Bones - Bones (Leo Records, 2016) ****½

By Derek Stone
The Bones Trio consists of Ziv Taubenfeld on bass clarinet, Shay Hazan on double bass, and Nir Sabag on drums. This, their debut release for Leo Records, is a compelling and coherent album that can easily swing from exhilarating bop to more abstract modes of expression. Despite these oscillations, and despite the sometimes loose feel of the compositions, the members always maintain a keen rapport with one another. The...

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Joe McPhee and Chris Corsano Schorndorf, Manufaktur, 2/18/2016

By Martin Schray
It was a longer period of icky weather in the south of Germany when on Thursday, February 18th, the sky cleared up for a few hours and an almost full moon appeared. Nevertheless, it was very cold outside. Inside the Manufaktur, one of Mats Gustafsson’s favorite jazz clubs worldwide, it was quite cosy, though. The club, which also promotes rock shows, dance events and night flea markets, is a marvelous venue when they present...

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Two Guys

By Colin Green
Barry Guy & Ken Vandermark – Occasional Poems (Not Two Records, 2015) **** In November 2008, Ken Vandermark (reeds), Barry Guy (double bass) and Mark Sanders (drums) undertook a short tour of England. Two of the gigs, from Birmingham and Leeds, appeared on Fox Fire (Maya Recordings, 2009), one of Vandermark’s most impressive recordings where he rises to the challenge of playing with Guy and the new areas into which this...

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Tom Rainey Trio - Hotel Grief (Intakt, 2015) ****

By Lee Rice Epstein
“Hotel Grief,” the latest from the Tom Rainey Trio (Rainey on drums, Ingrid Laubrock on saxophones, and Mary Halvorson on guitar), is a live recording from December 30, 2013. For a few reasons, mostly the lack of online chatter, this group seems underappreciated. Yet, the trio consistently churns out dynamic, sensitive improvisation. Tom Rainey, leader of this group, has a resume about a mile long, and surely most readers...

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Free, Not Jazz

By Joel Barela
It's that time again: the transition from one calendar year to the next, the time when we (and most music publications) review music we either missed or didn't get to in its release year. It also happens to be the perfect time to review a handful of items that don't necessarily fit with a site's standard style.  Below, you'll find three albums that don't necessarily share techniques or concepts with more traditional jazz...

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Paal Nilssen-Love: Large Unit

By Eyal Hareuveni
There are very few working free jazz big bands, if any big band at all, that toured as much as Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love's 12-piece Large Unit (including the sound man Christian Obermayer) in 2015, not even his close collaborator Mats Gustafsson’s Fire! Orchestra. 40 performances within 60 days, beginning with a European tour, continuing with a North American tour, and finishing with a second European tour. Such a busy...

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Paal Nilssen-Love: Collaborations

By Nicola Negri
The trio of Michiyo Yagi, Lasse Marhaug and Paal Nilssen-Love has been active for a few years, but never released any album before now. Nilssen-Love needs no introduction, a powerful drummer and hard working innovator involved in many projects around the world, constantly seeking new grounds to explore. Lasse Marhaug is another well-known figure in the field of improvised music, bridging the gap between electro-acoustic soundscapes...

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Paal Nilssen-Love - News from the Junk Yard (PNL, 2015) ****

Over the next few days, the blog is celebrating the work of percussionist Paal Nilssen-Love... By Eyal Hareuveni
Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love is one of the busiest musicians in our galaxy, performing about 200 to 250 performances a year. His playing is often characterized by an amazing level of energy and intensity, but ironically such description of his work misses a large part of his art. Nilssen-Love always has been a sonic...

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Aber das Wort Hund bellt ja nicht (But the Word Dog Doesn’t Bark) - a film by Bernd Schoch (DVD, 2015)

Editors note: we refrained from a star rating on this fascinating new documentary on the Schlippenbach Trio only because Martin provided the excellent liner notes for the DVD's booklet. It could easily be a 5 star review, but instead, allow him to give you an inside perspective ... By Martin Schray How can you make a documentary about a free jazz band and try to do the musical genre justice?...

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Anna Högberg Attack (Omlott, 2016) ****½

By Eyal Hareuveni
Swedish sax player Anna Högberg's all-female sextet Attack's debut album is one of the most expected releases this year. Attack premiered in the 2013 edition of the Stockholm Jazz Festival and since then its performances gained praises all over, including a heartfelt endorsement from Högberg role-model, sax-titan Mats Gustafsson, who promises that Högberg’s Attack will “melt your brain as we know it”. Attack features Högberg...

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Pixel - Golden Years (Cuneiform, 2015) ****

By Stefan Wood
Pixel is a Norwegian quartet that has won a lot of attention in their home country for their fusing of popular music with group jazz improvisations. They happen to also be fine musicians. The group is comprised of Ellen Andrea Wang (vocals and bass), Jon Audun Baar (drums), Jonas Kilmork Vemøy (trumpet), and Harald Lassen (saxophone). Golden Years is their third album, a tight, cohesive effort that is very appealing. The...

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Search Ensembles - s/t (and/OAR, 2015) ****½

By Stefan Wood
The Search Ensembles is a collaborative work, not so much a working group as it is a concept where many people contribute recordings to. Initiated by an/OAR founder Dale Lloyd, the Search Ensembles is a collection of old field recordings and new studio recordings that are intended to be sonic voyages to unexplored places, past and present, mysterious and evocative. They are abstract field recordings, aural textures of alien...

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Leap of Faith Orchestra - Hyperbolic Spirals Vols 1 & 2 (EvilClown, 2015) ****

By Paul Acquaro
From what I can tell, Hyperbolic Spirals is the most complete manifestation of saxophonist and orchestrator PEK's musical vision to date. Rarely does something so musically big and audacious come together in such a complete package! The first track on the fist volume of the set is the core Leap Of Faith band (named below) - a quartet of intrepid and uncompromising Boston-based musicians who adhere to a very free and organic...

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Anders Lønne Grønseth - Mini Macro Ensemble 2nd Edition Volume 1 (Pling Music, 2015) ****½

By Eyal Hareuveni
Norwegian composer-reeds player Anders Lønne Grønseth has developed a highly original compositional aesthetic for his Mini Macro Ensemble, called The Bitonal Scale System. Grønseth is inspired by his studies in the modal scale theories of Indian classical music and the maqam-scales system of the Near and Middle-East (and through his collaboration with Indian lap-steel guitarist Debashish Bhattacharya) in modern 20th music,...

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Tomeka Reid Quartet – s/t (Thirsty Ear, 2015) *****

By Tom Burris
Simply seeing the names of the musicians in this band made me do a double-take. Drummer Tomas Fujiwara, bassist Jason Roebke, guitarist Mary Halvorson are all in cellist Tomeka Reid's quartet?!? The various styles of these players coming together into one NYC-meets-Chicago supergroup works so well on paper it promises to be an absolute dream. But you know how supergroups turn out... Well screw your cynicism – and mine – because...

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The Nu Band (KSET, Zagreb, Croatia; 2/1/2016)

Photo by Martina Vuković By Antonio Poscic
There aren’t that many groups in the constantly shuffling and rearranging world of jazz that manage to have relatively long and consistently creative careers. The Nu Band, with Joe Fonda on bass, Mark Whitecage on alto saxophone and clarinet, Lou Grassi on drums and Thomas Heberer on trumpet, is one such band. Almost fifteen years and seven records on, rising from the grief of losing the legendary...

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Carlo Costa’s Acustica - Strata (Neither/Nor Records, 2015) ****

By Derek Stone
Carlo Costa is percussionist for the group Earth Tongues, whose album Rune was reviewed here by Stef. That recording is an exploration of sound, space, and the often tenuous threads that bind the two together. Strata is a piece written by Costa, and it moves through similar territory. Performed by a thirteen-piece ensemble, it’s a transfixing combination of improvised elements and Costa’s own compositions. It is largely an exercise...

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SFS – The Ragging of Time (Bruce’s Fingers, 2015) ****

By Eric McDowell
What does it take, in 2016, to surprise listeners conditioned to the unpredictable riches of creative music? I’ll speak from recent personal experience: I started up one of Simon Fell’s latest releases and sat back while the audience applause came and went, at which point a few pick-up snare notes ushered in a kind of Dixieland swing. Fair enough, I thought, tapping along relatively unfazed—until just a few seconds later everything...

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