Robert Dick, Stephan Haluska, & James Ilgenfritz – Time Wants a Skeleton (Infrequency Seams, 2025)

By Nick Ostrum

If one can judge by releases and coverage (mainly in the DMG newsletter), Robert Dick seems to have hit a late career renaissance. My first exposure to him was 2021’s Structures of Unreason in a rare flutes-guitars-electronics duo with Nicola Hein. Then, I stumbled upon his 2024 duo with harpist Stephan Haluska, Crop Circles,which was the under-recognized gem of the year, as far as I am concerned. After those,I had to pick up this latest outing. On it, Dick (various flutes including his own Glissando Headjoint flute) and Haluska (prepared harp) are joined by bassist Jason Ilgenfritz for seven cuts of free and unconventional chamber music.

Time Wants a Skeleton is a scratchy and breathy affair. Ilgenfritz and Haluska torque and rattle their instruments while Dick cuts his way through the stringed thicket with heaves and flutters. The rattles continue, though more idiomatic sounds – pizzicato and arco – cut in and out. Stasis, however, is never attained and the music remains rough and unstable. Sunbathing with Jonah, the second track, begins sparsely with unintelligible ogre grunts scatting dances atop bass drones. This leads into the titular piece, which is also by far the longest, at over 11 minutes. Whisps of dirges entangle with deep bass tones and what sounds like an insistent mouth harp. It all unfolds so slowly, though a third in, Dick takes over with a spirited section of trills and other quivering sounds that seem to invigorate Haluska and Ilgenfritz, pushing them into a more traditional propulsive war, albeit sans rhythm. By the end, however, the musicians have caught themselves and opened even more space in the piece, and it tumbles to its conclusion, like music box slowing due to declining torque, only for someone to turn the crank a couple more times to bring the piece buzzing towards its end.

The rest of the album proceeds with similar variation. Slow Splash is heavy on the flute, and sounds like a modern etude, laying lines of drone and hum in various layers and for various durations, with a series of spare, then increasingly frequent plucks mimicking the patter of a slow drizzle. How Do You Can It To Deny relies more on moody strings for atmosphere with flute whispers atop it. The Memory You Need starts quietly, but picks up into a series of chime rattles, nervous strings, and aerophonic swoops and sirens that evoke the dark psychological tension and strangeness of a Hitchcock film. The final cut, Not Only In The Dry Of The Century But Also On Normal Days, displays a similar moodiness, but with a more central role delegated to Haluska’s than Ilgenfritz’s strings. That is, until the end when the later makes a striking appearance with a heavy and prolonged thrum that seems to drag the piece to the final bar. This track also sticks out because it is the first and maybe only to stumble upon a sustained direction (in a loose harp leitmotif and tempo about halfway through), which it follows through to the final bars.

All in all, Time Wants a Skeleton is a stellar release. It is earthy (all sounds are acoustic) and ethereal, which seems fitting given the sci-fi origins of the title and the slight weirdness of every moment. It shows phenomenal responsivity that speaks to some organic connection among the members of the trio, who seem to move together in waves rather than by cues. And, within that, it still proudly wears a close-miked grit and graininess that keeps it grounded. This sounds like I am listening to the performance in a bar – minus the distractive ambience that implies – and that raw intimacy only adds to the effect.

Time Wants a Skeleton is available as a cassette and download through Bandcamp:

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Flowers from Charlie

Charlie Rouse - Two Is One (Strata-East, 2025) 

Charlie Rouse Band - Cinnamon Flower: The Expanded Edition (Resonance Records, 2025) 

By Lee Rice Epstein

In December of 1960, saxophonist Charlie Rouse recorded a lovely, engaging quartet session, issued the following year under the unassuming but hip title, Yeah. After a couple of blowing sessions that preceded it, Yeah is arguably the first look at Rouse as the warm-toned, ingenious artist who would emerge almost a decade later from Thelonious Monk’s quartet. The opener is Gene De Paul and Ron Raye’s classic “You Don’t Know What Love Is,” taken at a relaxed tempo. A palpable evening-at-the-nightclub vibe flows effortlessly from the speakers and carries through the rest of the album. Any listener hearing Yeah as their on-ramp to Rouse’s discography would be forgiven an expectation of a stack that sits comfortably alongside contemporaneous Wilkerson, Gordon, and Donaldson records.

And yet, shortly after, Rouse stopped recording as a leader for a decade, instead spending the bulk of the 1960s as a core member of Monk’s quartet. To say Rouse learned much from Monk both feels true and also underplays how much Rouse brought to the quartet. In the 1950s, he recorded a set of albums with Julius Watkins under the name The Jazz Modes, a rich and inventive pairing of French horn and tenor sax. Rouse’s talent for creating rich, unexpected tonal palettes paired well with Monk’s talent for composing equally unexpected harmonic clusters. Rouse (and of course Monk) understood that playing with Monk didn’t necessitate playing like Monk. In equal measure, they accentuate and lift the other, not unlike Cecil Taylor and Jimmy Lyons.

In 1974, when Two Is One was released on the independent label Strata-East, it’d be hard to say what most longtime listeners of Rouse would have thought. Thankfully, with Strata-East albums coming back in print, we have the luxury of looking back now and seeing the through-line connecting Rouse’s 1950s experiments with those of the 1970s, where electric guitars, bass, and cello dip into and out of funk, swing, and bossa rhythms with ease. Stanley Clarke’s bass is magnificent, and with Airto Moreria there’s something of a Return To Forever meets downtown soul vibe that works brilliantly. It’s as effortless a session as Yeah from ten years earlier, and just as stylistically and tonally interesting as Jazz Modes.

The band stretches out pretty well on every number, and then comes “Two Is One,” eleven minutes of soulful, driving funk. The drummer here is David Lee, who was backing Sonny Rollins at around the same time, and who has a great touch on the drums, knowing exactly how to push the song along, while leaving space for Rouse to flex on his solos. With a wave of saxophonists leaning in and overblowing at the time, Rouse emphasizes phrasing set off by brief moments of silence to pull in the listener. The result is simply fantastic, one of the finest in Strata-East’s nearly unbeatable catalog.

And then there’s Cinnamon Flower. Coming back to Rouse in a moment, one of the more fascinating aspects of the album is Bernard Purdie, whose flawless timing and feel is often compressed into only minute-long clips highlighting his eponymous shuffle. Here, however, he’s all over the set, brilliant and grooving; it tells a much fuller story of his skills than any Steely Dan Behind the Music ever could.

The set of songs on Cinnamon Flower are composed and arranged by either pianist Dom Salvador (known for his part in samba funk breaking out during the 1960s boom) or guitarist Amaury Tristão (maybe best known for championing bossa nova’s introduction to the States). Under Rouse’s leadership, the blend of samba funk rhythms with bossa nova accents is a dazzling, hypnotic groove. Wilbur Bascomb, Jr., plays electric bass on most of the album, with Ron Carter subbing in for Milton Nascimento’s incredible “Clove and Cinnamon (Cravo E Canela)” and Tristão’s “A New Dawn (Alvorada).” One of the most exciting elements of Rouse’s music is how smoothly the band mixes tempos and styles; again, while it’s not merely an extrapolation of Monk’s music, you can hear how ten years with the maestro would have opened Rouse up to even more possibilities than he’d explored previously.

And while the Two Is One reissue sounds fantastic all on its own, for Cinnamon Flower, the vaults have been raided, with the entire album presented in its original, unedited format. For anyone keen to play out a this-or-that game of comparing recordings, this is a perfect experience, where the original album remains as-is, and the additional studio versions (recorded at Sound Ideas by Resonance’s own George Klabin) play out just as beautifully. There are subtle yet striking differences in the opener, “Backwoods Echo (Sertão),” one of Salvador’s contributions and lengthier “Clove and Cinnamon (Cravo E Canela).” And of course, the best part of all is hearing more of Rouse, whose legacy seems to continue to grow as more of his records are rediscovered. Here’s hoping there are some live sessions from around the same time yet to be heard. It’s hard to believe, but even after twenty years of regular gigging, the ’70s were a high peak for Rouse, when his playing was as lush, dynamic, and imaginative as ever, and the band was eager to journey alongside him.

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Turbulence - Objections To Realism (Evil Clown, 2025)

By Ferruccio Martinotti

In the beginning was the legendary Leap of Faith Orchestra, a long-term collaboration from 1993 to 2001, resumed in 2015, between David Peck (PEK for the posterity), on clarinets, saxes, double reeds, voice and Glynis Lomon (cello, voice) with various other regulars such as Mark McGrain (trombone), Craig Schildhauer (bass), Yuri Zbitnov (drums), James Coleman (theremin), Steve Norton (saxes, clarinets) plus many guests, as a "variable geometry unit” blueprint. Hometurf: Boston, Mass; Team: Evil Ground Records. To follow the transition orbit shifting Leap of Faith onto Turbulence and the ever changing coordinates of the latter, it’s safe to read what PEK himself has to say in the liner notes:

“I formed Turbulence in 2015 as I started to assemble players for the Orchestra and Turbulence, its extended horn sections, along with guests on other instruments, also records and performs as independent unit. As of this writing in 2025, we have recorded over 50 albums on Evil Clown with greatly varied ensembles. All the smaller Evil Clown bands are really more about a general approach, rather than a specific set of musicians, A session gets credited to Turbulence when it is mostly horn players and the only musician on all of them is me. The sessions range from an early duet with Steve Norton and me (Vortex Generation Mechanisms) to Turbulence Orchestra and Sub-Units with as many as 25 performers and four albums by the side project Turbulence Doom Choir which feature myself, multiple tubas. percussion, electronics, signal processing and many other configurations”.

But who is PEK? Born in 1964, he approached clarinet and piano at a very young age, before switching on alto and tenor sax in high school. After 10 years spent playing in rock bands and studying classical and jazz saxophone with Kurt Heisig in San Josè, CA, PEK moved to Boston in 1989 to attend Berklee where he studied tenor sax performance with George Garzone but it was through the thriving improv scene of the city that he developed his mature free language. Along with cellist Glynis Lomon, he played in the Masashi Harada Sextet between 1990 and 1992, developing a deep musical connection that continued following the MHS, first with Leaping Water Trio for a few years and then with the first version of Leap of Faith in 1994. PEK’s musical scope shows collaborations with many active improvisors of the Boston scene including Raqib Hassan, Eric Zinman, Raphe Malik, Dennis Warren, Glenn Spearman, B’Hob Rainey, Eric Rosenthal, Laurence Cook, Matt Samolis, Martha Ritchey and, from 2015 on, he has accumulated a huge “Arsenal of Equipment” with a grand purpose: “to address a primary aesthetic problem of pure improvisation by using the large pool of instruments to make long-form broad palate works. This very broad palate enables the long improvisation to evolve with very different movements and pronounced development over their length”.

The ammunition deployed in this record are as follows and we kindly invite you not to skip it because such a list says (almost) all. PEK: clarinet, basset horn, contralto and contrabass clarinets, alto and tenor sax, English horn, bass flute, sheng, melodica, accordion, gravichord, daxophone, nagoya, spiny norman, ifo violin. ifo percolator, soma pipe, moog subsequent, novation peak, linnstrument controllers, syntrx, ms-20, nord stage 3, 17-string bass, (d)ronin, spring and chime rod boxes, noise tower, gongs, plate gong, chimes, englephone, brontosaurus bell, cow bells, crotales, glockenspiel, orchestral chimes and anvils, Tibetan chimes and bells, electric chimes, array mbira, xylophone, balafon, log drums, wood and temple blocks, danmo, ratchet, seed pod rattles, clown hammer, rubber chicken. John Fugarino: trumpet, flugelhorn, French horn, trombone, melodica, penny whistle, ocarina, prophet, orchestral castanets. Tom Swafford: violin. Scott Samenfeld: upright electric bass, electric recorder. Should you be aware of someone else playing brontosaurus bell, next round will be on us, promise.

Objection to Realismis the third Evil Clown session in a row to be credited to Turbulence in around three weeks. The previous session (Golden Ratio) sees the band as a sextet with four horns, bass and drums; the second (Nested Phenomena) is the common Turbulence configuration, a three-horn quintet, bass and a different drummer. According to PEK “it is interesting to compare the improvisations of three Turbulence Units recorded in a three week period. Of course, there are many common elements but the difference in the ensembles, combined with the broad palette available at Evil Clown Headquarters produced albums each with their own character”.

Here is PEK’s mission statement: “An advantage of improvisation over more conventional music is that it does not rely on fixed instrumentation or material which needs to be learned in advance. Accomplished improvisors, like the group assembled here, can make interesting music regardless of any last second changes to the lineup, so the last second change to a different unit was in no way a destruction for this performance. The aesthetic problem addressed to the ensemble is to make interesting music with the players and the resources at hand, a change in ensemble changes the problem without in any way preventing an interesting solution”. And this Livestream to YouTube (two songs for more than one hour of music), recorded in January 2025, is the crystal epitome of it: improv chamber music as an exhilarating ode to freedom from schemes, paradigms and constraints, with a sort of piece of mind mood that keeps in control the galloping of such a crazy array of instruments, without pulling the reins of sheer, untamed, anarchic sounds. Difficult to imagine a more effective antidote for these poisoned times, let’s give PEK what he really deserves.

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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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