Joëlle Léandre & George Lewis - Transatlantic Visions (RogueArt, 2009) ****½

Joëlle Léandre is a loner, walking the earth with her bass, looking for other people to play with, because she likes new interactions, she likes surprises, she likes musical dialogues, improvised, with no path to follow, meeting, listening, fusing, yet with both parties keeping their character, keeping their style, but at the same time finding sufficient common ground to enter into something valuable. Something not heard before, creating new opportunities...

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Eyal Maoz & Asaf Sirkis - Elementary Dialogues (Ayler, 2009) ***½

The "Elementary Dialogues" in the title refers to the most limited combination imaginable : a melodic instrument accompanied by percussion, in this case Eyal Maoz on electric guitar and Asaf Sirkis on drums. I only know Maoz from his Tzadik releases, but here he sounds different: harsher, raw, less melodic, dissonant, but very rhythmic. The first piece, called "Reggae", sets the tone well : a composed melody is used as a pretext to improvise, but...

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John Zorn - O'o (Tzadik, 2009) ****

This is the fifth album of Zorn's Music Romance Series, after "Music for Children", "Taboo & Exile", "The Gift", and "The Dreamers". Many musicians would be happy to have created one musical sub-genre as a lifetime achievement, ... yet the music here is one of the many that Zorn created in the past decades. It is a highly accessible amalgam of musical familiarity, yet brought in such a way that it is something else entirely, joyous in the simplicity...

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Burton Greene & Perry Robinson - Two Voices In The Desert (Tzadik, 2009) ****

Far away from the avant-garde, yet very modern in its approach, two musical masters play full of pleasure, enjoying each other's skills, technical possibilities, and improvisational brilliance. They dance, they sing, they waltz around each other, interlocking notes, phrases, rhythmical complexities, playing jazz mixed with klezmer, but there is something of Mozart as well, and all this with music that is accessible, that sounds simple, yet that is...

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Christian Lillinger's Grund - First Reason (Clean Feed, 2009) ****

This is German drummer Christian Lillinger's debut album as a leader, but by my calculation already the eighth album he plays on, and the guy's only 25 years old. That says enough about his reputation for percussive skills: broad, expressive, functional, subtle. You get that on this album. And he's as good as a composer/leader. Not only did he assemble this odd band with two bassists (Jonas Westergaard en Robert Landfermann) and two reed players...

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Abdelhaï Bennani Trio - In Side (Ayler, 2009) ****

Recorded before "There Starts The Future", but released just now, this new album by the Abdelhaï Bennani Trio is still good but lacks the powerful intensity and unreleased tension of the previous release. Benjamin Duboc is on bass and Didier Lasserre on drums. The style here is as improvisational and minimalistic, in the sense that not many notes are played, but their sound quality is quite intense, and in contrast to the agony expressed in the other...

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Joe McPhee - Angels, Devils & Haints (CJR, 2009) *****

Fourty years after his first album, Joe McPhee releases again a superb record, and it is revelatory for other reasons as well. It is also a tribute to Albert Ayler, whose trumpet-playing brother Donald he met in a record store in 1965, and who introduced McPhee to his music. McPhee was like so many other musicians deeply influenced by Ayler's music, combining free form with traditional spirituals, giving the overall sound something deeply rooted...

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Graveyards - Screwed & Chopped (Brokenresearch, 2009) ****

Of all the upcoming releases on Brokenresearch, this one of Graveyards is without a doubt one of the most powerful ones. The band consists of John Olson on reeds with Ben Hall on percussion and noise, Hans Buetow on cello and Chris Riggs on electric guitar. The music is close to impossible to describe : it sounds like the soundtrack for a horror movie, all doom and gloom, with slow, very slow sound explorations, full of reverb and cathedral-like...

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I'm working at a holiday pace at the moment ... so no daily reviews.Just a little bit slower than usual.© s...

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David Sait - Postage Paid Duets, Vol. 2 (aPRISe, 2009) ****½

Of all the traditional music genres that I've heard, only Andean and Chinese music I find difficult to relate to, often impossible to listen to, hard to swallow, even to the extent of getting almost physical allergic reactions. And I am referring to the original music, not even to the kitschy mutants (Zamfir, Vollenweider, ...) that haunt some highly frequented public places, and that will make your humble servant jump through the nearest window...

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New releases

There is too much music being released to review in a decent manner. Reviewing a CD requires repeated listening, and time is often the major restriction to do that properly. So I only listen once to all the albums I receive, and then I listen again to those albums I plan to review. The first contact is often a crucial one : is there anything new to hear? is there anything of interest? does it strike an emotional chord? is there any depth and inventiveness?...

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Rashied Ali Quintet - Live In Europe (Survival Records, 2009) ****

Two days ago, Rashied Ali sadly passed away during heart surgery, at the age of 76. Ali was a subtle power drummer, possibly best known for his collaborations with Coltrane in the 60s, and then primarily for the stellar "Interstellar Space", a genre-exploding sax-drums duet between two masters, to be followed by many collaborations later, including Jackie McLean, Alice Coltrane, Archie Shepp, Carlos Santana, David Murray, ... to name just a few....

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Mokuto - Dressed Like A Horse (Ninth World Music, 2009) ****½

Madness and esthetics, humor and beauty, seldom go together well in music, often the one goes at the expense of the other, but not so with this band. Their music is beyond description. There are laughs and crazy vocalizations, sometimes chattering of musical instruments like monkeys in trees, birds in the jungle, maybe pigs, possibly horses, sometimes incomprehensible and a seemingly pointless scattering of notes that never really evolve into phrases....

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Mulate Astatke & The Heliocentrics - Inspiration Information (Strut Records, 2009) ***

It is hard to define the status of Ethopian vibist Mulatu Astatke. He kind of invented and developed what has come to be known as Ethio-jazz, mixing Ethopian rhythms and melodies with jazz and latin music, resulting in very danceable music. But there is much more. His melodies and musical vision are extremely powerful. They're rhythmic, expansive, joyful, sad and never-ending. His compositional voice is unique, easily recognizable and absolutely...

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Steve Lehman Octet - Travail, Transformation, And Flow (Pi Recordings, 2009) ***½

In an earlier review, I praised Steve Lehman's music, with the caveat that too much complexity works stifling. Unfortunately he goes further in the same direction on this album. Melodies change, but especially rhythms, adding complexities to complicated compositions that can only be dealt with by really excellent musicians, which this band certainly has. Next to Lehman's tenor, there is Mark Shim on tenor saxophone, Drew Gress on bass, Tyshawn Sorey...

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Mêlée + Joe Morris - Cloud Atlas Quartet (Brokenresearch, 2009) ****½

Mêlée is avant-garde jazz like you've rarely heard it. Released on percussionist Ben Hall's Brokenresearch label, the trio further consists of Hans Buelow on bass and Nate Wooley on trumpet, here joined for the occasion by Joe Morris on guitar. You could call this noise jazz, because there are no discernible patterns and all four musicians play simultaneously almost the whole time, plus there are no moments of pause or relief of tension: you get...

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