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Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Tom Arthurs & Richard Fairhurst - Mesmer (Babel, 2007) ****

In an earlier review, I already praised Tom Arthurs for Squash Recipe, an album he made on the British Babel label. He's made yet again a stunning album, called Mesmer, sticking to flügelhorn throughout, and with Richard Fairhurst on piano. There aren't that many piano/trumpet albums (except for Fujii/Tamura), despite the fact that the combination works well. "Mesmer" is of course the German 18th Century physician who claimed he could heal people...

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Where can you get CD downloads??

My main source of CDs is the Brussels public music library, where I think they have one of the largest public jazz library in the world, and you can borrow CDs for 1.5 euro for a week. That's where I borrow approx. 10 to 15 CDs a week. Browse under "Nom" (name) to see what they have to offer in jazz, it's truly amazing. You can also check under "Nouveautés" what they have to offer each month.General downloadsites :eMusicPayPlay.comAllaboutjazz MP3StoreCDBaby (although as expensive as real CDs!)Digstation (limited choice)iTunesUS onlymp3.comRhapsodyLabels...

Monday, October 29, 2007

Darren Johnston, Fred Frith, Larry Ochs, Devin Hoff, Ches Smith - Reasons For Moving (Not Two, 2007) ****

There are CDs which you start listening to and you think "this is great, this is it!", and sometimes that's a disappointing thought when the rest of the album does not meet the initial expectation, but that is definitely not the case with "Reasons For Moving", recently published on the Polish Not Two label, with Darren Johnston on trumpet, Fred Frith on guitar, Larry Ochs on sax, Devin Hoff on bass and Ches Smith on drums. It starts gently, hesitantly...

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Paul Dunmall - Deep See (FMR, 2007) ****

No, this is not music for scuba-diving, though it may be an interesting experience. The cover art is some of the most unusual I have seen for this kind of music, but then again, what are the rules? Paul Dunmall is a British sax (and bagpipe!) player who has performed and recorded with musicians as diverse as Johnny Guitar Watson, Alice Coltrane and Keith Tippett, and who has been an essential part of the European free improv scene for the past decades....

Vandermark galore ....

Keeping track of Ken Vandermark's activities is a job in itself, and, admittedly, he must have fun playing all over the world with other musicians, each time in different countries, with different backgrounds and approaches to music. Yet regardless of the context, Vandermark manages to fit in perfectly well without loosing his own recognisable voice and approach.Territory Band with Fred Anderson - Collide (Okkadisk, 2007) Territory Band is an intercontinental...

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Double Duo - Crossword Puzzle (Libra, 2007) ****

Not so long ago I said that there weren't that many quartets with a double trumpet front line, well, here's another one, and even more unusual, because there are two pianos as well, which explains the name of the band. Dutch free improvizers Angelo Verploegen en Misha Mengelberg on trumpet and piano invite Japanese master duo Natsuki Tamura and Satoko Fujii on the same instruments, for two long free improvizations, recorded live at The Bimhuis in...

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Drake/Gahnold/Parker - The Last Dances (Ayler, 2007) ***

Swedish alto sax player meets again with Hamid Drake and William Parker, after last year's "... And William Danced". Nice enough album, yet no big surprises. The music is free bop, with long and expansive pieces, with Drake and Parker at their usual best, Gahnold not too adventurous, melodious in his improvizations, with a raw edge to his tone, sticking close to the core theme, but as said, fun enough. Easy to download from Ayler Records, or Allaboutjazz,...

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Mat Maneri & Denman Maroney - Distich (Nuscope, 2007) ****

Mat Maneri is one of those musicians I really have come to like in the past years, starting with absolute dislike. The main reason for that was that I could not comprehend the atonal, microtonal and totally abstract compositions he made. But on many albums on which he plays his 5-string viola without being the leader, his role is more "inside" the music, yet that was apparently needed for me to come to appreciate him, as a a kind of bridge to his...

Monday, October 22, 2007

Tom Rainey

(photo by Barry Quick)When I review the list of my reviews from this year, there are clearly a few constants, but none so striking as the presence of Tom Rainey at the drumkit, and that is a coincidence in the sense that I never looked for CDs on which he played (unlike CDs with for instance Hamid Drake), yet it's also not a coincidence in the sense that the major jazz musicians of today seek the services of this excellent and very versatile drummer.Some...

Solo bass albums

There is an old jazz joke about a group of explorers being led through the jungle by a local guide. As the men march and tear through the overgrowth, the guide warns - “Always listen for the drums. When the drums stop - bad things follow.” On day two, the group continues to hear the incessant drumming, and they are eased by the distant din. The guide implores “Always listen for the drums. When the drums stop - bad things follow.” On day three - the drumming was steady, and the group continued their journey with an easy mind. On the fourth day,...

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Thomas Heberer

Last year, Dave Douglas wrote on his blog : "For our New York readers: By all means, PLEASE come hear trumpeter Thomas Heberer this Saturday at Tonic at 8pm. He's coming with his electric trio from Cologne. This is an EXTREMELY RARE visit from a European master. Be there if you can". True, German trumpeter Thomas Heberer studied with Douglas, but still, for someone with his reputation to be so insistent,...

Ken Aldcroft

Yesterday I bought guitarist's Ken Aldcroft's "From Our Time", a record from 2003. I knew Aldcroft from his double CD "Kirby Sideroad" (2004) and from "His Mistress Never Sleeps" (1999), a tribute to Duke Ellington. Aldcroft is from Toronto, Canada, and his musical style is very modern, very bluesy and very open. Both in his compositions and guitar-playing Aldcroft manages to integrate the whole jazz-legacy without loosing his own voice, which is...

Friday, October 19, 2007

Matthew Shipp - Piano Vortex (Thirsty Ear, 2007) ****

Matthew Shipp will hopefully be known in music history as the guy who helped to create genuine, authentic, artistic, emotional, adventurous and intellectually stimulating new forms of musical expression, one of the true great jazz musicians of the 90s and 00s. He is amongst others, the inventor of something called "jazztronica", and with his Thirsty Ear recordings, managed to move many other musicians into new realms of thought about what modern...

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Schweizer, Anderson, Drake - Live Willisau & Taktlos (Intakt, 2007) ****

Ah, what a joy! Swiss free jazz pianist Irene Schweizer is joined by Chicagoans Fred Anderson on sax and Hamid Drake on drums. The latter two of course have been performing together for many years and are also close friends, both coming from the same town in Louisiana. Schweizer has been a musical adventurer since the late 60s, pushing the boundaries of jazz and even free jazz, integrating everything from classical to Indian and African music, and...

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Guitars, guitars, guitars, guitars, ....

It's always nice to hear great technical skill, but when it's combined with musical vision, the results are a pleasure to hear, regardless of the style or genre. Here are some of the better recent guitar trios. And it should also be said, that the results are often to the credit of the whole trio : the bass-players and drummers on the list below are sometimes superb.Adam Rogers - Time And The Infinite (CrissCross, 2007)Adam Rogers brings this excellent...

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Bitter Funeral Beer Band - Live In Nurnberg (Country & Eastern, 2007) ****

One of my favorite records of all times is Bengt Berger's Bitter Funeral Beer with Don Cherry, released on ECM in 1981. But today a live performance by the same band (but without Don Cherry) is available for download on eMusic.com. The performance does not have the same haunting quality as the ECM release, because of the absence of the real African funeral chants, and of course Cherry's soaring trumpet. Yet the discovery of this release is great...

Monday, October 15, 2007

Erik Friedlander - Volac, Book Of Angels, Vol. 8 (Tzadik, 2007) *****

You must give it to John Zorn, his ideas to bring new packagings and new formats for his Masada song book is truly astonishing. And it is not just re-hashing the same material over and over again, rather, it is offering artists to bring the best they have in terms of interpretation and performance with a given set of music. His Book Of Angels series is now as worthy as all the rest, with Volume 2 by the Masada String Trio, Volume 5 by the Cracow...

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Christian Wallumrod - The Zoo Is Far (ECM, 2007) ***½

With "The Zoo Is Far", pianist Christian Wallumrod, brings a strange mixture of modern classical music and free improvization with touches of jazz. The overall effect is very cinematic. Despite the relatively limited band, it sounds very orchestral, but with the contradictory effect that the pieces are extremely short, between 45 seconds and several minutes, creating sound sculptures, which are formed, and then disappear, there is no expansion, no...

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Raoul Björkenheim - The Sky Is Ruby (TUM Records, 2007) **½

Sometimes artists who have performed well in small settings, get over-ambitious, and start wanting to play with a big band, or with a string ensemble, regardless of what that means to their musical language. Ok, once in a while you're entitled to such adventures, but more often than not the languages don't mix, and the result is pretty disappointing. Miroslav Vitous made this mistake with his recent Universtal Syncopations II, and Finnish guitarist...

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Jason Kao Hwang - Edge (Asian Improv Records, 2006) ****½

This is not a recent CD, but it's now available via PayPlay and that's good news, because it was hard to get. Jason Kao Hwang is a violinist and composer whose album "The Gift" with Roy Campbell and William Hooker is among the best I've heard in the previous years. On "Edge", he is accompanied by Taylor Ho Bynum on cornet and flugelhorn, Andrew Drury on drums and Ken Filiano on bass. The relatively short album consists of four tracks of about equal...

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Empty Cage Quartet - Hello the Damage! (pfMentum, 2006) ***

The MTKJ Quartet (acronym for the musicians' initials), turned into the Empty Cage Quartet some years ago. They are a free jazz/free improv band consisting of Jason Mears on alto saxophone, Bb clarinet and wood flutes; Kris Tiner on trumpet and flugelhorn; Paul Kikuchi on drums and Ivan Johnson on contrabass. Their live music, as on this album is very slow, lengthy and spacy, and the sound quality not too good. And that's really a shame, because...

Monday, October 8, 2007

John Coxon/Wadada Leo Smith - Brooklyn Duos (Treader, 2007) ***

Looks like Wadada Leo Smith is definitely committed to releasing duo recordings, the third already in a year, this time with British multi-instrumentalist John Coxon, known from Spring Heel Jack, on whose The Sweetness Of Water, Smith also participated. But Coxon isn't into electronics or sampling here, he plays harmonica and guitar, both electric and acoustic. Technically Smith is another league than Coxon, but musically they are very much on the...

Joe McPhee's Survival Unit III - Don't Postpone Joy (Rai Trade, 2007) ****

In 1971, Joe McPhee released Trinity, the first album with his Survival Unit II, with a bass-less trio, later to be followed by "N.Y.N.Y. 1971", released by HatHut in 2006. Now, a year later, McPhee brings us his Survival Unit III, with Fred Lonberg-Holm on cello and Michael Zerang on percussion. The set-list is not unfamiliar : "Variations on Harriett", "Variations on Nation Time", come from his first records "Underground Railroad" and "Nation Time",...

Sunday, October 7, 2007

Die Enttäuschung (Intakt, 2007) ****

No name could be more misplaced than "Die Enttäuschung" (The Disappointment"), a Berlin free jazz band. A few years ago, this quartet with Alexander Von Schlippenbach on piano, made the excellent Monk's Casino for the same label. Here they bring their own compositions, and very much in the same vein. The pieces are short, anchored in bop, but open enough to be catalogued as free jazz. With Rudi Mahall on bass clarinet, Axel Dörner on trumpet, Jan...

Saturday, October 6, 2007

Fred Hess Band - In The Grotto (FHMusic, 2007) ****

Fred Hess is one of those artists who managed to carve out their own style and characteristic voice within jazz. His albums are carefully composed but keep the lightness and freedom of free jazz. The compositions themselves are always creative, with lots of twists and turns, tempo changes, rhythm changes, new themes coming in, moods shifting, and it's hard not be kept captivated by what's going on : you get surprises and new vistas after every new...

Friday, October 5, 2007

William Parker Double Quartet - Alphaville Suite (RogueArt, 2007) ****

The great thing about William Parker is that he doesn't stop looking for new approaches to music, as long as they're acoustic and based on genuine interplay between real musicians. On this CD he brings a double quartet, his usual band consisting of himself on bass, Rob Brown on alto sax, Lewis Barnes on trumpet and Hamid Drake on drums, augmented with Mazz Sqift on violin, Jessica Pavone on viola, Julia Kent on cello and Shiau-Shu Yu on cello....

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Alipio C. Neto Quartet - The Perfume Comes Before The Flower (Clean Feed, 2007) ****

Here's another stunning free jazz album. Trumpeter Herb Robertson and bass player Ken Filiano are obviously well-known names, saxophonist Alipio C Neto is probably less known, although he's one of the driving forces behind the IMI Kollektief and Wishful Thinking. Neto is a Brazilian who moved to Portugal to have a doctorate in literature, yet who stayed in the country and started seriously engaging himself in music. The quartet is completed by Michael...

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Mark O'Leary - On The Shore (Clean Feed, 2007) *****

I have already praised Mark O'Leary before for his great sense of music, and he proves it again on this record, and how! With Alex Cline on drums and a double trumpet front line consisting of Jeff Kaiser and John Fumo, the line-up is definitely unusual (apart from Jacek Kochan's "Another Blowfish", with Eric Vloeimans and Piotr Wojtasik on trumpet, I'm not aware of any other quartet with a double trumpet front line). The music on this record is light,...

Monday, October 1, 2007

Erik Friedlander - Block Ice & Propane (Skipstone Records, 2007) ***½

Erik Friedlander is one of the best cellists around in modern jazz or modern music "tout court". This is his second solo record in a few years time, and one which is remarkably accessible for his doing. The cellist is known for his complex compositions, often with a strong influence of classical avant-garde, but here he brings an almost sentimental journey into his own past, as brought up by his memories, full of childhood nostalgia. In line with...

Joe Rosenberg Quartet - Quicksand (Black Saint, 2007) ****

This live recording starts with a very nice clean-sounding solo improvization by Joe Rosenberg on sax, then Masako Hamamura joins on piano, adding a few soft chords, then Mark Helias' bass takes over, gently plucking the strings, moving the track a step further as an intro for a fragile unisono line between sax and piano, elegantly accentuated by Tom Rainey on drums. The rhythm section proves to have the absolutely necessary sensitivity to accompany...