Luis Nacht & Camila Nebbia - Noche Y Niebla (ears&eyes Records, 2026)

By Ferruccio Martinotti

While all around us certainties crumble one after another, one remains intact: the creative streak of the Berlin-based, Argentine-born, ace musician Camila Nebbia shows no signs of drying up. After an incredible run of albums in 2025, so high-quality that it's almost impossible to rank them (don't even try, just get them), Nebbia doesn't let our turntables cool down and returns with the album "Noche y Niebla," an equal partnership with Luis Nacht on tenor and soprano saxophone, supported by the rhythm section of Jeronimo Carmona (double bass) and Fermin Merlo (drums), while she on tenor, as a rule. 

Born in Buenos Aires in 1959, Luis began his formative journey studying the flute in Mexico City, taking his first steps as a professional musician touring Central America and Europe as a flutist and singer with the latin music band Grupo Sur. He later moved to New York and began playing saxophone, taking lessons from George Coleman and Richie Beirach. His collaborations include, among others, Actis Dato, Iannacone, Giunta, Otero, Hoogland, Hecht, Verdinelli, and Perez, and a series of prestigious awards earned at home and in Europe contribute to defining his stature as a musician. Jeronimo Carmona is a double bassist with a solid trajectory in foundational Argentine jazz ensembles and collaborator of Luis Nacht for over two decades. Fermin Merlo stands out for his rhythmic creativity and deep understanding of interaction in free improvisation, having worked alongside Nacht for more than ten years. 

After many encounters on stage and in the student/teacher dynamics, Luis and Camila meet again in a Buenos Aires studio, attempting, through aesthetically and generationally diverse perspectives, to define sonic paths that unravel in the nocturnal mists of the amazing cover picture and perhaps also of their names, which translated as Night and Fog. We don't know if this is a joke or an induced suggestion, but what is certain is that the final result fully achieves the intended goal, offering us a labyrinth that challenges the listener, not by imprisoning him in tangles of sounds he can't unravel, but, on the contrary, by showing him the way out, or rather, multiple ways out, according to different everyone’s sensibilities, provided he follows the directions simply hinted at by the musicians. 

A distinctive feature of the album is the working method used, establishing, before recording, the titles of the pieces, which serve as narrative coordinates within which to let the improvisation flow, unfolding between stories, intrigue and mystery, without ever drying up into sterile conceptualism and thus losing the emotional intensity expressed in dramatic and dreamlike plots that constitute the album's hallmark. The interplay and the resulting play of references among Nacht and Nebbia is wonderful, perfectly met by the powerhouse of Merlo and Carmona and, as always, it's interesting to hear what the protagonists have to say about. Nebbia: “Improvisation in ‘Noche y Niebla’ is a radical commitment to the present moment. We are not only searching for melody but for the expression of sound in its most solid and stripped-down state. It is a sound that is found and shaped in the fog, right at the moment of execution.” Nacht: "This album is the continuation of many years of work, taken to a new conceptual limit. My lyricism collides with Camila's sonic purity and that tension becomes the true composition of the record. Having Merlo and Carmona, musicians with whom I share more than years of history, gives this freedom an essential rhythmic anchor". As in every great free album, the architecture is very solid and only the excellent skills of the musicians are able to make it invisible to the listener: Noche y Niebla is a paradigmatic example, don’t miss it. 

Read More

Tyshawn Sorey – Members…Don’t! (Pi Recordings, 2026)

By Fotis Nikolakopoulos

Coming out during the turbulent 1968, Max Roach’s Members, Don’t Git Weary was an album of its time. Political (continuing Roach’s musical statements that started with We Insist!), vocal and aggressive in its own right. The acclaimed –and a favorite of mine- drummer Tyshawn Sorey offers us here not a cover album, not even new interpretations of the songs, but, I dare say, a brand new reimagining of the old material.

Recorded live at New York’s Jazz Gallery with a great band -consisting of Adam o’ Farrill on trumpet, Mark Shim on tenor saxophone, Lex Korten on piano, Tyrone Allen on double bass and Fay Victor on vocals- Sorey and his comrades achieve something that only the quartet of [Ahmed] is doing right now: taking musing of the past, through a current perspective, and making it a product of the present. Really great Black music. Ancient to the future indeed.

Sorey as, somewhat, a leader is a musician that even a listener, like me, who prefers music as a means of collective expression, can trust. I use the word trust as he seems eager to channel the Black tradition that he so clearly has absorbed into a new entity that belong to the group of people that are behind all the sounds.

Joining the dots, very fast and ecstatically, between the jazz tradition, free jazz and the journey of transcendence that jazz, those days, offered to everybody (as did Roach’s music too), the music on this release, over ninety minutes long, is a joyous affair and a signature recording for a year, our current situation, that sees the planet going towards chaos, imperialism and fascism.

Music has no boundaries and sets free powers that can heal or, at least, bring solace. Even for brief moments. I commented before about Sorey’s leadership and that, obviously, brings in mind the solo players in jazz history. But Sorey here –continuing my previous line of thoughts- assures that this is a collective effort with the focus on how to act and react (the interplay between the musicians) using the material as a basis to comment on our dire situation right now. As did Max Roach’s music back then. This is an urgent listening for sure .

Listen here:

@koultouranafigo

Read More

Han-earl Park uᴉɐƃ∀ ʍǝN sI plO sI ʇɐɥM (Buster & Friends, 2026)

By Sammy Stein

Berlin-based Korean American guitarist and improviser Han-earl Park has released ‘uᴉɐƃ∀ ʍǝN sI plO sI ʇɐɥM’ (What is Old Is New Again), a collection of twenty-one solo miniatures recorded between January 2024 and February 2026. Most are first-take improvisations with minimal editing and production.

Park is associated with numerous projects, including, but not limited to, ensembles and duos Juno 3 with Lara Jones and Pat Thomas, and Gonggong 225088 with Yorgos Dimitriadis and Camila Nebbia, Richard Barrett, Wadada Leo Smith, Paul Dunmall, Pauline Oliveros, Charles Hayward, Mark Sanders, Lol Coxhill, Louise Dam Eckardt Jensen, Evan Parker, Ingrid Laubrock, Josh Sinton , and Franziska Schroeder, and a shedload more.

While the tracks are miniatures (as described by Park), they vary in length, some running for several minutes and others being shorter. What they have in common is Park’s touch of the bizarre, the explorative and various mechanizations of the guitar body and strings to create different soundscapes and atmospheres. The contrast between the numbers is impressive, and Park manages to find twenty-one slightly different ways to present an instrument. From the quirky, slightly thunky explorative open-fretted opener ‘All The Wrong Notes’ to the warpy, atmospheric ‘Drift After’ or the beautifully evocative ‘Bees on a Summer Day’ where the listener might conceivably feel as if they are inundated with little furry visitors of the apiaran kind in a grist, but not quite a swarm, as the notes plink and flip.

There are many highlights on this recording, from the overlapping melodies of ‘Footwork’ to the explorative ‘On The Way Out’ with its unexpected final phrases, and the wonderfully worked ‘The Zen of FWIW, Frustration,’ a retake of an earlier one-take work by Park (the FWIW is for What It’s Worth.)

‘Trash Fumble’ is wonderfully spooky and dark, with a frenetic ending, while tracks like ‘Scratch ‘n’ Sniff’ and ‘Coefficient of Friction/(Breathe, Just Breathe)’ contain contrasting rhythms, shaped phrases,, and in the latter track, Park uses the fourteen minutes of music to explore many facets of the guitar.

Of the title, Park says, “I don’t really want to be too explicit about the meaning—it’s probably my most didactic piece, which I don’t feel 100% comfortable about. It was recorded a few days after the ‘military action’ in Venezuela, and on January 6, the anniversary of the attempted self-coup in D.C., and the Star Spangled Banner runs both pro and retrograde through that piece. But do you think there’s a way -not- to spell that all out explicitly? None of it’s particularly hidden—or a secret—but I’d like listeners to come across it themselves.

The title came from a videographic piece recorded by Park for YouTube.

Over the eclectic mix of tracks, Park uses his music to convey a range of meanings, and the impact is varied, from the dark shades of ‘Grade Separation’ to ‘All You Zombies/Salvo and Echo’, where two guitar lines are interwoven to create chord-like essences.

There is the quietness of ‘Don’t Overthink It’ and the Latin elements that creep into ‘Envelope/Duo Minus-One’. The title track is beautiful, while the gloriously loud and gloopy ‘Oatmeal Again’ is crazily wonderful.

Park manages to give the track appropriate titles, as his artistry extends from the music through to the visual effects the sounds can have.

This is an album to listen to with intent and perhaps in parts because the intricacy and content need time to digest and imbibe. Listening to the entire recording feels like you might be glimpsing the relationship between Park and his guitar, one that is still developing and becoming ever more intricate and complex – a bit like the music.

Preorder available today on Bandcamp.



Original track from uᴉɐƃ∀ ʍǝN sI plO sI ʇɐɥM:

 

Read More

Rodrigo Amado This Is Our Language - Wailers (European Echoes Archive Series, 2026)

 

By Eyal Hareuveni

Wailers is the fourth album so far of Portuguese sax hero Rodrigo Amado and his American super-quartet, This Is Our Language - Amado on tenor sax (on the left channel), Joe McPhee on tenor sax (on the right channel), double bass player Kent Kessler, and drummer Chris Corsano. The album was recorded during the quartet’s European tour that introduced its second album, A History of Nothing (Trost, 2018), at the same studio where it recorded its first and second albums, Namouche Studios in Lisbon, in October 2019. The quartet’s third album, Let The Free Be Men (Trost, 2021), was recorded live at Jazzhose in Copenhagen in March 2017. Amado released this archival recording on his own label.

Amado frames the quartet’s free jazz ethos of resistance, truth, and transformation with a quote from American poet, writer, teacher, and political activist Amiri Baraka (aka LeRoi Jones), titled “Wailers”:

"Wailers are we

We are Wailers. Don't get scared. Nothing happening but out and way

out. Nothing happening but the positive. (Unless you the negative.)

Wailers. We Wailers. Yeh, Wailers. We wail, we wail.”

The music was credited to the quartet, except one piece, the heartfelt “Theory of Mind III”, dedicated by Amado (who plays here the alto sax and bird water whistle), Kessler, and Corsano to McPhee. This Is Our Language offers free jazz, entangled with free improvisation in its most intense, ecstatic, poetic, and spiritual form, totally possessed by the music of the moment and performing it as seriously as their lives, while also aware and respectful of the great legacy of free jazz. The quartet’s energy is instantly absorbed by the listener and has a powerful, motivating, and emotional impact, transforming John Lennon’s “Power to the People” and Patti Smith’s “People Have the Power” into an actual reality. It reminds us, as Baraka wrote, of the constant need to resist common evils and keep working for the greater good.

Amado and McPhee sound like spiritual brothers who keep feeding each other with fiery ideas and touching melodic-soulful themes, as if they have discovered an endless well of sacred songs. You can repeat their deep conversations on “Hot Folk” and “Subterranean Night Color” time and again and still wonder at this inspired magic. Kessler and Corsano know when to push forward with manic, propulsive energy and when to open the interplay for an introspective dynamics that highlights the distinct voices of this quartet and its profound camaraderie. Just listen to Kessler’s masterful bowed solo that introduces “Violent Souls” and Corsano’s rolling drums, and the way they together build the tension for Amado and McPhee's soaring solos. This great album ends with the soulful, fiery blues” Blue Blowers”.

Read More

The Thunks - Swarm Patterns (Trost, 2026)

By Brian Earley

…the Janus-like aspect of knowledge and cognition must be set against a background fabric of cultural possibility: individuals draw their self-understanding from what is conceptually to hand in historically specific societies or civilizations, a preexisting complex web of linguistic, technological, social, political and institutional constraints.

-Leslie Marsh and Christian Onof, 2007
“Stigmergic Epistemology, Stigmergic Cognition,” Cognitive Systems Research

No matter an individual’s greed, or desire for personal power, each of us works by necessity in collaboration with a larger social fabric. The utopian dream of nonhierarchical social structures may be more scientific fact entangling our actions in constant negotiation with the behaviors of those around us. Stigmergy, or communications and actions mediated with our surrounding environment, serves as a central component of swarm behavior: the phenomenon of starlings swooshing through the sky instantly negotiating each turn with the group so that the birds never collide with one another and form beautiful panoplies of arches and elastic contours.

No matter the political rift, so must human beings abide by the simple truth that we need each other to survive.

The Thunks, a trio assembled of one pianist and two drummers, manifest such coexistence in their recent release Swarm Patterns for Trost Records. On this work Elizabeth Harnik, the brilliantly inventive piano player who spends almost as much time playing the inner strings of the instrument as she does the outer keys, joins her former bandmate from the DEK Trio, drummer Didi Kern (the third member, “K,” is Ken Vandermark), and Martin Brandlmayr, himself a former collaborator with Harnik in the Trio of Mikolaj Trzaska, Harnik, and Brandlmayr.

The music on this album, comprising two long works, “Swarm Patterns I” and Swarm Patterns II,” is rich with energetic, spontaneous group swirling and swarming, but also materializes as extemporaneous or predetermined compositional patterns. Think Cecil Taylor’s concept of unit structures. For example, on “Swarm Patterns I” Harnik and the drummers create at least five distinct motific patterns they return to at various times through the twenty-nine minute work. After some opening swarming Harnik thunks the piano for the first time at 15 seconds and then lifts upwards into swarms of piano washes until developing a three and two note-thunking at the mid-range of the keyboard for the work’s first motif. The three musicians fly off into the stratosphere as a collective soaring Garuda until returning to the established pattern just after the one minute mark.

After five minutes into the piece Harnik is strumming the innards of the piano like a harp before establishing a be-dom-DOM sequence that will soon blend with the first pattern around 6:10 in the work.

This patterning happens over and over again, but so do spontaneously communicated stretches of interplay. At 7:20 atonal space time arrives and soon the drums are scratching on cymbals, followed by a series of tom hits. Stigmergy manifests in one of its clearest moments with a percussive SMACK around 7:50 prompting a strike on the piano strings by Harnik.

The piece alternates between synergistic hushes of silence framed by percussion and a swirling upward frenetic energy that lurches forward. The group attains autonomous, nonhierarchical vitality as tension synchronously builds and falls into quiet, and by the 23:50 mark the group develops its final motific pattern, which it quickly combines and recapitulates with motifs from the beginning and middle of the work.

A humorous piano splatter and a simultaneous drum and cymbal hit end the piece with laughter.

The group dynamics on Swarm Patterns are remarkable, and for some real swarming, check out the first five minutes of “Swarm Patterns II.” All over these works, the three members shift and fly and land and ascend like starlings or stars swirling in an expressionist night sky. But they are not avian creatures or orbs burning in the nether reaches of the cosmos, of course. These are three human beings showing the rest of us the possibility of beauty and harmony when individuals know they need each other to soar and shine.

Read More

Globe Unity Orchestra - Live at Berliner Jazztage 1976

Just hitting the internet: from nearly 50 years ago and sounding as blasphemously fresh as it did then, this performance of the Globe Unity Orchestra is a must see. If you need more convincing, simply take a look at that list of musicians joining pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach on stage at the Berliner Jazztage that evening in early November. 

Peter Brotzmann: Alto Saxophone, Bass saxophone, 
Clarinet Evan Parker: Soprano Saxophone, Tenor Saxophone 
Gerd Dudek: Soprano Saxophone, Tenor Saxophone 
Rüdiger Carl: Alto Saxophone, Tenor Saxophone 
Michel Pilz: Clarinet, Bass clarinet 
Kenny Wheeler: Trumpet, Flugelhorn 
Manfred Schoof: Trumpet, Flugelhorn 
Albert Mangelsdorff: Trombone 
Paul Rutherford: Trombone 
Günter Christmann; Trombone 
Peter Kowald: Tuba, Bass 
Alexander von Schlippenbach: Piano 
Buschi Niebergall: Bass 
Han Bennink: Drums, Percussion, Clarinet 
Paul Lovens: Drums, Percussion

 

Read More

Johannes Bauer, Michael Griener, Olaf Rupp - Aufsturz (scatterArchive, 2026)

By Martin Schray

It’s always great when unexpected recordings of your favorite musicians surface, in this case the eternally underrated drummer Michael Griener, the great Olaf Rupp (if I had to pick my favorite guitarist in nowadays improv scene, it would be him), and trombonist Johannes Bauer, who died far too young and who was the living proof that free jazz can swing. When you listen to this live recording from Berlin’s Aufsturz Club from 2007, you shake your head in disbelief as to why this music wasn’t released back then. But the answer is relatively simple: the musicians organized this gig to have a demo tape that they could send to promoters. The simple stereo recording had a few technical flaws that could only be corrected now with modern studio technology. Finally, after mastering by Olaf Rupp, it has been made available in good sound quality - and the result is nothing short of sensational.

A long note opens “Aufsturz“, the first track, and already in the beginning almost everything that awaits you in the following 40 minutes is laid out. A powerful wave envelops you and takes your breath away. You feel as if you could literally grasp creativity: percussion shooting back and forth at lightning speed, machine gun fire, guitar glissandi and chopped runs, the accentuated trombone, which takes on the function of both the bass and a melody-leading wind instrument. Dark rumblings alternate with bright, sharp sounds. You don’t know where to listen first because you are pulled from one extreme to the other. Seemingly total chaos (but of course the band is complete control). Free jazz in the European tradition, as if from a picture book. It’s great fun feeling how the fiery improvisation of the opener penetrates your whole body. The sound swells like a tsunami and screams like a thunderstorm before the piece ebbs away.

In a beautiful article a few years ago, the major German newspaper DIE ZEIT claimed that Olaf Rupp plays guitar like only Olaf Rupp can play it. But that comes at a price, the article says, because he doesn’t fit into any pigeonhole. But isn’t that what it’s all about? His rushing runs and splintering sounds, his flageolet torrents, his booming feedback, and his generally bone-dry sound carry this recording. And it fits Johannes Bauer’s creaking, snarling horn, this sparkling, effervescent notes that stretch and compress sounds that are both real and unreal at the same time. Anyone who thinks that Griener’s drums hold the whole thing together is mistaken. It’s quite the opposite, his style, reminiscent of a hyperactive Paul Lovens, tends to tear everything apart. At the same time, however, he skillfully directs the dynamics of the improvisation. And of course, being the professionals they are, they saved the best for last. The 14-minute “Türsturz” sounds like a mixture of wild Sonic Youth, Derek Bailey, Jimi Hendrix, New York Art Quartet, and a distillation of Brötzmann's Machine Gun . It’s easy to get carried away by this force of nature.

Aufsturz is heaven and hell in one. So far, my favorite in 2026.

Aufsturz is available as a digital download. You can listen to and download the album on the scatterArchive bandcamp site: https://scatterarchive.bandcamp.com/album/aufsturz

Read More

Mia Dyberg: Hometown Duos

By Paul Acquaro 

Two duo recordings from saxophonist Mia Dyberg from the tail of 2025...

Mia Dyberg and Axel Filip - HobbyHouse (Relative Pitch Records, 2025)

Danish saxophonist Mia Dyberg and Argentinian percussionist Axel Filip both currently call Berlin home and work together in a trio they've named "HobbyHouse." Avant-garde and experimental, their debut as a duo seems to focus on the intersection and overlay of timbre and textures as much, if not more, than the melodic and rhythmic sensibilities that also permeate their playing.

 

HobbyHouse starts with 'Feet in the water,' where long, hushed tones and gentle percussive vibrations intermingle gingerly, making for an expectant atmosphere. Then, they light off some small fireworks on 'Running horses,' spryly skipping rhythmically about. Next, 'Snow plow racer' combines the two approaches as a slowly unfolding, intervallic melody emerges over the splash of cymbals and taught figures.

 

A stand out track is the very short 'When they jump,' just slightly under two minutes of indeed jumping intensity. Here Dyberg's thoughtful playing bounces delightfully off Filip's agile figures for a fun romp. Skipping to the end, the closer, 'Swimming in the air' exudes a cool calmness, a gentle wrap up to a rich recording, which throughout the duo seems to be able to say quite a bit in the short duration of the tracks.

 

Mia Dyberg & Rieko Okuda - Glasscut (Kassiani Records, 2025)

Dyberg's duo with Japanese pianist and also current Berlin resident Reiko Okuda marks the debut not of their recorded work but of the Kassiani Records label, which has released Glasscut digitally and as a very limited edition LP. The album fits quite well sonically alongside Okuda and Dyberg's previous releases, Nigatsu 二月 from 2019 and Naboer from 2020. At times pensive and other times exuberant, the duo artfully follow their intuition.

 

The opening track's reservation is nerve wracking. The tension is palpable, first introduced by gentle breathiness from Dyberg and followed by a building of austere notes from Okuda that stretch a dissonant filament between the two instruments. It only gets more intense, suddenly breaking only when the next track begins. 'No Cut' is uptempo, starting with a curlicue melody from Dyberg, adorned with trills from Okuda. Here, one can hear the pianist's modern classical roots, which were long ago the focus of her studies before being drawn into the experimental fold, in the harmonic accompaniment. The track is both dense and light, moments of wildness tempered with more deliberate passages.

 

The final track, 'Jikan' begins with Dyberg with long solo introduction, demonstrating her jazz sensibilities and fragmented approach to melody. When Okuda joins, it is with single note lines that interject and intertwine for short stints. The piece develops in fits and starts, mixing restraint and eruptive play.

 

Glasscuts is an enjoyable and diverse recording from a two dynamic musicians in the contemporary improvisation scene.  

 

Read More

Emmeluth’s Amoeba - With Love (Moserobie, 2026)

By Brian Earley

As I drove home from Philadelphia on March 28 of this year my soundtrack of choice was music from Scandinavia. Specifically, With Love, the latest release from Signe Emmeluth’s Amoeba. The specter of authoritarianism had brought me to Philly’s Love Park that day where I met up with 80,000 of my closest friends. A calling card of fascism has always been deliberate confusion and the restriction of information, both of which apply directly to my experience of With Love. When I clicked “Check out now” to purchase the physical record on Bandcamp from Moserobie Music Production, I was met with a message informing me this item no longer ships from Sweden to the United States, part of the fallout from the US mandate removing the de minimis tariff exemption. I don’t wish to trivialize the much more serious and life altering impacts of fascism on individual lives, where it rips apart families until the earth is charred and oil rains from the sky, but I also don’t want its tiny bruises to be normalized either. Information is growing a little harder to obtain in the US. Thank goodness the internet is still free enough for me to listen to music from a Swedish label.

I have long been in crazy love with Emmeluth’s compositions and recordings, and since Signe’s 2021 solo work Hi Hello I’m Signe , I acquire her albums as quickly as I can; a hard miss for me was the 25 edition release of Live 2022/2023with each cover a unique handpainted origami by Emmeluth herself (throw a shout my way if you know where I can find one!). Somehow, her work possesses a sound that is at once completely distinct and utterly new. This album is no exception. For example, mere seconds into the record’s second track, “Golugele,” there is no mistaking the sound for anything other than the Amoeba. Pianist Christian Balvig and Emmeluth bang down composed unison syncopations, while Karl Borjå’s jangling guitar alternates off beat chords with Sonny Sharrock like runs and drummer Ole Mofjell rolls the snare into splash and crash cymbal waves.

At times Emmeluth’s group evokes Don Cherry’s multi-thematic works where small themes emerge into expansive improvisations. In fact, like Complete Communion or Symphony for Improvisers, this album is one long suite, though perhaps it maintains a tighter line with composition than those legendary albums. At times Sun Ship era Coltrane is present, as it is on “Amoeba 1,” the first song on the record. The work, despite the community of free jazz ancestors smiling from the ether at their musical lineage, sounds like nothing else. Make no mistake, Emmeluth and the band are imitating nobody, but they do not come from nowhere. Although their roots may grow deep, they flower into petals and filaments not found on any other stem.

The music tumbles freely forward while remaining tightly fused. Check out the opening romp on “Amoeba 2” where Emmeluth’s horn soon signals the group in the direction of a heavy metal like guitar riff starting around the 2:00 mark. The work stomps along while operating with shocking precision, but really starts rocking as it continues into “Hubby,” the following track. The music converts into an asymmetrical wobble that escalates into a glissed wail around the 30 second mark. The riff returns and soon yields Emmeluth’s alto whistling at the top of the music before embarking upon a noise solo urged forward by Balvik crashing the piano keys.

“Pling Plong MF/Dripping Liquids/Pling Plong MF” follows the controlled chaos with mysterious ambience, and the record reaches its zenith on its closing work. “Something Old” returns the riff from “Amoeba 2” but varied and simplified and played on only strings at first (plucked on Balvig’s piano–or also on Borjå’s guitar?), and a trance-mania manifests as the group continues and varies this throughout the 9:52 work.

“Gåen,” the final song on the digital recording, seems to stand alone outside of the suite, and despite its opening flourish, emanates liquid meditation. It is soft and reassuring and sad and full of hope and is as filled with paradox as the band that plays it. I hope I have no illusions about my privilege in being able to listen to such a complex and beautiful work. The Amoeba is still tossing threads for us to catch and follow in the labyrinth, and I don’t want to grow complacent about how wonderful it is to have easy access to this remarkable music. The attention to detail, commitment to originality, and conscious lineage with its tradition all demonstrate just how much love went into the creation of this album, and it is with love that I thank those involved for it.

With Love can be found here: https://signeemmeluth.bandcamp.com/album/with-love 

 

Read More

Sónia Sànchez / Jordina Millà / dieb13 - Munich 2025 - Day 3 Set 1 (MMI Festival, 2026)

 

By Eyal Hareuveni

The Music & More Impro (MMI) Festival curates new, intimate musical and dance constellations, featuring artists from different generations and nationalities, and even different artistic disciplines, who have never played together—or at least not in that particular formation—for a one-time encounter and experience. The Festival began in Munich in 2016 but moved to Barcelona for its third and fourth editions, and returned to Munich in 2025.

The MMI Festival has released seven albums from its 2025 edition so far, documenting meetings between John Butcher and Marta Warelis, and Agustí Fernández and Lucía Martinez, among others. The last album in this series is of a trio of Catalan, Barcelona-based dancer Sónia Sànchez, who innovates the flamenco dance legacy with Japanese Butoh and Body Weather; fellow Catalan, Salzburg-based hyper-pianist Jordina Millà Benseny, who was introduced to the improvisational world by Fernández (who has also played with Sànchez, in a duo with Millà, and in the MMI Festival), plays with Barry Guy, and has collaborated with dance and theater groups before, including with Sànchez in Trio Mars; and Viennese turntables and electronics wizard dieb13 (aka Dieter Kovačič), who performed before with Millà.

This trio’s set opened the third and last day of the festival and was recorded live at Einstein Kultur in Munich in May 2025. Obviously, the album does not offer the full experience without Sànchez’s expressive face and dance moves, but you can hear her feet pounding the floor. The 51-minute free improvised piece begins with Millà producing delicate, otherworldly friction and percussive sounds from inside the piano, subtly extended by dieb13’s humming electronics. Slowly, it morphs into a resonant, enigmatic, and poetic texture, spiced with dramatic, fragmented pulses.

dieb13 kept introducing surprising, processed, and noisy sounds that stimulated the tension and disrupted any attempt to surrender to a familiar course, and mid-piece, he even adds a heavy, hypnotic, Fire! Trio-like pulse, and samples of vocal artist Phil Minton (dieb13’s long-time collaborator), while Millà transformed the grand piano into a twisted, restless harp. And just as this improvisation reached its chaotic climax, it gently slides into a cathartic coda, as if the trio has equipped its audiences with heightened sonic and visual awareness for the sober awakening that comes after such a masterful performance ends.

Read More