Keith Rowe and Michael Pisaro - 13 Thirteen (Erstwhile, 2017) ****½

By Connor Kurtz
When the apes in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey first encountered the large black rectangular object known as the Monolith, they reacted with extremely strong senses of confusion, fear and curiosity. Soon after, the film showed the creation of the first ever tool, and it was clear to the viewers that it was the Monolith which allowed this to happen. The Monolith didn't bestow any intelligence upon the apes, but it opened...

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Peter Brötzmann, Steve Swell & Paal Nilssen-Love - Live in Tel Aviv (2017) ****

By Derek Stone
If ever a group deserved the title of “free jazz power trio,” it would be this one. Legendary reedist Brötzmann, American trombonist Steve Swell, and the mighty Nilssen-Love have been playing together since early 2015, and have two masterful live sets under their belt, Krakow Nights and Live in Copenhagen. Both of those recordings boast a dense, muscular, yet occasionally free-wheeling sound that, in many ways, perfectly encapsulates...

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Hang Em High – Tres Testosterones (Gig Ant / Boomslang Records, 2017) ****

By Rick Joines
Hang Em High: a trio of international bad asses Bond (Polish): two-string bass and electronics Lucien Dubuis (Swiss): clarinets—bass and contrabass Alfred Vogel (Austrian): drums, pots, pans & etc. Genre of the album called Tres Testosterones Already-Done-Stole-Your-Woman-Cowboy-Noir Low-Down-Psychedelic-Gangster-Blues-Rock Make-My-Day-Punk-Jazz Alterati accrescitivi to add a suffix to an Italian noun(i nomi alterati),...

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Shelter - Shelter (Audiographic, 2017) ****½

By Paul Acquaro
Shelter, a new project from saxophonist Ken Vandermark, starts out on somewhat familiar ground - Nate Wooley's trumpet and Vandermark's sax hurtling a melody with an uptempo urgency. It all seems quite normal until they smack into the rhythm section, and the momentum is suddenly yanked in a different direction. An akimbo pulse takes precedence, and Vandermark joins bassist Jasper Stadhouders on some low register counter point,...

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Raoul Bjorkenheim Triad – Beyond (Eclipse Music, 2017) ****

By Chris Haines
I’ve been following the progress of Bjorkenheim’s Triad project with great interest over the last few years as they’ve gradually released bits and pieces on Youtube and Soundcloud, which I’ve become incredibly excited about. As a trio comparisons with the Scorch Trio may be drawn, although in my opinion wrongly as they’re a slightly different kind of beast to that group, and musically probably have more in common with Krakatau,...

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William Parker, Cooper-Moore, Hamid Drake, and Rob Brown @ Shapeshifter Lab July 12, 2017

By Paul Acquaro
About two weeks ago I had an unexpected opportunity to see In Order to Survive perform at Shapeshifter Lab in Brooklyn. The concert was a celebration of bassist and band leader William Parker's new double album just released on AUM Fidelity, featuring the formidable quartet of pianist Cooper-Moore, bassist and leader Parker, drummer Hamid Drake, and saxophonist Rob Brown. I write 'unexpected' not because I had not know about...

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Colin Stetson - All This I Do For Glory (52HZ, 2017) ***

By Daniel Börker
First there is a beat. A beat built by Colin Stetson's Sax. Colin Stetson on the way to the club? Yes and no. Of course, maybe like Oren Ambarchi said Hubris was his way to the club (at least that's what I read). To prepare myself for this review I read the last one that was published on a Stetson album, which was written by Paolo Casertano on part three of his New History Warfare. Paolo's last sentence stuck with me,  he...

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Christian Lillinger/Tobias Delius - Dicht (Relative Pitch, 2017) ****

By Martin Schray
Julia Neupert, the host of the SWR2 Now Jazz radio show "Freejazzblog On Air", has a theory about the way musicians play their instruments: She claims that their style is similar to the way they talk. Be it quick, moderate, hectical or bewildered - everything is reflected in their music. And she has a point: Think of Peter Brötzmann, who could declaim very uncompromisingly and brush off other people’s opinions very harshly...

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Two from Tomeka: Part 2

By Eric McDowell
With her stunning quartet debut in 2015, Tomeka Reid made her full emergence onto the scene after a period of incubation with masters like Nicole Mitchell, Anthony Braxton, and Mike Reed. That we’re still eagerly awaiting a follow-up quartet album, though, isn’t to say that the cellist has been on vacation. Not only playing a supporting role on fellow Chicagoan Jamie Branch’s own recent knock-out debut, Reid has also shared the...

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Two from Tomeka - Part I

By Eric Mc Dowell With her stunning quartet debut in 2015, Tomeka Reid made her full emergence onto the scene after a period of incubation with masters like Nicole Mitchell, Anthony Braxton, and Mike Reed. That we’re still eagerly awaiting a follow-up quartet album, though, isn’t to say that the cellist has been on vacation. Not only playing a supporting role on fellow Chicagoan Jamie Branch’s own recent knock-out debut, Reid...

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Catching up with Küchen

By Eyal Hareuveni
Swedish sax player Martin Küchen moves freely between free jazz projects, with his groups Angles 9, All Included and the Trespass Trio, to free-improvised, experimental projects where he explores new sounds and textures. His recent releases highlight his free and always searching spirit. Trespass Trio - The Spirit of Pitesti (Clean Feed, 2017) ****½ This is is already the fourth album of this Swedish-Norwegian trio, featuring...

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Amina Baraka & the Red Microphone (ESP-Disk, 2017) ****

By Paul Acquaro
Poet and activist Amina Baraka, has just released, I believe, her first recording on the storied ESP-Disk label. Her album of spoken word and inside/outside jazz is a spot-on debut, drawing deeply on her life, culture, and politics. Baraka is the widow of writer, activist, and music critic, Amiri Baraka, mother of current Newark, NJ mayor Ras Baraka, and has a lot to talk about. It starts with a simple melody on piano, then sax,...

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Elliot Cardinaux - American Thicket (Loyal Label, 2016) ****

By Paul Acquaro
Pianist and poet Elliot Cardinaux floats into this set of music and poetry quietly and when the first track ’Thicket’ ends on the phrase "There never were any Indians in Columbus’ America" you know something is happening, even if you don’t know exactly what it is. Though it took me a while to get to this album, when I finally dove in, I soon found myself enjoying the unexpected moments when surreal snippets like "I’ve ruined...

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Miriodor – Signal 9 (Cuneiform, 2017) ****

By Chris Haines
Maybe in part due to the amazing amount and quality of new improvised music that I had the privilege of listening to and writing about over the last year, I have recently been revisiting old albums, many from the seventies and eighties, some of which I probably haven’t listened to since then. Much of this music could be said to come under the umbrella of progressive rock, which in some ways has enabled me to ‘clean my ears’ in...

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Toshimaru Nakamura and Martin Taxt - Listening to the footsteps of living ones who are still on the ground (Ftarri, 2017) ****½

By Connor Kurtz
In this reviewer's extremely biased eyes, Toshimaru Nakamura is one of the most important electronic musicians of the 21st century. Toshimaru Nakamura is best known as the man behind the no-input mixing board[1], and one of the earliest and most prolific names in onkyo-style improvisation[2]. What might be easily glanced over on the packaging of his new full length collaboration with Martin Taxt, Listening to the footsteps...

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