Ken Vandermark in a cistern

It's already an old video, but I came across it via the website of the Corbett & Dempsey label. In 23/10/2010, Ken Vandermark, Haavard Wiik and Chad Taylor, played at Centro de Artes do Espectáculo de Portalegre in Portugal. In the day after the concert, the musicians, the crew of Clean Feed and the recording team went to the village of Marvão. The Castle of Marvão is a well-preserved medieval castle located in the Portuguese district of Portalegre. The castle has a large cistern in which rainwater was collected to provide drinking water when the castle was under siege.

The resonance of the place proved to be the perfect invitation for Ken Vandermark to create an impromptu performance on baritone, luckily captured on camera. We know about the importance of the venue in which musicians perform, but like with John Butcher on various occasions, these resonating and echoing empty closed spaces are particularly inviting for saxophonists. 

Enjoy the interaction between artist and space!

Read More

Tim Daisy’s Vox 3 - October Bells (Sonic Action Records)

By Charlie Watkins

Vox 3 is Tim Daisy’s trio with Fred Lonberg–Holm on cello and James Falzone on clarinet. They’ve been playing together since 2008, when their eponymous debut was released, and I believe this is now their ninth recording together – most of which have been under the name Vox Arcana. I reached out to Tim to ask what prompted the name change, and he told me that he changed the name when he started adding other musicians to the group: Macie Stewart on Roman Poems (2019) and Gabby Fluke-Mogul on A New Hotel (2023). He also hinted that the future might see even larger configurations. But the trio remains the core.

Tim Daisy describes Vox 3 as his ‘experimental music trio’. I think ‘experimental’ might be overstating it a little: compared to most things on this blog, I would say Vox 3 falls on the more accessible side of avant-garde jazz. This isn’t a criticism, just an honest acknowledgement that what you get here is not massively ‘out there’. I would instead describe Vox 3 as a storytelling trio. They have a unique language that wouldn’t feel out of place if you were sitting around a fire, listening to folk tales of danger and sorrow. It makes the music quite accessible, in spite of the freely improvised elements, and reminds me a little of the early Ornette Coleman, whose free jazz was so deeply rooted in the blues. Similarly here, the melodies are simple, but it is the highly textural use of percussion that turns these folk tunes into miniature stories.

The record starts with Escriptura, a free jazz romp, with Fred Lonberg-Holm walking the cello(!) whilst James Falzone growls away over the top. James is an extraordinary clarinettist who really shows off what the clarinet is capable of: his abstract lines and vibrant array of timbres make him a formidable presence. After a drum break, James and Fred swap over, James now accompanying Fred’s fierce improvisation. I wish we could have heard a bit more of this powerful, passionate playing on the record – you only need to listen to Fred’s recordings with Peter Brötzmann to hear what he can do – but there are only occasional hints of this throughout.

Most of the album is much more mellow in tone, especially tunes like A Simple Theme, where the cello is played arco and the clarinet much more melodic. In fact, the rest of the album is generally more like this. I think sometimes the narrative-driven compositions mean the individual tracks end up with too much variety, whereas I think the record could be more interesting if each track had a stronger individual identity. Nonetheless, I did enjoy the way the improvised elements were integrated in almost as if they were scenes in a drama, especially on The Real Sky, which I think shows all three musicians at their best and manages to hold together melody and experimentation in an interesting way.

There are enjoyable moments throughout, and you will certainly find yourself drawn into the stories they are weaving. But I think this album only hints at the potential of Vox 3, and the stories they have left to tell.

October Bells is available from Sonic Action Records on Bandcamp.

Read More

天藤丸 Ten-Toh-Maru - 夜を往くもの The One Who Walks Through the Night (Meenna, 2025)

By Eyal Hareuveni

天藤丸 Ten-Toh-Maru is, no doubt, the most experimental ensemble that Japanese pianist-composer Satoko Fujii plays in and most likely, the Japanese supergroup that most of you have never heard of.

Ten-Toh-Maru features the unique, incomparable voice artist Tenko (天鼓), co-founder of the eighties, all-women avant-rock band Mizutama Shobodan, and a frequent collaborator in the next decade with John Zorn, Ikue Mori, Fred Frith, and Zeena Parkins; Fujii (藤井郷子), who plays here mostly inside the piano; and Toshimaru Nakamura(中村 俊丸), a central figure in the Japanese free improvisation movement Onkyōkei (音響系, literally, reverberation of sound) of the nineties and early 2000s, a pioneer performer of the no-input mixer board and its feedback noises, and one of the main artists of the Japanese label Ftarri and its sub-labels Meenna and Hitori, all focusing on reductionist aesthetics.

Ten-Toh-Maru recorded its debut album, live in its first-ever performance at the Koendori Classics club in Tokyo in September 2024 (its second performance was in January 2026). 夜を往くもの The One Who Walks Through the Night consists of three untitled, free improvised pieces that merge Tenko’s wordless, free-associative vocal delivery—at times sounding like a mysterious shaman, and at other times naked and vulnerable, but always totally possessed in the moment; Fujii’s resonant percussive piano sounds that often correspond with exotic, traditional zithers and percussive instruments; and Nakamura’s subtle yet tangible, otherworldly fragmented noises. Nakamura recorded and mastered this album. The cover artwork is by Cathy Fishman, a visual artist who did most of Ftarri’s covers (and many of Otomo Yoshihide's doubtmusic label).

The music unfolds patiently, relying on attentive listening and nuanced, but completely unpredictable, textual development. The music sounds timeless, often flowing through a series of poetic, dream-like cinematic images, but with references to Japanese theatre and traditional rituals. Fujii anchors the free-form dynamics with brief, incisive textual gestures, suggesting loose forms and courses. Hopefully, Ten-Toh-Maru will keep performing and expanding their rare musical universe.

Read More

Kris Davis and the Lutoslawski Quartet - The Solastalgia Suite (Pyroclastic Records, 2026)

By Brian Earley

One transitions into interlude; nobody starts there. Unless you are listening to pianist Kris Davis’s latest release from Pyroclastic Records, The Solastalgia Suite. Or unless beginning is merely transition.

This sets up only the first of many questions about arrival and separation in Davis’s powerfully titled suite, a sequence of songs dealing with the lived experience of watching your world crumble around you. That is to say, solastalgia: remembering when autumn in New York did not commonly see temperatures of 70 degrees Fahrenheit (November 2024, when Davis recorded this album, completed the warmest fall in the history of NOAA’s climate record), or when Calgary, the city of Davis’s youth, did not see over 120 smoke-filled hours more than its average (the city’s province of Alberta was particularly ravaged by wildfires that year).

On Solastagia Davis has been commissioned to create a work for her piano with Poland’s Lutoslawski Quartet by the Jazztopad Festival. The string quartet comprised of Roksana Kwasnikowska (first violin), Marcin Markowicz (second violin), Arur Rozmyslowicz (viola), and Maciej Mlodawski (cello) consists of a set of virtuoso string players who have performed in a variety of adventurous jazz and classical formats (see Schoenberg concertos with Jacek Kapszyk or Kenny Wheeler or Uri Caine) according to the Wroclaw/National Forum of Music website.

The piano quintet moves from “Interlude” as introduction into “An Invitation to Disappear,” where a violin sings alone until the other strings gradually circle around and console it. What is remarkable compositionally about “An Invitation” is just how little material Davis provides for herself, as she allows the strings long stretches of pianoless song. Her disappeared piano enters around the two minute mark on a melody just crooked enough to create an atmosphere of malaise and exits within one minute. At 4:12 the music resolves into silence, only to transition into a string supported homophonic piano melody that weeps in a minor key and gazes in a stunted wonder that may be the most moving moment of the entire suite. It is an invitation to hide as much as it is an appeal to gather together and witness what is being lost right in front of us.

The string harmonics and upper register piano of “Towards No Earthly Pole” depart from grounded midrange and seek outwards, a movement that does not find its likeness until the suite’s penultimate piece, “Life on Venus.” “Life on Venus,” however, is alien with its one violin sawing over rattles of strings, ominous low-bowed cello, and liquid piano chords landing in intervals between. If home cannot be compassed at an Earthly pole, it most certainly is not on Venus. Unless the alien world of Venus is now Earth, yielded to the pressures of climate change just as the soft and strange atmosphere of the music erupts into a cacophony of forte strings in the final work, “Degrees of Separation.”

And “Degrees” is violent, loud, startling in its sudden dynamic attacks, and the longest piece on the album. The music separates into quiet retreat before lurching back to shake the listener’s attention. However, only small degrees separate the human ear’s vastly different perceptions of decibels or hertz. In the arrangement of the solar system, only one degree separates our planet from its toxic twin, and only 2.5 degrees Celsius separate a livable home and a world we watch disappear.

The Solastalgia Suite leaves little room for comfortable anchoring: the music slides into transition even as it ends. The beginnings we assume are only so by our expectation of introduction. The conclusions are not certain departure, but may start again to arrive at new hemispheres of sound, or maybe single piano keys ascend out of perceivable pitch towards endings unknown.

One can listen to The Solastalgia Suite here:

Read More

Ziv Taubenfeld / Helena Espvall / João Sousa - You, Full Of Sources And Night (NoBusiness, 2025) *****

By Richard Blute

"Are you the one who sings those melodies I sometimes hear in spring, the ones that make me dream?”

With a fragile, heavenly tone, a voice I will never forget, he calmly replied:

"I don't know. Sometimes I have hallucinations where I sing winged melodies I don’t recognise, not knowing if they come from me or ever existed. I only remember the day I parted from those who taught me to fly. They told me I carried within me the most perfect song, and that one day it would let itself be sung freely by me.”

-Luis Lopes, from the liner notes

I sat down to listen to this album with no expectations beyond the fact that every NoBusiness album I have ever listened to has been of the highest quality. I didn’t know any of the musicians, but I was attracted to the album because of the bass clarinet played by Ziv Taubenfeld. I have been hooked on the peculiar, deep sound of the bass clarinet since the first time I heard Eric Dolphy playing it. I hit PLAY and almost immediately had one of those flashes where you realize you’re listening to something genuinely new and unique and wonderful. I think everyone who listens to free jazz is looking for such moments.

The album begins with the track 'Oluyemi' where cellist Helena Espvall plucks a simple repetitive pattern over which Taubenfeld improvises. I think of the title track of Julius Hemphill’s Dogon A.D., where Abdul Wadud’s cello plays a similar role. But this band has something different in mind. Espvall is restless in her playing and she varies further and further from her starting point. I realize she’s also steadily increasing the speed and intensity of her plucking. Taubenfeld matches her and João Sousa follows suit on drums. The song briefly feels like a contest. The track reaches an intense crescendo and then I realize that Espvall has begun bowing as Taubenfeld falls away and Sousa just plays a light, simple accompaniment. Her bowing is plaintive, as if she’s missing her accompanists or sad over the state of the world.

On 'In the Ether, In a Light', Sousa’s drumming propels the track forward. He’s especially good on this track. Espvall switches between bowing and plucking and always seems to be giving the right reply to what Taubenfeld is playing, as if they’re having the most intense conversation. I can’t get over how good Espvall is on this whole album.

'Come Back Evaporated Chess' is another standout. Sousa plays some fairly straight-ahead up-tempo percussion with Espvall bowing rhythmically but introducing slight variations in response to Sousa. Taubenfeld peeks in and then lurches in with some Dolphyesque lines. He’s excellent on this track and the next 'They Are Fragments of the Sun'. Over the course of the album, he demonstrates the full range of sound of the instrument.

'Of the Angel In You, Oh Tigers and Lions' starts off as a lovely, peaceful ballad, with Espvall’s cello sounding mournful and Sousa gently responding, with Taubenfeld’s bass clarinet floating above them both. The intensity of the piece increases as each musician digs into what the others are playing. It’s another tremendous track.

I could go on, but instead I’ll say a bit about the musicians. I discovered that I did in fact know Ziv Taubenfeld as he plays on a very good album I own, Albert Beger’s Cosmic Waves. Currently based in Lisbon, he has a great many projects on the go. He’s in a band called Kuhn Fu, dedicated to the work of Christian Kuhn (bonus points for the name). He leads a large band called Full Sun which is a collection of great musicians, including Michael Moore, Luis Vicente, Olie Bryce and Marta Warelis. He’s collaborated with Han Bennink, Ab Baars, Hamid Drake, Ada Rave, and many more.

Helena Espvall has been involved in a wide number of projects. Her bandcamp page has many solo pieces I’m slowly wading through and very much enjoying. She has produced a duo album with Masaki Batoh of the Japanese experimental rock group, Ghost. She has also been involved in, to quote Wikipedia, “Philadelphia's flourishing psychedelic and weird-folk circles”.

João Sousa is part of the exciting Portuguese free improvisation scene. Especially check out his duo with saxophonist José Lencastre, Free Speech and several albums with Pedro Branco.

This is an album to treasure, and another great release from NoBusiness.

Read More

Catching up with Jon Irabagon (2025) (Part 2 of 2)

By Paul Acquaro 

See part one of the reviews here.

Jon Irabagon Trio (plus two) - Axiom Five (Irabbagast Records, 2025)

 

Recorded live at the Stone in 2024, Axiom Five features the work of saxophonist Jon Irabagon with his long-standing trio of bassist Mark Helias and drummer Barry Altschul, but with the additional voices of pianist Uri Cane and trombonist Ray Anderson. The trio plus Cane released Dinner and Dancing in 2024 (also recorded at the Stone) and the trio as a trio released It Takes All Kinds in 2014 (recorded at Jazzwerkstatt Peitz). 

 

Axiom Five is pure free improvisation, starting with the opening moments where Irabagon and Anderson are immediately in motion. A playful call-and-response then invites the others to join. The momentum ebbs and flows, with some quite powerful moments, which at first comes in waves of intensity. One instrument is often out front, the others supportive but giving sonic space. Sometimes this space opens up even more and a melding of minds seems to spontaneously occur. The sounds grow denser and around 13-minutes in or so, the band is relaxed and in motion. Around 18 minutes in, they turn inwards and an exploratory section lasts for a spell, before returning to form. Helias and Altschul both get a feature in the latter part of the track. Track two is shorter, about 15 minutes compared to the 37 minutes of track one, and begins with a solo piano intro from Cane. Expansive and free it sets the foundation for the probing group interplay that follows. 

 

This is fine free jazz, rich in dynamics and unanticipated shifts that can be volatile but resolve with tacit agreement.

 

Available digitally at Bandcamp:

 

Jon Irabagon's PlainsPeak - Someone to Someone (Irrabaggast, 2025)

Jon Irabagon's final recording of 2025 is also, in some sense, a new beginning. A few years ago, the saxophonist moved from New York City back to his hometown of Chicago. He has continued to work with an international cast of collaborators, as evidenced just by the recordings reviewed here, but also reestablished some old connections and created a new group of mid-west based musicians. The new Jon Irabagon Quartet is with trumpeter Russ Johnson, bassist Clark Sommers and drummer Dana Hall.

Their first recording, Someone to Someone, is an all acoustic outing with Irabagon focusing on his original instrument, the alto sax. The result is an exhilarating recording that, while celebrating old connections, is ready to explore new sonic territories. 

 

The album begins on an melancholic note, the title track is an elegiacal fanfare, saxophone and trumpet in near unison, but with something amiss, the bowed bass seems to smear some notes in a slowly unfolding interlude, then a return to the melody is followed with drum break and each instrument breaking into spirited solos, only to come back to the evocative melody to end. It is a beginning and an end together that leads into 'Buggin' the Bug', whose melody is reminiscent of something Thelonious Monk may have written. Underpinned by a slinky descending bass line, the tune is ready made for the vibrant solos from Irabagon and Johnson. 

 

'Maloert is My Shepherd' is an homage to a local beverage and shows off the group's ability to swing between free jazz blowing and declarative melodies. 'At What Price Garlic' is a driving piece that sees Irabagon delivering a withering solo over driving rhythm work. 'Tiny Miracles (at a Funeral for a Friend)' is an emotional journey and a high point of an album that is replete with them. The simultaneous solos from the sax and trumpet create a complex but sympathetic mesh of sound supported by a perfectly conceived bass line. Closing out the album, 'The Pulseman' is an upbeat composition that provides an fine tuned vehicle for distinctive solos from each musician. 

 

Hopefully the excellent Someone to Someone is signalling much more great music to come from the musically restless Irabagon. After all, there are already new releases on the near horizon! 

 

Read More

Catching up with Jon Irabagon (2025) (Part 1 of 2)

By Paul Acquaro

Saxophonist Jon Irabagon already has two new albums ready for release for 2026 and so what better excuse is needed to look back at the last four he put out under his name? None at all ... except that it should have happened sooner! 

Jon Irabagon - Server Farm (Irabbagast, 2025)

Chicago-based saxophonist Jon Irabagon has been energizing the jazz and experimental music scene for a while now ...from being a founding member of  Most Other People Do the Killing, to his own projects like Outright! and the experimental metal-tinged work of I Hear Nothing but the Blues - just to name a few. Over the years he has teamed up with jazz veterans like bassist Joe Fonda and drummer Barry Altschul to form exciting working groups drawing inspiration anew from classic free jazz forms as well as working with contemporary masters like guitarist Mary Halvorson, pianist Matt Mitchell and new music's Mivos Quartet. On Server Room, the restless saxophonist dons his composer cap and delves into a rich musical world that connects contemporary fusion, rock, classical and straight-up jazz.

 

Server Farm draws on a big pool of peers:  Mazz Swift on violin and vocals, Peter Evans on trumpet, flugelhorn, Miles Okazaki and Wendy Eisenberg on guitar, Matt Mitchell on piano and synths, Michael Formanek on acoustic bass and Chris Lightcap on electric bass, Dan Weiss on drums and Levy Lorenzo on kulintang, laptop, electronics and vibraphone. It's the kulintang that we are first confronted with on the opener 'Colocation' - the earthy sounding set of gongs from the Philippines give way to the furnace blast of sound that propels the first track.

 

There is a concept behind the album, as suggested by the recording's name. A server farm is a sprawling complex run by the likes of Amazon and Microsoft containing countless rows of computer calculating numbers and guzzling finite natural resources like there will be no tomorrow to power our e-commerce lust and AI addiction. For Irabagon, who enjoys creating inquisitive worlds around his music, it seems to be a chance to play with the terminology ('Colocation,' for instance, refers to the practice in the IT world of placing your servers and networking gear in a third-party data center) and to write dramatic pieces that contrast organic sounds and algorithmic aggression. 

 

So, back to 'Colocation' - after the chiming intro, the band smacks you upside the head. Insistent percussion, titillating Fender Rhodes and a gripping horn line indeed feels like the heat of a thousand servers mining bitcoin. The first solo passage goes to Mitchell who actually seems to cool things down a bit in exchange with Weiss and Lightcap. The intensity comes back and eventually morphs into a chaotic free-wheeling passage before leading into a lightly polyrhythmic interlude lead by Swift and accompanied by the horns before splintering into electronic tones. The sonic complexity and textures in the first 13 minutes alone is nearly satisfying enough ... nearly ... there is after all the majority of the album to still come!

 

'Routers' - named after a device that anyone with a home internet connection should be aware of - follows with a sharply syncopated head that invites some inventive sax work from the leader - and eventually congeals into a rich interweaving of melodies and harmony. 'Singularities,' a reference to concept of artificial intelligence surpassing human intelligence, begins with a tumble of melodic strands and some big-band harmonies. The longest track by a minute, it also packs a lot into its running time. The most intensive use of guitar on the recording happens here, as well as the most prominent hard-bop grooves. The last track 'Spy' features an obtuse vocal melody that could perhaps symbolize AI having defeated the humans.

 

Overall a spectacular album, data rich and emotionally laden with, needless to say, expert musicianship all around. While we may not really know what the future holds, it seems like we'll have a good soundtrack for it. 

 

Peter Brendler and Jon Irabagon - Two-Part Inventions (Irabbagast, 2025)

Do you recall the album Foxy from Jon Irabagon with drummer Barry Altschul and bassist Peter Brendler from around 2010? It was a tour-de-force trio album that turned me, at least, into a dedicated listener of the saxophonist. Now, a mere 15 years later, we have Irabagon and Brendler teaming up again, this time as a duo, to explore a set of jazz standards that all share the trait of being written by pianists. A concept album for sure: take compositions for an instrument that can play 88 simultaneous notes (if so desired) and transpose it to two that can play two or three*. Two-Part Inventions is an exercise in reductionist and maximization, and it works simply great.

 

The impetuous for the project began with Brendler's own intensive practicing during the pandemic. He writes in the liner notes about his efforts to "explore playing multiple parts of a piece concurrently on the bass." This led to him suggesting to Irabagon trying out two pieces that adorn the album, Bill Evan's "Turn out the Stars" and George Shearing's "Conception." Irabagon grabbed the idea and in turn proposed an entire album of jazz standards by pianists. 

 

From the moment the album opens with the aforementioned Evans piece, the prowess of the duo is evident. 'Turn out the Stars' begins with a faithful rendering of the melody, with a melancholic sax line and a responsive walking bass line. Somewhat surprising is how one really does not really miss what is not there. The music is skeletal but also rather big boned. The following tune, 'Joshua', from Victor Feldman, is a more uptempo piece that features some blistering runs. Herbie Hancock's 'Maiden Voyage', appearing a little later on the recording, is a true high point. Irabagon's solo is far reaching and Brendler covers an extended range of both bass and melodic parts. 

 

This is a refined gem of a recording. Focused on standards and showcasing a wonderfully heightened sense of camaraderie, Two-Part Invention is a subdued highlight. 

 

Available digitally:

 

 

 

* or maybe more -  four is possible on the bass and two on the sax with multiphonics, so six notes, maybe, but it seems a bit stressful, no? 

 

See part 2 here 

Read More

Brique at Jazzwerkstatt Peitz

Have you heard Brique? A spicy melange of free jazz / punk / free style poetry, fresh, exciting and yet somehow comforting. Here they are - and they are vocalist Bianca Iannuzzi, pianist Eve Risser, bassist Luc Ex and drummer Francesco Pastacaldi - at Jazzwerkstatt Peitz last summer, irreverent and, at times, heart-poundingly loud:

A few years ago, Brique closed out the Serious Series festival in Berlin. Read here - just scroll to the end: https://www.freejazzblog.org/2023/12/serious-series-2023.html.

Read More

Laura Altman – Holy Trinity (Relative Pitch, 2025)

By Dan Sorrells

Laura Altman's Holy Trinity takes its name from the Anglican church in Western Australia where it was recorded. It doesn't seem directly concerned with that classic trio of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but as I read the label's notes about the release, they offered up another apt trinity in the context of Altman's solo improvisational practice: instrument, environment, and intervention. I'd like to slightly complicate that last one. Let's say: int(erv)ention, the hazy crossroads of intention and intervention, that wavering boundary between what you put into the world and how the world meets it.

I first encountered Altman's clarinet along with accordionist Monica Brooks and piano-deconstructionist Magda Mayas in the brilliant improvising trio Great Waitress. Altman's solo work shares many of the same concerns: multiple sound sources converging in new timbres, emergent phenomena from the layering of overtones, the use of gaps and silences to emphasize or regather. Rather than responding to bandmates, on Holy Trinity Altman positions her clarinet, voice, and small objects like tin cans in dialogue with more contingent forces—some environmental, some of her own devising—fragile and volatile feedback from a small amplifier, tape interjections from handheld cassette players, reflections and distortions of reverberant space, birdsong in the churchyard.

The starting and ending tracks "Opening Out" and "Turning In" do well to describe the dual aspect of the music, a double movement of eruption and irruption, Altman unfolding her sounds into the receptive room and enfolding those it gives back. She works in pure, swelling tones, often alternating between registers to create slowly pulsing cycles of low and high, pushing into altissimo notes that seem on the cusp of existence and at the edge of control, as frail as the feedback she duets with. Tracks like "A Call to Water" and "The Song I Came to Sing" trouble the boundaries between clarinet or voice or speaker, delicate ecosystems of sound that cloud agency and confound temporal order. This causal erosion seems to float things off into an incorporeal realm of sound-in-itself, and yet there's a forceful grounding element that is always present, a strong feeling of embodiment and place, Altman's inward breaths the caesurae punctuating the overlapping resonances—that palpable, vibrating air within Holy Trinity.

In a remarkably harmonious passage, Barry Blesser once wrote of a clarinet note sounding in a cathedral which could be thought of as "a million bells, each with its own pitch, and each with a slightly different decay rate," the clarinet exciting those reverberating frequencies such that "you are actually hearing the bells of space." As I'm listening to Holy Trinity, I'm hearing Altman's patient exploration, offering and accepting in return, ringing variously the sacred bells of space. This may not be devotional music, but it still feels like an exaltation.

Read More

Colin Stetson, Greg Fox & Trevor Dunn (SFD) – Nethering (Envision & Invada, 2026)

 

By Charlie Watkins

From its earthquake opening, Nethering announces itself as a bold new statement from avant-garde saxophonist Colin Stetson, joined here by drummer Greg Fox and bassist Trevor Dunn. Stetson, who is probably best known for his solo saxophone work, shows himself to be in excellent form in an improvised ensemble setting, here showing an uninhibited aggression that I haven’t heard from him before. Fox, who established himself working with black metal band Liturgy, brings a similarly hard-edged approach to the record, whilst Trevor Dunn’s explosive bass playing adds a furious intensity and momentum to the music. Dunn and Fox worked together previously on Sally Gates’ 2023 record Deliriant Modifier, and they have clearly established a strong connection that makes them a terrifying pairing.

Fans of Stetson will quickly hear similarities to his ‘post-everything’ jazz metal quartet Ex Eye, who conjure up a similarly affronting sound (and of which Fox is also a member). But SFD go further: less constrained by compositions, more free to open up and explore the sonic potential of the grouping. This record brings in more elements of drone and noise, and feels generally more orientated towards ‘sound’. There is also an extraordinary range in the music: from the unabated to the subtle. The second track, Reclaimer, starts softly, but without ever losing the intensity that characterises the whole recording, and Molemoss maintains a fragile but ominous quiet. The musicians are always working with rather than against each other, allowing them to rise and fall as one, and this gives a clear sense of structure to the album.

It sounds to me like the first three tracks were recorded as one improvisation, then the next two tracks, then the final two. The shape of the music as a whole is cohesive, contrasting and always with a clear sense of direction, and it is testament to the impressive production that the track changes weave so seamlessly together. The overall production is very impressive: even at its most explosive, nothing is lost of any of the three instruments, but the detail doesn’t compromise the rawness of the playing either.

Stetson’s characteristic vocalisations, which are amplified by a close contact microphone around his throat, add a ghostly fourth voice to the mix. Unlike on some of his solo records, where these vocalisations have a more angelic quality, here it is more of a demonic roar. But it is his abrasive saxophone sound that generates the most intensity, moving the recording towards noise. Moleman, the fourth track, is absolutely massive: Dunn and Stetson weave together complex lines and harmonics, both demonstrating their virtuosity, whilst Fox relentlessly propels the music forwards. It demonstrates the close relationship between metal and improvised music: both genres require absolutely mastery of the instruments, with a similar emphasis on raw sound; in many ways, this record moves closer to the former. This crossover sound of will surely attract a wider audience than improvised music normally does, by its blending of genres and approaches.

Netheringis loud, abrasive and boundary-pushing. The album notes indicate this is the first release in a series of collaborations led by Stetson, which can only be a good thing, and a comment Stetson made at the album launch party on Bandcamp suggests that this trio has more recordings in the works. The album comes in at just after forty minutes, but its succinctness is a virtue, especially with more to look forward to in the future. Highly recommended.

Netheringis available now on Bandcamp:

Read More