Phil Grenadier & Bruno Råberg - Plunge (Orbis, 2012) ****

By Stef Gijssels
    Trumpeter Phil Grenadier and bassist Bruno Råberg offer us a nice and intimate duo performance. Over nineteen, mostly short tracks, both musicians explore the space between sound and emotion, then reworked by Råberg in his studio, which offers a higher density at times than you might expect from a duet. The use of effects were limited to the studio environment, and not by the use of extended techniques...

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Satoko Fujii & Natsuki Tamura - Muku (Libra, 2012) ****½

By Stef Gijssels
    Regular readers know my appreciation for Satoko Fujii and Natsuki Tamura, not only wife and husband, but also musical soulmates, playing together on most of their incredibly prolific oeuvre. This albums is their fifth duo album, after "How Many" (1997), "Clouds" (2002), "In Krakow In November" (2006), "Chun" (2008). Although the "musical soulmate" concept is bizarre in their situation, because of their...

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Michael Bisio/Matthew Shipp - Floating Ice (Relative Pitch, 2012) ****

By Paul Acquaro
Bassist Michael Bisio and pianist Matthew Shipp's Floating Ice is a rather beautiful recording. It's a collection of conversations between two masterful improvisors, and the album's sound is well represented by the title. There is a delicacy to the intertwining acoustic instruments. Mostly eschewing extended techniques, and working within the more established parameters of melody and rhythm, the music made is like the same element...

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Middle East & Jazz

By Stef Gijssels
   It's been almost a year since the last "world jazz" post on this blog, called "Jazz From The Middle East, Between Experiments & Kitsch". One of the earliest epigone of the genre was Ahmed Abdul-Malik with his "Jazz Sahara" in 1958 leading to Lebanese oud-player Rabih Abou-Khalil, possibly the best known master of the genre, yet who unfortunately keeps rehashing his own kind of musical blend with different line-ups. Today...

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Fabula (Creative Sources, 2012) ****

Reviewed by Joe I thought I'd wade into some of the 'noise' CDs waiting to be reviewed in our files. In fact I notice more and more bands around that are working in a completely different area from what we would probably call 'music', a more 'noise' oriented area, built up of work with electronics, live and prepared instruments. With these records one has to find another level to listen on, a little like acousmatic and electro-acoustic music....

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Gustafsson/Russell/Strid: Birds (dEN, 2012) ****

By Martin Schray
My girlfriend lives in a tiny but really nice apartment in Munich offering a great view on a small beautiful park inhabited by lots of wildlife like squirrels, hedgehogs, mice and dozens of birds like ravens, woodpeckers, blackbirds, sparrows, tomtits and many more. Especially in summer there are real concerts in the mornings, and when you are up early you can watch this world come to life from the balcony. It is a wonderful,...

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Ra-Kalam Bob Moses - Sacred Exhalations (Ra-Kalam Records,2012) ****

By Paul Acquaro
Sacred Exhalations from Ra-kalam Bob Moses is a fiery affair, one where you can feel the music as much as you hear it. It is dense and pulsating at times and reflective and searching at others. The opening track, 'Sacred Exhalations' is a wide-ranging and free affair. Instrumental voices rise and fall, searching tones and unfulfilled wails contrast with -- and ride upon -- Moses' strong pulse and kinetic drumming....

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Eve Risser - En Corps (Dark Tree, 2012) *****

By Stef Gijssels
  Bassist Benjamin Duboc and drummer Edward Perraud have been featured before on this blog, both are among the most adventurous and technically skilled musicians on the French free music scene. Listening to them is by itself always a treat, and now they are joined by Eve Risser on piano. Eve Risser? Risser was unknown to me, but what a revelation! Her piano-playing is anything but conventional, highly percussive, full of muted...

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Angharad Davies, Tisha Mukarji, Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga – Outwash (Another Timbre, 2012) ****½

By Dan Sorrells
Lately I’ve been reading Seth Kim-Cohen’s excellent book In the Blink of an Ear, which argues that post-Cagean sound art has been short-changed by an unwavering adherence to Pierre Schaeffer’s “sound-in-itself” approach, and that the discourse surrounding the sonic arts should more appropriately be placed within a larger social, philosophical, and political context. Another Timbre is a label that seems to be heading in the...

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Mika Vainio - fe3O4 - Magnetite (Touch, 2012) ****

By Paolo Castertano Last March, I attended a Mika Vainio live set. It wasn’t the first time I had the chance to experience a performance by this half of the now in permanent hiatus famous experimental electronic duo Pan Sonic. So I was certainly aware of the many-sided embodiments of the artist, swinging from deep techno to minimalism. However, the misleading promotion of the hosting club had me thinking it was a live presentation of his recent...

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String minimalism and the power of tone

By Stef Gijssels
    Two albums with Frantz Loriot on viola, two minimalist albums, very avant, equally good in terms of musicianship, coherence, interplay and intensity, yet totally different in terms of tone and listening experience. Bobun - Suite Pour Machines À Mèche (Creative Sources, 2012) **** Bobun is a duo of French-Japanese viola-player Frantz Loriot, whom we know from the excellent "Baloni", and French cellist...

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Ich bin N!ntendo feat. Mats Gustafsson: self-titled (vafongool, 2012) ****

By Martin Schray
Like many Germans I am a soccer fan. And I was just watching my favorite club being beaten by its “worst” enemy. It was not a simple defeat, it was humiliation – and I watched it until the bitter end. After that I needed something really strong – something like Ich bin N!ntendo feat. Mats Gustafsson. You need the following ingredients: 1 electric guitar (played by Christian Skår Winther) 1 electric bass (played by Magnus Skavhaug...

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Mike Reed's People, Places and Things - Clean on the Corner (482 Music, 2012) ***

Posted by Joe Sometimes it's daunting going into the Free Jazz Blog files to see what's in there, and what needs reviewing! In fact everything should be reviewed but there just isn't enough time in the day to do that. So often I find myself hitting the play button on something and hoping it's what I'm looking for on that day. Mike Reed's album caught my eye as something that would be easy to listen to and a possible respite from some...

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Ran Blake and David Fabris – Vilnius Noir (NoBusiness, 2012) ***½

By Troy Dostert
Ran Blake has had an abundantly prolific career as a quirky, idiosyncratic, and cerebral pianist who offers performances that are consistently thoughtful and refined, yet with occasional twists of suspense or wry humor that just manage to prevent the listener from getting too comfortable. He’s made some terrific recordings over several decades of work; more recently, his solo outing from 2006 (All That Is Tied) was a real...

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Joe Hertenstein, Achim Tang, Jon Irabagon - Future Drone (Jazzwerkstatt, 2012) ****½

By Stef Gijssels
    There clearly is more than one Jon Irabagon, the tenor saxophonist who played on albums with sounds as different as "Foxy", "I Hear Nothing But The Blues", "Mostly Other People Do The Killing", "RIDD Quartet", or his own somewhat too ambitious "Outright". On top of this, he also recently collaborated on Mary Halvorson's "Bending Bridges". Here he plays in a trio led by German drummer Joe Hertenstein, and with Achim...

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Nate Wooley - [8] Syllables (Peira, 2012) ****

By Alfie Cooke Nate Wooley is rapidly becoming the main man in solo trumpet. Admittedly, there is a general shortage of brass players in improvised music so it's a small field, but his only real challenge is Peter Evans (check out his two albums on Evan Parker's PSI label).  Both men are capable of a phenomenal range of sounds from their horns but Wooley seems to be taking the lead in the long-form improvisation. 8 Syllables, like...

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Elephant9 - live at the BBC (Rune Grammofon, 2011) ****

By Paul Acquaro
Dodovoodoo was a revelation to me. That playing the ring modulated Fender Rhodes and pumping out sophisticated jazz rock à la Weather Report's I Sing the Body Electric was still possible, almost made me weep. In this cynical day and age where fusion has been a dirty word for a long time, this Nordic organ trio was making some of the finest of it to date.It's been a couple of years since a proper release by Elephant9....

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The Thirteenth Assembly – Station Direct (Important Records, 2011) ****

By Tom Burris
Even before their recording debut, “(un)sentimental,” the members of the Thirteenth Assembly had played together in various combinations and had been friends and cohorts for years. “Station Direct” is their follow-up from 2011 and shows absolutely no indication of having been anywhere near a sophomore slump.  Without going through the list of projects these folks have worked on together, let’s just say that the members...

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Stian Westerhus - The Matriarch And The Wrong Kind Of Flowers (Rune Grammofon, 2012) ***** [part 3 of 3]

By Paolo Casertano Editor's Note: This is the final installment of a three part post on Stian Westerhus and his new recording The Matriarch And The Wrong Kind Of Flowers. For more about the musician, see the previous two posts. Part 3: The album I will focus now on Westerhus' last work “The Matriarch And The Wrong Kind Of Flowers,” once again for him on Rune Grammofon. The poetically titled work was recorded in the Vigeland Mausoleum...

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Stian Westerhus - The Matriarch And The Wrong Kind Of Flowers (Rune Grammofon, 2012) [part 2 of 3]

By Paolo Casertano A note from the author: I lied, no rating yet...  Part 2: Studio I take here the opportunity to list some ongoing projects Stian Westerhus is involved in. The Puma trio, with already three releases under its belt, represents in my opinion the enlargement of Westerhus' solo potentialities, as you may infer from their last “Half Nelson Courtship” in which the role of the guitarist as a leader has become more...

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Stian Westerhus - The Matriarch And The Wrong Kind Of Flowers(RuneGrammofon, 2012) [part 1 of 3]

By Paolo Casertano A note from the author: I consider Stian Westerhus - together with a fistful of other very young musicians (some of them are portrayed here on both side of the page) - as one of the most promising names in the greater free jazz community. That’s why the following review is going to take into account and give a brief overview both his feverish live activity and his short but already dense recorded output, up to his just released...

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