resolution,' 'Meditations,' 'Selflessness,' I realized that the spiritual realm is the governing body of everything.When I heard that, my journey changed." Rader became a Buddhist and was an active member of the Loft Scene in New York City.

 

Rader moved to Europe in the late 1970s, playing with a number of musicians on the continent, working with, among others, Gunter Hampel, Jeanne Lee, John Handy and Mal Waldron. He also married and  raised a family in Germany before returning to the US in 1989. After settling in Florida, he worked with musicians such as Billy Bang, Frank Lowe and David Liebman.

 

In recent years, Rader played often with woodwindists Peter Kuhn, John McMinn, Noah Brandmark, Drew Ceccato and Kidd Jordan, bassist Kyle Motl, releasing many recordings on his own ABRAY imprint. Below are visit to his last few releases.

 

Rader passed away at the end of September.

 

Abbey Rader & Davey Williams: In One Is All (ABRAY, 2023)

This duo features Rader with electric guitarist Davey Williams, recorded in 1999 live in Atlanta. Williams who died in 2019, worked across genres, playing blues, punk, rock and experimental music (he was in Curlew) and was also a music critic. All of these influences (except maybe the last one) are evident in this spirited improvisational recording.

 

The one long track begins with some guitar sounds, not quite chords, not really notes, more like humming and the sounds of small chattering primates. Rader then jumps in with a wash of cymbals and some suggestive rolls. The guitar tones get fuller and more aggressive, foreshadowing the slashing assault that soon follows. The punk and the avant-garde soon come together to critical mash-up of the two musicians. Over the nearly one hour of musical flow, the sounds are non-stop, sometimes sparser, like when a simple chime from Rader holds the space or William's plays a single line melody, but mostly angular and intense, the music is brutally lovely in a sharp, well-rounded way. 

 

 

Abbey Rader Trio: Live at Subtronics 24 (ABRAY, 2023)

Recorded in 2017 in Miami, Live at Subtronics 24 begins with Rader's drums and Motl's bass setting a vigorous tempo. Then we hear the saxophones, Jordan, already into his 80s, springs into action. His tone is a bit muted at first, but the spirit is spry. Next, John McMinn's sturdy voice slips in, injecting his own lively playing and giving Jordan's a boost. Within a few minutes the lines of 'Anytime, Anywhere' are flowing from all four musicians. "The Gateless Gates,' begins again with Rader creating a foundation of tone for Motl's meaty, bowed bass line. This time, the woodwinds enter a bit more reservedly, starting with a set of bluesy lines before exploding into free blowing. Last track, "Intrinsically, There is No I,' has the quartet at once setting the direction and demonstrating the title.

 

Overall, it's a musical feast! Rader's drumming is the table, the table cloth, the plates and cutlery, Motl's bass is protein (meat, tofu, what have you) and the woodwinds, everything from the vegetables to the garnish to the fine wine and digestives.

 

 

Abbey Rader & John McMinn: Two As One (ABRAY, 2021)

 

Florida based saxophonist John McMinn needs to be heard, his playing embodies all that is good about free jazz: free-spirited, spiritual (maybe inspiring is a better word), and melodious. Sometimes that last word seems to juxtapose oddly with the notion of free-improvisation, but it is an integral piece of the music on Two as One.

 

While the two musicians produce a collage of sounds, there is distinct structure to the music. Absent of chords and bass lines, McMinn's lines themselves follow the contours of songs and melodies even as they splinter and split in unexpected ways. For example, 'Inner Vision,' the second of the 10 tracks of the album, begins with a melody both known and never heard before, which serves as a foundation for an arcing improvisation over Rader's propulsive and supportive drumming. McMinn is not a overpowering player, his tone never quite threatens to break the instrument, rather it seems to be constantly stretching, imbuing the tunes with a certain yearning. On some tracks, McMinn is also at the piano, providing variety and some dissonant intervals to the recording.

 

Their playing together, which spans over 30 years, more than confirms the album's title. 

 

 

 

Here is a short movie, Get Free, from 2016:

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Earscratcher - Otoliths (Aerophonic Records, 2025)

By Martin Schray

Dave Rempis’s latest releases reveal his influences even more clearly than his earlier albums - you could hear Coltrane (on Harvesters with the Rempis Percussion Quartet), Brötzmann (on Propulsion with Jason Adasiewicz, Joshua Abrams and Tyler Damon), and some more. And that’s also the case here. Otoliths is the second album by his transatlantic quartet Earscratcher, which brings him together with his long-time collaborators Fred Lonberg-Holm on cello and electronics and Tim Daisy on drums, plus the outstanding Austrian pianist Elisabeth Harnik. 

Their second album shows a band that has built on the foundation of their debut but which has also evolved. While their first one was strongly characterized by an energetic playing style (Rempis was a bit reminiscent of Jimmy Lyons then), the follow-up focuses more on quieter and slower passages without denying the energy. Cecil Taylor’s bands can certainly serve as a reference here as well, but it’s less the Unit from the 1970s and 80s than his European quintet of the 1990s and 2000s with Harri Sjöström (sax), Tristan Honsinger (cello), Teppo Hauta-aho (bass), and Paul Lovens (drums). Of course, the four were driven more mercilessly by the great pianist than Elisabeth Harnik does it here with the three guys, but as soon as the improvisations are energy-driven, then things really get going. 

“The Attic and the Atrium”, the first and longest track on this album, recorded live on tour in the US in December 2024, takes a 15-minute run-up before it literally explodes. It’s not as if the band has to find its feet. The structure is clear and precise (and in this respect, Cecil Taylor definitely shines through), the quartet builds tension very subtly, and you expect the tempo to pick up every second. Fred Lonberg-Holm’s electronics and his bowed trills in particular are responsible for a dark mood, which Elisabeth Harnik reinforces with her counterpoints. A first brief thunderstorm quickly passes, the sky calms down, Rempis withdraws from the action, and the piano, cello, and drums sound almost spherical. This gives rise to moments of unusual melody (which were not unfamiliar to the late Taylor either), with Rempis countering Harnik’s, Lonberg-Holm’s, and Daisy’s atonal elements with lines in which Johnny Hodges or Ben Webster shine through. And just when you have settled into the melodious sounds, all hell breaks loose. “The Attic and the Atrium” is one of the best pieces Rempis has produced in recent times (and there have been many exciting recordings by him lately). But that doesn’t mean you can ignore the three other pieces. “Ossicles” and ‘Scapha’ are significantly shorter than the first track, but follow a similar structure, with the quiet passages being shorter. And last but not least, there is another highlight at the end: “Umbo” is a typical piece for a Rempis band. Tension-driven, but also elegiac, spiritual, epic. You want to lose yourself in it and wish it would never end.

Otoliths is another masterpiece by the Chicago saxophonist, and I wonder how long he can maintain this extraordinary level. On his label Aerophonic alone, there are about 70 recordings now, none of which are even mediocre. Dave Rempis is one of the outstanding musicians of our time.

Otoliths is available as a CD and as a download. You can listen to it an buy on the label’s bandcamp site: https://aerophonicrecords.bandcamp.com/.

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Samuel Leipold / Martin Perret - Matsutake

For this weekend's Sunday Video we present a video accompanying a track from the upcoming release Barene by the duo Leipold/Perret, featuring drummer and sonic explorer Martin Perret and Samuel Leipold, on guitar and electronic textures. The project is rooted in experimental soundscapes, shaped through a cross-city collaboration spanning Venice, Lucerne, and Berlin. Over the course of a year, they captured spontaneous improvisations using drums, guitar, and synthesizers, then restructured them digitally—layering new ideas, applying effects, and reshaping the material.

Find out more here.

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Alberto Popolla - Really the Blues (AUT Records, 2025)

By Ferruccio Martinotti 

The blues. The fingers are getting stiff simply by writing down the word. No way to describe it or to waste time and space talking about it: the blues just IS. A sentence carved in our soul, that smell of blues like nothing comparable, comes from the legendary Mezz Mezzrow, with his final will:”Just take my body and shove it in one of them blast furnaces and when I’m melted down good, scrape out the dust and mix it up with some shellac and press it into a record with a King Jazz label on and then take it up to Harlem and give it to some raggedy kid on The Corner who hasn’t got the price of admission to see the stage show at the Apollo or a deuce of blips to buy himself a glass of foam, until he gets tired of it, and then let him throw it away and that’s that. Just do that and you know I’ll be happy.” Mezzrow, besides a chill down the spine, provides the programmatic title of the record and subject matter of this review. Italian musician Alberto Popolla, a clarinetist, arranger and composer, has explored the different sounds and the infinite resources of timbre of his clarinets, crossing experimentation and improvisation, writing and conductions, Balkan music and klezmer. He has promoted several Italian and European ensembles and collaborated with musicians from all around the globe such as, among others, John Tchichai, Don Byron, Steve Beresford, Lol Coxhill, Simon Allen, Chris Cutler, London Improvisers Orchestra, Mamadou Diabate, Elliot Sharp, Mike Cooper, Lisa Mezzacappa. 

In recent years, with the group Roots Magic, Popolla has dedicated himself passionately to the arrangement and composition, taking inspiration from the great blues heritage and the fascinating sounds of the Canterbury prog music scene. His mission statement is to juxtapose tradition and innovation, blurring the boundaries through an ongoing tension between composed form and free approach: “The development isn't always linear and progressive but circular and spiral. The closed template is a step forward, it could be a comfort spot to some extent but this doesn’t mean that things are easier”, he clarifies. In this free-solo attempt on the blues wall, Alberto’s purpose is to draw a direct line, in the full respect of the Afrocentric elements of that rural sound, taking into account that, up to the ‘50s and ‘60s, jazz dealt with an unreal, never seen, postcard-like Africa, even when the artistic outcome was outstanding, like the legendary “jungle sound" of Duke Ellington, whose Africanism was merely aesthetic actually. Only from the late ‘60s, the most committed Black jazz musicians tried a daring “back to Africa”, discovering that a three centuries cultural divide was almost impossible to be bridged. Along with the clarinet, the foot tapping and the beating on an array of objects, here we find a heartfelt, spiritual, intimate, aware, homage to a music that for Popolla is definitely not only a genre but a true language. The choice of the covers deployed a Masterclass of Heroes: Mezz Mezzrow (Really the Blues); John Carter (Karen on Monday); Randy Weston (Anu Anu); Jelly Roll Morton (Winin’ Boy Blues); Blind Willie Johnson (Dark was the night, cold was the ground); Eric Dolphy (Serene); Jimmy Giuffre (Cry want, Pickin’em up and layin’em down); Louis Armstrong (Lonesome Blues); Milt Jackson (Bag’s Groove). A self-penned song (Golden Tooth Blues), plus the contribution of his partners in crime Gianfranco Tedeschi (Pop’s Blues) and Errico De Fabritiis (Blues for Amin B.) crown it all. 

As per the sandpaper nuances that often come out of his clarinet, it’s really interesting to listen to what Popolla has to say about: “The clarinet in jazz is still affected by the imprint of the great band leaders like Goodman, Shaw and Herman. Its sonorities and aesthetic are often associated with swing, virtuoso, smooth and gentle sounds, casting a shadow over the crucial role the clarinet had at the beginning of jazz and blues history when it was played in an edgy, dark and scratchy way. An epitome of this is The Sunday Afternoon Jazz Blues Society by John Carter, one of the very few to play clarinet outside the box”. Really the blues is a sparkle pebble amidst the roaring waters we are used to move into and such a “modicum of blues” (to quote Ivo Perelman) could really be the perfect spot to find some solace and remember where everything comes from.

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Lafayette Gilchrist and New Volcanoes – Move with Love (Morphius Records, 2025)

By Nick Ostrum

Recently selected as the new pianist of the Sun Ra Arkestra, Lafayette Gilchrist is a rare breed for jazz musicians. He straddles various styles – funk, soul, gospel, jazz, free (though somewhat less of this recently) – in a way that few can, avoiding the sonic muck or poseur output that too often comes out of such wide blending. This might be because Gilchrist does not really cross over but genuinely embodies just enough of each style to make it convincing. He is also an excellent composer, and increasingly so. What is more, he does not release a lot of music, which means each album his name graces has some special inspiration and refinement.

Move with Love captures Gilchrist (keyboard) on a live outing with his New Volcanoes octet. And, damn, can they riff on a groove. The horn section (Leo Maxey on trumpet, Christian Hizon on trombone, Shaquim Muldrow on sax) entangle and jaunt, mostly in tight formation. The rhythm section (Anthony “Blue” Jenkins on bass, Kevin Pinder on drums, Bashi Rose on percussion) continually lays heavy beats and tumbling Afro-Latin polyrhythms, through which Carl Filipiak – swinging between funk syncopations, straight melodies, and even a few excursions reminiscent of early Allman Brothers jams - wends and weaves his guitar. I am hesitant to say Gilchrist takes a back seat through much of this, but he does something of the sort. Rather than forging forward from the front, he provides propulsion from behind, and he does so in a fittingly understated manner. (Actually, none of the soloists really goes outrethough, maybe shaded by the Arkestra appointment, there are moments that hint in that direction.)

Stylistically, this leans further toward funk and 1970s R&B than the freeer musics (or contemporary composition) that usually grace these pages. Imagine if Sun Ra sat in with Donny Hathaway’s band and primarily blended in. Think Stevie Wonder tightness, but on the other side of pop flair and with a healthy dose of swampy blues struts.

I had not originally intended to review Move with Love, as I had thought it might be too straight-ahead. But it is just too infectious to let pass without mention.

Move with Loveis available as a download, CD, and vinyl on Bandcamp.

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