Leo Genovese / Takashi Sugawa / Alfred Vogel - Unleashed (Boomslang, 2026)

 

By Eyal Hareuveni

In April 2025, Argentinian, Brooklyn-based pianist Leo Genovese just finished a concert with The Mars Volta at Madison Square Garden and had ninety free minutes before the tour bus would move on. He called his friends - Japanese, Tokyo-based double bass player (and cellist) Takeshi Sugawa, one of the busiest musicians in the Japanese scene, leader of his Banksia trio, who hosted Genovese in his debut album as bandleader (Outgrowing, 2018, with drummer Tom Rainey), who was in New York as part of the Satoko Fujii Tokyo Trio North American tour, and Australian drummer Alfred Vogel, of How Noisy Are the Rooms? And Vanish trios, the founder of Boomslang Records and the Bezau Beatz festival, who was visiting New York and had previously recorded with Genovese (Eyes to the Sun, Boomslang, 2024, with fellow Argentinian sax player Camila Nebbia).

Sugawa and Vogel did not know each other, and the ad-hoc trio played a short, free-improvised session in a small restaurant. They immediately felt the magic of shared, light pulse. Genovese, Sugawa, and Vogel promised each other that they had to repeat this experience. It did not take long. In May 2025, Genovese played in Berlin with Esperanza Spalding, Sugawa was touring in Europe, and Vogel booked the Bonello Studio in Berlin for an all-night, free-improvised recording session that produced Unleashed.

The music is quite spacious and understated, sketching its movement with delicate, skeletal strokes, without a plan and with no aim of reaching cohesive structures or grooves, as if asking the listener to be an active part of its creation and imagine where it can land. Genovese, Sugawa, and Vogel are attuned to every sound and gesture, as each one opens more sonic threads, but without attaching themselves to any of them. Melodic veins rise and dissolve organically, but the deep listening, deeply poetic, spontaneous, primal, and collective, egalitarian process is the essence of this trio. The trio distills its dynamics on the poetic, 13-minute “A World of One Colour”. Letting go and just being in the moment when everything opens, or, as Sugawa puts it, “A spirit that wanders, that lives across times and places.”

Hopefully, Genovese, Sugawa, and Vogel would find time in their busy schedules to take this trio on the road, letting it blossom even more on a tight tour.

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I Use the Music to Use Me: The Visual Improvisation of M P Landis

By Dan Sorrells

Left: P+D 02 01 02 (2024); Right: M P Landis & Michael Sarin, May 18, 2024 at L/A Arts, Lewiston, ME

Adjacent to a drumkit, two large boards hang above a stage clad in drop cloth. A third lies flat on a small table surrounded by paint bottles and upturned pot lids that will become ad hoc palettes. Each board is covered in paper and divided into grids by white painter's tape: the small board into nine squares and the larger two into twelve. It's the end of June 2026 at the Apohadion Theater in Portland, Maine. Just ahead, the fifth meeting of painter M P Landis and drummer Michael Sarin in a collaboration they've come to call, concisely, Paint & Drums.

Fans of creative music may recognize Landis's paintings from the album covers of artists like Flow Trio , [ism] , and Sabir Mateen . His work is part of an estuary somewhere far downstream of the Abstract Expressionists: gestures that range from child-like markings to purposive strokes that convey the whole body's movement; textured clots and layers of color; obscure figures and shapes that could be letters or symbols but offer a mute refusal. But Landis will say he feels less affinity with other visual artists than he does with musicians.

Indeed, what stands out about Landis's work is how deeply committed his methods are to the same reactive, exuberant ethos that drives the free improvisers. Music—especially jazz and improvised music—has long been part of Landis's work, both in the studio and in a live setting. In a 2006 conversation with the writer Fred Schmalz, he described arriving at a point in the 1990s where he began using music "as a jumping off point to get beyond my ideas and find a way of working that transcends technique and becomes more emotional and dance-like."

Joe Maneri/Mat Maneri/Randy Peterson #1 - #4 (2001). Created live at the 2001 Vision Festival, NYC

His career in the decades since validates Mike Heffley's musing in Northern Sun, Southern Moon. "If one were a painter," Heffley wrote, free improvisation "is music that might be the most fruitful aid and stimulus to the process. It encourages one to get physical with one's tools and media, to delight in them as ends in themselves, whatever means they might develop into therefrom." Talking with Schmalz, Landis describes exactly that:

"I feel almost like the music uses me or, I guess I use the music to use me. There is a certain surrendering to what I am listening to which helps me jump right into physically moving; making marks, grabbing paint, etc. It overcomes the endless problems of decision and throws me right into the act of creating."

Some of Landis's paintings bear titles that pay tribute to the music he was listening to as he painted. But music's influence is more deeply seated.

Top: David S. Ware: Onecept triptych (mp13.01, mp13.02, mp13.03) (2013)
Bottom Left: PIANO SKY (JOE MANERI) (2003); Bottom Right: lp13.06 (derek bailey) (2013)

Landis moved from painting on street corners and in the audience at concerts to frequently painting on stage in collaboration with musicians, dancers, and other visual artists in the vibrant Brooklyn arts scene. He remains a prolific collaborator. The live performances of that period culminated in a tour with the Jump Arts American Road Project in 2002, Landis taking the stage with poet Steve Dalachinsky, dancers, and musicians like Tom Abbs, Daniel Carter, Steve Swell, and Okkyung Lee. Cisco Bradley's recounting of the tour in The Williamsburg Avant-Garde touches on Landis's intense engagement with his materials and an approach to live painting that's still present in Paint & Drums:

"[Landis] would paint through the entire evening of performances, with two wooden panels covered in paper on which to work. One panel was covered by one large piece of paper, while the other panel had multiple smaller pieces stapled to it. Landis described his process: 'I painted the whole board, not thinking about where one piece of paper stopped or started. I liked how it gave the work a sense of being midstream, like capturing a sound in time.' He added, 'The intensity of the music made the painting intense. It felt like I was doing months' worth of painting within a few hours.'"

Left: american road project 1L (2002); Right: j.a.a.r.p. [#12.] (2002)

It was during his time in NYC that Landis met Sarin, then drumming in the storied Thomas Chapin Trio (just one facet of his deep and continued embeddedness in the New York avant-garde). Nearly two decades later, Sarin lamented that he never had a chance to see Landis paint in a live setting and asked if he'd be willing to collaborate. Two performances were arranged in May 2024, and the duo have now met three more times in 2026.

A Visual Musician

There's an enticing trap, or at least a long stroll to a dead end, in approaching the relationship between Landis's paintings and free jazz. It is to interpret them as somehow "representing" the music. Landis is clear on this: "I don’t mean for [the music] to define the work because I’m not interested in making visual representations of music, or anything for that matter. These paintings and drawings are artifacts of a creative process; a recording of my reactions to not just music, but to life and my living it."

Establishing that the relationship is indirect, two smaller traps await, both common responses to abstract music and painting. Treading carefully between them, I'm likely to get a foot caught in each. The first comes from the dismissive "Even I Could Have Done That" school of art criticism; the other adopts a transcendental tone that inflates the abstract nature of these artforms until they're lofted into the clouds. Something like "overwhelming directness" versus "overweening mystery," to borrow from Stanley Cavell.

Left to Right: MONK 3. THINK OF ONE (2005); MONK 4. HACKENSACK (2005); MONK 5. 'ROUND MIDNIGHT (2005)

The first response is an almost defensive tensing in the face of such directness. A move to immediately let the air out before the overweeners get too jazzed up. "I get it. Your painting is like free jazz: random and improvised and spontaneous." Nothing enigmatic here. You don't really have to know anything, you just have to do.Splatter the paint, whack the drum, toot the horn. This attitude tends to badly underestimate the skill that's required to achieve the allegedly facile result, but there's something perceived here, a focus on the plain fact of bodies in action, that can't be entirely dismissed. The process, the doing, is integral—it's what's insisted by these artforms, what we can always sense even when we try (willfully or otherwise) to bracket it out. In viewing pieces like the "Monk Work" paintings, those initial impressions of sheer spontaneity belie the fact that, just as in lots of jazz and improvised music, accumulated experience and an incredible depth of consideration are channeled into an application of skill, shaping an ongoing process that didn't have a specific end in mind when things got underway.

What get overlooked are all the particularities: the whorl of circumstance, body, and action that actually birthed that painting or moment of music. Landis's painting isn't merely like free jazz because both can be loud and break rules. Many of his pieces represent a series of events and decisions through time—sometimes over weeks and months—that are fervently attuned to intention and accident and their intertwining.

Left : 16.35T (2016);Right: 19.155 (2019)

We often fall back on visual metaphors when trying to talk about music, but the counterintuitive thing about Landis's paintings is that their material likeness to music is not visual, but temporal: they are "impossible" images that inscribe action-through-time in the same way that music does as it plays out. This sense of movement-across-time leaps from their surfaces. Looking at a piece like 16.35T, I really do find myself reaching for musical concepts: there's a staccato rhythm to the marks, which have a lively motion in their stacks of contrapuntal bands. There's dissonance in the dabs of glowing green, which seem to punctuate moments in the painting's development.

The paintings have no telos, just as improvised music isn't about getting to the end of playing. They aren't planned and realized ends or even a representation of an instant or "the now" but rather they are a holding-open, a paradoxical attempt to spatialize temporality, or express it all at once. The time-taking is the work in the way music is the running of the clock. This temporal nature is never more apparent than during live performance. There, we see the changing cadences of painting, the transformation of color and form as new strokes merge with old, the accumulation of layers that continually supplant the painting's character, even as glimpses of its previous features remain.

Brice Marden once said of Jackson Pollock, "He doesn't apply the image; he lets the image evolve out of the activity." Landis: "I like to push what I make ‘til it feels right, in some inner logic kind of way, even when that leads me to something that might look off or clumsy, but in a way that attracts me." All of these evolved and evolving particularities are exactly why just anyone couldn't create that painting or improvise those sounds. Those unrepeatable elements in concert with the artist's grappling are what constitute the work. If such painting or music could be said to have "content," this is all it could possibly be, and encrypted. You may be physically capable of executing the work, but you could never be existentially capable—you have no access to its means of creation.

Top, Left to Right: wd3060 (2006); wd2034 (2004); wd5625 (2013)
Middle, Left to Right: wd5921 (2014); wd6016 (2014); wd6058 (2014)
Bottom, Left to Right: wd6831 (2016); wd7972 (2019); wd6562 (2016)

This idea of paintings as ledgers or accretions of activity is hyper-concentrated in the wd series ("warehouse drawings"). Landis produced 10,000 wd pieces in the nearly thirty years between October 1996 and March 2025. Nearly all began as a folded piece of paper that Landis would carry with him throughout the day, often marked with notes, reminders, shopping lists. "Later in the studio, I chronologically staple them to boards, usually working on 20 at a time, drawing and painting on them, often in multiple layers over many days, weeks and sometimes months in response to whatever is happening in my world at each session."

Like a recording of an improvised performance, the wd paintings are the record of happenings that can't ever be restaged, a ledger of events that could never be repeated exactly so. Their accumulation of texture, their creases and sometimes ragged edges, are evidence of their travel through the real world, are the grounding reminders that, however abstract the visuals, they are the products of a creative drive that is selfsame with Landis, moving through life. Though Landis has retired the wd series, hints of their methodology have emerged in a new FP series created on small pieces of folded hand-made paper.

Left to Right:   FP26.78 (2026); FP26.103 (2026); FP26.174 (2026)

Paintings from the wd series often made their way back to music, and the influence began running in the opposite direction. Several have been used as album art, and over the years musicians would ask Landis if they could use a painting as inspiration for music. Most notably, Loren Connors and Suzanne Langille took a number of wd pieces and projected them in the studio while recording, which was subsequently released asI Wish I Didn't Dream.

During the pandemic, Landis began a series of smaller, heavily contingent paintings called "Notes." Each month, he starts dozens, which he lays around the house or beneath paintings in the studio, allowing them to gather stains and marks of daily life. "Notes" can be shuffled and combined into larger pieces called "Compositions," forming the basis of graphic scores. In 2024, the Cannery in Penobscot, Maine staged a series of concerts in which "Compositions" were performed by musicians like E. Jason Gibbs, Phillip Greenlief, Leslie Ross, Steve Norton, Laura Cromwell, and others.

Top, Left to Right: Note 138 (2020); Note 126 (2020); Note 154 (2020); Note 1131 (2026)
Bottom, Left to Right:   Note 964 (2025); Note 1121 (2026); Note 1 (2020); Note 702 (2023)

Accepting that there's something more than brute, unskilled doing behind such vast and varied artistic output, the "overweening" approach—a propensity I admit I must actively temper—starts from trying to articulate the interesting whatness of all those coalesced particularities . But it can be quick to flight and risks overstating its case. In seeking some ultimate source for often dumbfounding glimpses into a pure creative stream, it also risks leaving the artist behind entirely. Firebrand critic Robert Hughes famously had little patience for this. He once wrote that all of the "verbose obeisances to the Ineffable" in discussions of Mark Rothko's work tended "to be coercive, because of a deep uncertainty about the nature of his art." (I'm not sure what Hughes would make of something like Paint & Drums, though I can imagine him satisfied, standing before the large paintings at the end of the show, still gleaming and dripping.)

Hughes's warning is not unfounded, but it's also dismissive of the role uncertainty and small-i ineffability play in the experience of art like Landis's (or Rothko's, for that matter). We find the ineffable creeping up not because this sort of art is a direct mainline to the transcendent Godhead or a manifestation of universal Truth, but because it carries the possibility of ringing within us some deeply sympathetic tone, a personal and close-feeling resonance that never quite carries through into words. This isn't absolute or guaranteed. In truth, it is fleeting and infrequent. But we each know our own private tone and we hope in our encounters to feel that vibration. Returning to Cavell, in "Music Discomposed" he says these kinds of art are "known by feeling, or in feeling," and this underlies our anxiety and difficulty in communicating this knowledge:

"I want to tell you something I've seen, or heard, or realized, or come to understand, for the reasons for which such things are communicated (because it is news, about a world we share, or could). Only I find that I can't tell you; and that makes it all the more urgent to tell you. I want to tell you because the knowledge, unshared, is a burden . . . It matters, there is a burden, because unless I can tell you what I know, there is a suggestion (and to myself as well) that I do notknow."

This uncertainty is not a defect. It is an essential component of the improvised musical set, and of Landis's practice as he steps into his studio each day and faces dozens of paintings in various stages. And, Hughes's self-certainty aside, I think it is also the essential, brightly dark core of our aesthetic experience of these works. It's the same doubt the skeptic amplifies until it distorts into nothingness, easy to dismiss. Uncertainty—not-quite-knowing—is the grip that pulls the artist into the stream, and it's also the grip that gets us by the collar and stops us, to look or to listen. Picking up a paint brush or a saxophone are also attempts to convey news about a world we share, or could.

Left: 15.14 (2015); Right:20.03 (2020)

"Somehow Precise, Intense, and Vague All at Once"

The heading is Michael Gallope's description of what he calls music's "affective inconsistency," but it also beautifully captures Landis's paintings and the particular energy of his live collaboration with Sarin.

One of the more charming aspects of Landis's and Sarin's partnership is that they still aren't quite sure of it. Each time, they gently ease into a start and there's always some hesitation about whether they've finished. This thread of uncertainty runs through the whole performance, is what fuels the excitement, but it also feels more palpable than during a musical improvisation.

Left: M P Landis and Michael Sarin, May 15, 2024 at the Apohadion Theater, Portland, ME
Top Right: P+D 04 01 03 (2026); Bottom Right:P+D 03 02 02 (2026)

In the audience, witnessing the real-time change in the paintings draws out tensions between arising aesthetic judgments and a curiosity about what continuing will yield. As elements emerge in the paintings, there are times when things "feel" finished, or where particular sections or forms satisfy some personal preference. I find myself becoming protective, secretly wishing that further actions will spare a notable swirl of black or a blaze of orange that still burns though layer after layer. I wasn't alone. At several of the performances, others talked about fearing a painting was "ruined" at points during the show, feeling satisfied with a certain stage of the process and forgetting that the process must continue, that the painting in the moment they esteemed it also arose by that process. After the April 2026 performance, one enthusiastic young audience member bantered with Landis about the range of emotions he felt during the show: "At one point, I actually felt angry with you, man! I thought you fucked it up!"

Imagining how you think someone should be behaving toward certain sounds or stimuli also leads to subverted expectations. I wonder if the way Landis is moving should be more . . . what? Theatrical? Synchronized? Wouldn't that be inauthentic? How do I suppose live painting and drumming should look, and where'd those ideas even come from? It feels like the risks of improvising are magnified. And are they greater for M P? Notes melt away, but marks on canvas remain.

Left: P+D 01 02 04 (2024); Center: P+D 01 01 03 (2024); Right: P+D 02 02 08 (2024)

It's all quite different from watching two musicians improvising. At times they seem at odds, or moving just past one another. Sarin whips himself into a storm, a deluge of creative energy that—in my mind—is an arc of electricity shooting across the stage to directly animate M P's limbs. But Landis is opening a paint bottle or looking for a brush. All that, just dissipated! But has it? I presume bolts of lightning, but am likely missing the charged potential in the air. In some ways, it becomes easier to sense these shifting emotions when there's a visual element, a continuing remnant. In music alone, things often move so quickly that only the most egregious "missteps" or a complete failure to gel create notable feelings of resistance in the witness. Here, things move as fast, but your eyes are drawn to the canvas, which holds on to the movement of the performance like streaks of light in a long exposure.

Through all these contours, there's an unmistakable resonance between what Landis and Sarin are doing, if not an equivalence. I feel an immense mental force that wants to draw their activities into a neat consonance, but it's like pushing repelling magnets together. As Landis has always maintained, the painting doesn't "represent" the sounds any more than the reverse. Instead, there's a joyous, if ambiguous, exchange of energy. You can see that it's mutually reinforcing. Sarin is palpably exhilarated. The propulsion of his drumming spurs Landis into action, and the emerging images become mutable graphic scores, giant ever-changing "notes" urging Sarin further. The exact how just evades a tight grasp. Together or separately, the painting and drumming are abstract art that many would accuse of being untethered. But there's something stubbornly literal in their doing. The paintings are just that: caked and layered paint, ink, and pastel, thick and viscous or water-thinned and dripping. The drums: driving, rhythmic, sometimes crashing, deafening, sometimes the faintest texture of hand's skin on drumskin. It is all, plainly, what it is, a frustrating tautology because there is yet, as Sarin said at the end of the most recent performance, an alchemy.

"Whole" and "Divided" Painting from Paint & Drums 4, May 9, 2026 at the Loove Annex, Brooklyn, NY

Fever Bed

To quote another M-P, Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote in "Cézanne's Doubt" that "before expression, there is nothing but a vague fever, and only the work itself, completed and understood, will prove that there was something rather than nothing to be found there." I'd gently propose shifting the sense of the word "work": M-P wrote l'œuvre, a finished piece of art, an "artifact" of the creative act. I'd like to read it as the doing, le faire, le travail—the undertaking of creating.

I often sense that vague fever while listening to improvised music, like the back of my hand against a warm forehead, and admittedly less often when facing a painting. I vicariously feel it in the dim light, watching Landis and Sarin on stage. Still, I sense in myself an inhibiting self-consciousness, like I'd never be able to start, even as I also discover expectations and opinions welling up and fading away as the performance plays out. Once in motion, there's an odd sort of courage in continuing to mark the canvas, to pound the drum, but I wonder if the central task of the improvising artist is to continually overcome that uneasy inertia and just begin. An unstopping at imagination's edge that risks mistake and awkwardness and dissatisfaction to possibly reach something that at best can only be hazily made out, and not at all while sitting in caution and doubt. Unsure if you can know you've reached it. Something about the feeling of reaching.

Left: FEVER BED (MAT MANERI TRIO) (2003); Right:manifestation (before fire music) (2001)

See much, much more of M P Landis's work, including video clips and other pieces from the Paint & Drums performances, on his Instagram or Facebook pages. You can see what Michael Sarin is up to on his Instagram page.

All photos of paintings used with the artist's permission.

All performance photos by Dan Sorrells.

 

 

 

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Bringing down the walls of Jericho

By Richard Blute 

And when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, when you hear the sound of the trumpet, then all the people shall shout with a great shout, and the wall of the city will fall down flat…

-The Book Of Joshua, Chapter 6, Verse 5

Today we’re looking at two albums featuring saxophonists whose playing could bring down the walls of Jericho. Don Dietrich and Martin Escalante aren’t interested in melody in any ordinary sense of the term. You won’t find a cover of Surrey With The Fringe On Top here. They are living entirely on the very edge of what their instruments can do, skronking, screeching, howling, maybe a made-up verb with -ing on the end should go here. You won’t come away from these albums humming. But if you can find yourself in the same headspace as these musicians, you will come away from listening to this stunning, frequently shocking music exhilarated.

Richard Cook and Brian Morton, in writing The Penguin Guide To Jazz, used the word “god-bothering” several times. I’m not sure they meant it as a compliment, but I take it as one. I frequently think of it when I listen to music like this. This music certainly isn’t for everyone, even among free jazz fans. But for those looking for extremity in their music, these albums are special. 

Dietrichs - Live Bahdu (Relative Pitch, 2026)

 

First up is Live Bahdu by the Dietrichs. Don Dietrich, along with Jim Sauter and Donald Miller, formed the thunderous free jazz/harsh noise band Borbetomagus. Rather than sitting around trying to think of new adjectives to describe Borbetomagus, I would just urge you to check them out. They aren’t on Bandcamp, but there are many samples of their music on Youtube.

(True story. I was once on a jazz open discussion group when someone wrote in asking for recommendations for music similar to Chuck Mangione. Some evil person who was not me, I swear, suggested Borbetomagus. I’ve often wondered what became of that poor listener.)

Here we have Don joined by his daughter Camille Dietrich on cello. While this album has much of what you would expect from an album with Don Dietrich, Camille’s cello provides an exciting counterpoint to Don’s saxophone. She’s equally skilled at plucking and bowing, her classical music training brings moments of peace and musicality and then her desire to wreak musical mayhem takes over. Don responds and the result is some serious fire and brimstone. There’s a moment just before the 4-minute mark when there is some relative calm, and then the duo turns on a dime to create a shocking racket. The whole album is full of such surprises. 

Max Devereaux & Martin Escalante - Consequences Live! (Caresse Cassettes, 2026)   

And then there’s Martin Escalante. Another frequent creator of extreme sounds, Mats Gustafsson, said of Escalante:

“This is the JAZZ we need! URGENT! DEDICATED! RADICAL! Unique-face-peeling-cutting-edge- and-totally-in-your-face-MF! This is ALL we need for a better living!”

Who am I to argue with Mats Gustafsson, especially when he’s writing in ALL-CAPS? You might think Mats is exaggerating, but a listen to this album will tell you otherwise. Escalante, especially when he’s accompanied by a guitar, sounds punk as hell to me. I’m taken back to college days when I would crash off the walls of my dorm room screaming along to Black Flag. On this release he’s accompanied by the guitar of Max Devereaux, who manages to hold his own amid the noise and haste. He’s capable of creating his own ruckus but also quite good at providing accompaniment to Escalante on his wildest flights. At times he sounds like a rhythm section and at times he sounds like a machine gun. I wasn’t familiar with him before this album, and have been checking out his work since getting it. I hope to write more about him in the future.

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Luke Stewart, Chad Taylor, Aymeric Avice - Deep in the Earth, High in the Sky (RogueArt, 2026)

By Brian Earley

In February of 2025, the trio of bassist Luke Stewart, drummer Chad Taylor, and trumpet-playing-electronics-wizard Aymeric Avice gathered in Studio Sextan-La Fonderie in Malakoff, France to make this exciting recording for RogueArt. Having recently performed at Périscope in Lyons, France with drummer Ramon Lopez, Stewart and Avice clearly had chemistry, and would continue to play together with both Lopez and Taylor, including a September 2025 show at the Sons d’hiver festival, a fifteen destination event orbiting Paris that focuses on experimental music, that year operating under the theme of Great Black Music. Check out part of that show here.

Deep in the Earth, High in the Sky is a high-energy event. I used the word “exciting” above I think to refer more to how I feel when I listen to the music than to any specific innovation on the part of the trio during this recording. Stewart and Taylor have clearly established themselves as two of THE masters on their respective instruments on the experimental music scene, and here they display sharp and deeply communal listening as they lock-in or open-up with near ESP levels of communication. A good example of this takes place around the three-minute mark of “Pangea Suite #1,” as the two transmute a funk-oriented rock feel into a free improvisation that defies any kind of circular rhythm. Taylor seems to hit his ride cymbal just one time outside of the established backbeat and the two musicians instantaneously take off together into realms unknown.

Aymeric Avice, for his part, is just so much fun to listen to, and I fear that I have slept on this musician. Avice is a trumpet virtuoso who lives and plays in electro-sonic amusements. He spends much of his time on this recording swirling and bending the pitches of his trumpet using electronic effects. And, thanks to Avice’s electronic experimentation, often these trumpet pitches come in harmonies wild, fierce, or even a little frightening. “Pangea Suite #2,” for instance features space-age trumpet electronics that can make the listener feel like they are floating in a slightly unreal ether. Check out the three-minute-ish section of this song to hear this levitation.

The album is clearly conceived and follows an organized layout. The opening song is “Deep in the Earth,” book-ended by the closing composition “High in the Sky.” Both of these works feature Chad Taylor and Luke Stewart on mbira and are a lovely and meditative introduction and conclusion to the album as a whole. In between these works lie three suites: Pangea Suite, Unknown Suite, and Escaped Sounds, all of which feature the exciting interplay of drums and bass and the electro-experiments of Avice mentioned above.

To my ears, the album has two clear reference points. The first is Live-Evil or Bitches Brew era Miles Davis. There are moments in the Unknown Suite , for example, that if cyphoned in ten-second snippets, could have been lifted right from one of these Miles records. “Unknown Suite #2” around 7:30 or 7:40 is evidence of this.

The other unmistakable reference point is jaimie branch. jaimie’s mark is all over this album. I mean, goodness, listen to the same song just before and just after the section I referenced above. Avice’s somehow both soft and sinister distortion on the trumpet around six minutes into “Unknown Suite #2” reminds me so much of sections of fly or die. This is to say nothing of the opening of “Unknown Suite #3,” with its ebullient toms, optimistic bass line and trumpet soaring overhead. Even the opening “Deep in the Earth” uses meditative mbira playing reminiscent of some of the beautiful breezy’s work. Of course, part of this connection is because the drummer on this record IS the fly or die drummer.

Deep in the Earth, High in the Skyis a fun record to listen to, and is filled with kinetic energy and intuitive interplay. At times serene and moving and at others scorched-earth electronic, this is an album worth checking out.

Deep in the Earth, High in the Sky can be found here

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Mikołaj Trzaska / John Edwards / Mark Sanders - Because it Happens (Gusstaff Records, 2026)

By Martin Schray

I’ve seen the most magical of all magical rhythm sections in free jazz / improvised music - John Edwards on double bass and Mark Sanders on drums - several times now, the first time as the Foils Quartet with Frank Paul Schubert on saxophone and Matthias Müller on trombone. I was immediately blown away; my jaw literally kept dropping at the musical fireworks the two of them set off. Later, I saw them with Trevor Watts and Veryan Weston, then with Swiss saxophonist Omri Ziegele, and finally, three years ago, with John Butcher. However, the most spectacular gig was a concert with Roscoe Mitchell at the Météo Festival in Mulhouse in 2016. After ten minutes, the audience jumped to their feet and gave a standing ovation, yelling, shouting in pure ecstasy - right in the middle of the piece. Sometimes I think that even a way below-average amateur guitarist like me could play with them, and the result would be - let’s say - not a complete disaster.

Because It Happens is part of a gig at Café Oto (the other part, Not So Late, is available on a separate CD), and for this recording, the rhythm twins have enlisted the help of first class Polish saxophonist and bass clarinetist Mikołaj Trzaska. It’s no surprise that the trio is in full swing from the very first seconds,. Sanders stays firmly on the drums, which lends the improvisation a dark, driving character. Trzaska uses this for insanely fast runs, which are nonetheless underpinned by a deep spirituality. Many influences converge in his playing: Coltrane, Brötzmann, Shepp, Parker, and many more. His style is both energetic and subtle, he uses vibrato when appropriate but he can also sound very dry and abstract. Added to this is his excellent timing that leaves plenty of space for Edwards and Sanders. All of this is evident right from the opener “Running Loose”. Throughout the entire set a wide range of emotions is explored; there are moments of intense density followed by very lyrical passages (e.g., in “Creator of Creatures”) and superbly integrated solos (see Sanders’s drum solo in “Written By”).

However, the highlight of the album is the encore, “Light Inches”, which Edwards and Sanders kick off with an off-the-wall rhythm. The piece swings back and forth, Trzaska lets the notes dart through the room, breaks off abruptly, plays somewhere in the background, then Edwards takes the lead - the three musicians seem to be arguing over the direction of the improvisation, only to then agree almost instinctively on where to go. The rest is sheer madness in terms of power, harmony, and perfection.

Because It Happens is an outstanding album in every respect. Anyone who wants to hear state-of-the-art European free jazz (or “live composition”, as the musicians call it) should give this release a try.

Because It Happens is available on vinyl and as a download.

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These Things Happen - A Gentle Reminder (Corbett vs Dempsey, 2026)

By Ferruccio Martinotti

It's rare to come back home empty-handed from a foray into Corbett vs Dempsey’s territorial waters, and this mission is no exception. Today, we're talking about the Atlantic Pact, set between the ever-erupting, volcanic Chicago scene and the anarcho-free stronghold of Amsterdam, that nothing and no one will ever conquer. No drones, tanks, Patriots, or F-35s, but the only weapons useful to humanity: reeds, pianos, drums, and basses. These Things Happen provide them with their sophomore album, "A Gentle Reminder", following their 2022 self-titled debut. 

This album, recorded at Hyde Park Jazz Festival in Chicago and at WNUR Studio, Northwestern University, confirms the band's recipe: original songs interspersed with renditions of Misha Mengelberg and Thelonious Monk, presented not in a slavish, calligraphic manner but through a contemporary reinterpretation of tradition. 

The players on the field deserve to be met up close. Keefe Jackson, tenor saxophone, bass clarinet. Born in Fayetteville, Arkansas, he arrived in Chicago in 2001 and performed across US and Europe with the likes of Tomeka Reid, Tim Days, Dave Rempis, Mike Reed, Jeb Bishop, Jason Adasiewicz, Satoko Fujii, Ab Baars and Bill Meyer. His partner in crime on the other side of the Pond, Oscar Jan Hoogland, piano, is a top notch badass. A leading figure on the Dutch impro scene, Hoogland sprung onto the Amsterdam landscape around 20 years ago, at the forefront of a new group of improvisers to arrive and simultaneously uphold the tradition of New Dutch Swing even while tearing it apart. As always, collaborations define the breadth of a musician's chromatic palette and so, read here about Oscar: improvisation with Senegalese singer Mola Sylla and percussionist Frank Rosaly; sound installations and performances with Practical Music and his Phonograph Orchestra; cumbia with Ibelisse Guardia Ferraguttis’s Superinca and the Galactic Green; Ethiopian jazz and Eritrean traditional music with Semer Welday’s Adulis. His work with Arnold de Boer and the duo with mythologic Han Bennink incontrovertibly attests to the caliber of the artist. The rhythm section that supports the two pals features Jason Roebke on double bass (collaborations with Ken Vandermark, Jeb Bishop, Jeff Parker, Chad Taylor, and Rob Mazurek), who replaced Joshua Abrams during the process, and Mikel Patrick Avery on drums (Rob Mazurek, Marshall Allen Tomeka Reid, Jeff Parker, and Kurt Vile on his CV). 

The record: Jackson's opening track "20 Years Past 12 O'Clock," a sonic excursus that moves across multiple time scales, is followed by a piece by Hoogland dedicated to Ab Baars, "Upperclass Underground," and a reinterpretation of Monk’s "Green Chimneys," whose genesis is described as follows: "it started out as a punk song on the setlist before taking a thin-threaded turn on the night." Two original compositions keep the pace in the right mood, constantly balancing compositional rigor with a loose flow, free from excessive constraints. The revisitation of Mengelberg's "Een Beetje Zenuwachtig," from minor to major, pays homage to the legendary Ukrainian pianist's key change when he played "Round Midnight" in Chicago, while "Well You Needn't" pushes Monk "max so far," as Hoogland puts it, with a sculptural declination of an ongoing sonic pendulum swinging between modernity and tradition. The album closes with “Over het Zijn en het Hoera”, its title drawn from an absurdist story by Dutch writer and artist Armando. 

As it has rightly been said, this is music that knows its history inside out and wears it lightly. The generosity of spirit here, between players, between cities, between Monk and Mengelberg, between composition and the moment, is the real subject. You know, sometimes things like these happen.

 

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Okuda Müller Hall - ³√ (Unit Records, 2026)

By Martin Schray

In July, Europe was grappling with extremely high temperatures and, as a result, thunderstorms due to the heat dome over the continent. I live on the top floor of an apartment building and therefore had a particularly privileged view of these natural spectacles. On one occasion, I could see such a storm approaching - a dark wall rapidly pushing toward the city - though it was obvious that the weather front would only graze the city. The gusts of wind were fierce, trees bent under the force of nature, thunder roared, and lightning lit up the sky. But why am I telling you this? Because it fits perfectly with “Equilibrum”, the first track on the new album by the international trio Okuda Müller Hall - Rieko Okuda (Japan; piano), Matthias Müller (Germany, trombone), and Samuel Hall (Australia, drums) - perfectly. At first, the drums just tingle softly; Hall rubs the toms and strokes the cymbals, while Müller delivers an unsettling drone that shifts only slightly. Sometimes it grows louder, then fades again; it literally fluctuates. Then the piano slowly enters the picture, with Okuda attacking the interior of the instrument. Almost imperceptibly, everything grows louder, darker, and more menacing. The thunderstorm is now over you, but only a few heavy drops are falling, symbolized by isolated piano notes. Even though you know you’ll get off lightly, a hauntingly beautiful, fascinating feeling lingers.

“Six Lights,” the third and longest track on the album, continues this form of improvisation in a similar vein. Müller, however, forgoes the drone, opting instead for deliberate, sustained notes over which Okuda showers bright piano sprinkles, while Hall works his magic on the dark drums and simultaneously manipulates extended materials. Müller then takes a two-and-a-half-minute break, and when he rejoins the piece, it actually sounds like contemporary European free jazz or like - say - a trippy ECM recording.

In general, ³√ (“Cube Root”) combines wide-ranging developments with a finely balanced structure, it’s a perfect showcase of Berlin’s Echtzeitmusik scene, the trio’s music flows organically into a distinct sonic language - multi-layered, crystal clear, a combination of density and openness. The liner notes mention that an “acoustic space of great depth and fluidity unfolds, within which a steady pull develops, drawing the listener ever deeper into this flowing, ever-changing soundscape“.

My favorite track on the album, though, is the last one, “Sputnik.” The thunder and lightning of the opener are gone; what remains is the wind - rough, wild, hissing around the corners and producing strange sounds. Rieko Okuda creates a powerful soundscape against which Müller and Hall enjoy a great deal of freedom, and which ultimately proves what they are - in a musical sense: a force of nature. The album ends with a few subtle dabs of piano. Fascinating and stunningly beautiful.

³√ is available as a download. You can listen to the cording here:

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[Ahmed]أحمد - Live at Cafe OTO, London, 12/11/2025

What can we say about [Ahmed] that hasn't been said already on these pages by Ferruccio Martinotti, Fotis Nikolakopoulos, Stuart Broomer, Lee Rice Epstein, Sarah Grosser and Paul Acquaro?

So, instead of trying to say more, we say, take a front row seat at Cafe OTO and enjoy a show: 

Video by roustghoti, published on YouTube.

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Bezau Beatz, Aug. 6-9, 2026, Bezau, Austria

By Eyal Hareuveni

Second time at the Bezau Beatz festival, located in a small, beautiful, and most peaceful village in the Austrian Alps, but much closer to Switzerland, Italy and Germany than to the Austrian free music scenes. Thanks to the festival's artistic directors and producers - drummers Alfred Vogel and Valentin Schuster - the festival has managed to create a friendly and highly attentive community of music lovers and musicians that is welcoming and shares all kinds of musical adventures and experiments. A perfect place to take a vacation from the local or global disturbing reality and its abhorrent horrors and stupidities, and find some nurturing, fresh air - literally. This festival will celebrate its 20th anniversary next year.

1st Day, Aug. 6

The festival opened with the Danish-Norwegian quartet Emmeluth’s Amoeba - alto sax player and bandleader Signe Emmeluth, her partner, guitarist Karl Bjorå, pianist Christian Balvig, and drummer Ole Mofjell - which stormed the intimate space at the festival’s headquarters, Hotel Post. This quartet has already released four albums and has developed a tight, telepathic interplay, using Emmeluth’s skeletal compositional motifs for exploratory, intense rhythmic improvisations. There were times that the interplay sounded as if Bjorå, Balvig, and Mofjell challenged Emmeluth’s commanding, natural flow of ideas with playful, even disruptive moves. Still, she used their tactics to steer the quartet into collective, even more powerful, cathartic eruptions.

Later, down at the hotel’s basement - the SuBBwayZ - the duo NarrSteidle - German guitarist and electronics player Steffi Narr and drummer and electronics player Oliver Steidle (of The Killing Popes and Ilog), who has released a debut album on Vogel and Schuster’s Boomaslang label (Ghost Ants, 2025), weaved resonant acoustic, electronic, and processed sounds into fragmented rhythmic patterns, that slowly evolved into rich yet twisted and restless grooves.

The evening program moved to the main space - The Remise, a vintage locomotive garage most days of the year (with a strong aroma of grease), where Danish guitarist Teis Semey (who confessed that he has never seen mountains so high before) led his Amsterdam-based quintet: alto sax player José Soares, tenor sax player Jesse Schilderink, double bass player Jort Terwijn and drummer Giovanni Iacovella - with a set of playful pieces that flirted with free jazz, fusion and even pop songs, charged with youthful, passionate uplifting energy.

The following performance of the German, all-female quartet Hilde - vocalist Marie Daniels, violinist Julia Brüssel, cellist Emily Wittbrodt, and trombonist Maria Trautmann - was completely different. This quartet has already released three impressive albums (the most recent, Timbre, on Boomslang, 2026) and offered its refined aesthetics that search for unexpected ties between abstract timbral invention, chamber art song format, and free improvisation, with elegant grace, organic interplay, and wit, always highlighting the four distinct voices. Hilde never chose familiar routes, and it explored coordinates of time and space with its own mysterious and thoughtful inner logic. There were some arresting musical games, especially when trombonist Trautmann contrasted Daniels’ warm and beautiful vocal delivery with her subversive, ironic trombone vocalization.

The day ended at the Hoel Post with Schuster’s new quartet WOBBLE8 - baritone sax player Sofia Salvo (of Kuhn Fu), guitarist-vocalist Dan Peter Sundland (of Frank Gratkowski's Entrainmen, and Lina Allemano's Ohrenschmaus), vintage synth player Sebastian Pfeifer, and Schuster with a drum set with two pedals on the bass drum. This quartet prepares for the release of its debut album soon, The Moon is not there when nobody looks and exploded on the small stage with manic energy, propelled by Schuster’s massive, metal-like drumming, Salvo’s merciless Ayler-ian blows, Pfeifer’s prog-rock keyboard layers, and Sundland’s spiky guitar lines. The endless Dadaist-apocalyptic energy could supply enough electricity for the whole region for months. Looking forward to exploring WOBBLE8’s new album.

2nd Day, Aug.7

 

Austrian, New York-based Luisa Muhr opened the day’s program with an early performance of her conceptual work TEUFLIN/SHE-DEVIL (released on Boomslang, 2024), a feminine, irreverent interpretation of original, rich German texts from Goethe’s Faust, accompanied by cellist Elisabeth Coudoux and tenor sax player Jonathan Reisin, all dressed in black, and performing in the small church, Kloster Bezau. This work is based on a graphic score and questions the concept of "evil" from a female perspective, the separation of "good" and "evil," as it is particularly ingrained in Western traditions, and contemplates issues of life, death, and morality. It centers on Goethe’s phrase “Was glänzt, ist für den Augenblick geboren; / Das Echte bleibt der Nachwelt unverloren” (What dazzles, for the moment spends its spirit; / What’s genuine, shall Posterity inherit). Clearly, not the easiest issues to process early in the morning, but the wise, graceful performance of Muhr, Coudoux, and Reisin charmed and deeply moved the audience, some even to tears.

 

Luckily, the next performance of the free improvising trio of Portuguese alto sax hero José Lencastre and bassist João Hasselberg and Danish master drummer Kresten Osgood changed the atmosphere. This trio released its debut album last year, This Anger is a Liar (Fundacja Słuchaj!; the title is taken from a song by Kip Hanrahan), and the performance suggested how three idiosyncratic and opinionated improvisers converse and explore the unique space of the local artist locksmith’s workshop, Kunstschmiede Figer, and its artifacts. Lencstre opted for exploring brief melodic and introspective ideas; Osgood, with a Ninja Turtles T-shirt, was, as usual, all over, playing his drum kit as if he was making love to it, with commanding pathos but equipped with a profound musical sensibility, provoking the audience with his eccentric antics, but completely bewitching all; and asselberg was torturing his bass guitar (titled “Lily”) with feedback sounds, aggressive hammering, and effects. Somehow it all made perfect sense, as the trio relied on its deep listening dynamics to search for uncharted timbres and resonances, even when Osgood sang solo the Hanrahan’s song. The performance ended with Hasselberg dismantling the neck of the guitar and rubbing the bass string against the pickups, offering a symbolic interpretation of Eric Dolphy's immortal saying: “When you hear music, after it's over, it's gone, in the air. You can never capture it again”. All left this performance with a big smile on their faces, agreeing that our world needs many more Krestens desperately.

The afternoon performances returned to Hotel Post with a performance by the German, Cologne-based Philip Zoubek Trio - Zoubek on piano and synth, double bass player David Helm, and drummer-percussionist Dominik Mahnig. This trio has released five albums (including one in its electric version as Placebo Domingo) and is about to release its sixth one soon on Boomslang. It played a highly powerful set that highlighted its tight, inexhaustible, resonant kinetic-rhythmic energy as if it were a three-headed sonic entity, synchronized to the most minute detail, while following the intricate, composed score.

Down at the SuBBwayZ, the futurist trio Meat.Karaoke.Quality.Time. - EWI and Moog synth players Florian Walter and Jan Klare, and Karl-F. Degenhardt on sensory and AI percussion, all dressed in black, as mad scientists from another planet. They cooked otherworldly - literally - weird but accessible sonic spices.

Back in the Remise, Argentinian, Berlin-based tenor sax player Camila Nebbia presented her sextet, The Hanged One, inspired by the tarot card number 12, representing letting go, patience, reassessment, insight, and sacrifice, which is usually a symbol for new perspectives. This band: : cellist Julia Biłat, guitarist Arne Braun, electronics player Andres Marino, double bass player Vinicius Cajado, and drummer Lukas Akintaya, is about to release a new album by Relative Pitch. The sextet explored the tension between jazz-tinged composed parts with powerful grooves and experimental improvisation and timbral explorations, with Biłat and Marino more active on this edge. Nebbia encouraged individual, generous solos that allowed all ideas to be turned upside down, and new perspectives to emerge without fear of clash, but Nebbia’s economic, soulful solos glued all contrasting poles into an impressive, coherent statement.

Next, at the same location, French drummer Edward Perraud presented his Sauvages Paradis (White Paradise) quartet - organ player and pianist Eve Risser (the leader of Red Desert Orchestra), flutist Delphine Joussein (of Nout trio and the Flöjter duo with Mats Gustafsson) and guitarist Arthur Delaleu. This collective quartet just released its criminally short debut album, Wild Thing (Gigantonium, 2026), and immediately captured the audience with its hyperactive, ever-inventive, and inspired sonic paradise. This quartet created cathartic, hypnotic, and trance-like textures that demonstrated how these resourceful improvisers keep feeding and pushing each other, with generous doses of humour, ecstatic storms, and dream-like, cosmic soundscapes. Perraud sang in gibberish, played on a strange guitar, Risser introduced North African meditative pulses on the piano, and Joussein transformed her flute into a mean, effects-laden electric guitar, and only Delaleu sat still as if the exhilarating sonic mayhem did not touch him. This quartet delivered on its promise from its album: “surrendering to the collective fever and opening yourself up to a journey of no return”.

Day 3, Aug 8

The morning performance began with "Three men in a church with no Maria", the Littorina Saxophone Trio - Finnish Mikko Innanen, Swedish Fredrik Ljungkvist, and Lithuanian Liudas Mockūnas - playing within the beautiful acoustics of the ancient Kirche Reuthe, but without its founding member, Estonian Maria Faust, who had another engagement. This quartet of reed masters, who play the saxophone family, from the sopranino to the bass, is titled after the original name of the Baltic Sea and released a debut album last year. Leaking Pipes (NoBusiness, 2025). The touching, beautiful set stressed the profound, emphatic, and playful dynamics of this trio and its own independent aesthetics, rooted in Nordic folk motifs and European schools of modern jazz. Ljungkvist’s soulful, moving ballad “Nils-Olof”, dedicated to his father-in-law who passed away, and the trio’s interpretation of Ljungkvist's “Oslo”, were the highlights of this set, which could have been much, much longer, as far as the attentive audience cared.

In the afternoon, Israeli-born, New York-based tenor sax player Jonathan Reisin presented his thought-provoking, complex compositions from his album Too Good X Unreality (Boomslang, 2025) at the Remise, with Korean-born, Amsterdam-based pianist Chaerin Im and Italian drummer Francesca Remigi (neither played on the album). Reisin introduces post-Cageian extended techniques and Steve Reich-like minimalism, and his sax playing and his compositions suggest a distant, sober, often even ironic perspective on the jazz legacy. This performance allowed his demanding, intricate compositions to blossom with the new voices of Im and Remigi, and often Reisin simply stood aside and enjoyed how they breathed new, unpredictable fresh air into his ideas, letting this ad-hoc trio push the boundaries of its instruments.

At the same location, Finnish, Berlin-based guitarist Kalle Kalima presented his new trio Detours, with German drummer Christian Lillinger (who plays with Kalima in the KUU! quartet) and Argentinian, Brooklyn-based keyboard player Leo Genovese, who played the Hammond organ, Crumar electric piano, Korg synth, and piano. This trio was formed in the 2025 edition of the Saalfelden Jazz Festival, but this was one of its first-ever performances, and music was composed, focusing on the high-energy, dense, and physical rhythmic outputs of these gifted, versatile improvisers, with little variance in the radical, electric textures. But there were times that I could swear that Genovese had at least four hands, if not much more.

The night ended at the same location with the first-ever performance of the Vanish trio - the one and only American vocal artist Shelley Hirsch, Swiss master double bass player Christian Weber, and master drummer Alfred Vogel. This trio released its debut album earlier this year on Boomslang that revolved around Hirsch’s stream of thoughts, observations, insights, and stories. It was clear from the first moment that Hirsch is a natural on stage, with a deeply sensual, touching presence that immediately bewitched the audience, as well as Weber and Vogel, who kept challenging her with fragmented rhythmic patterns. Hirsch transformed this performance into a funny, moving, and thoughtful love letter to the festival, to the appreciative audience, and especially to the “beautiful white-haired women of Bezau” and to Weber and Vogel. She did so with a remarkable, commanding ability to shape the English and the German languages to her needs, with amusing onomatopoeic games, and poetic quotes from jazz standards. I hope that this trio will find more opportunities to explore its great potential.

Day 4, Aug. 9

The festival ended with a morning performance at the Remise with a guest band from a twin festival in Porto, Portugal. Portuguese, Amsterdam-based Vocal artist and composer Vera Morais presented her new quintet EUPNEA - with vocalists Līva Dumpe, Sarah van Eijk, and flutists Teresa Costa and Ketija Ringa-Karahona - that just released a debut album. Morais’ compositions offer a beautiful, touching synergy of breath, air, and vocal pitches, flirting with contemporary music and influences of Meredith Monk ensembles, and encapsulate the quintet as a human organ that explores highly immersive chamber music. Morais is a creative force worth following.

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MoE & Ikuro Takahashi featuring Signe Emmeluth - Live at Børsen Kulturhus

 

By William Rossi

MoE, the vocals, guitar and bass duo of Guro Moe and Håvard Skaset, is one of the most interesting rock acts around today, merging aggression and a punk attitude and with a love for improvised and experimental music. On this release they're joined by frequent collaborator Ikuro Takahashi on drums and alto saxophonist powerhouse Signe Emmeluth. While collaboration and experimentation are to be expected with this band this record is notable for mainly two reasons: it was recorded live in concert (which came as a surprise to me because their chemistry is so great that I'd assumed a lot of their records were recorded live) and it's the first MoE album in which frontwoman and backbone of the band Guro Moe trades her trusty electric bass for a double bass.

While each of the six untitled tracks has its own identity, the album is a full gig recording with the dynamics of a concert as a consequence. After a short minute of mood setting and acclimatization the four musicians get straight to business with pummeling, fluid drumming, furious guitar bashing and driving bass setting the stage for Emmeluth to shine on her sax. This no holds barred first track immediately shows just how tight this band is and will be throughout the album, the especially fantastic interplay between the sax and the guitar being a highlight. The second track brings the energy down a bit and rests on Moe's signature bass playing, simultaneously gluing the band together and laying down a delightfully off-kilter groove. Takahashi and Skaset take a step back, the former focusing mainly on the cymbals and the latter turning his guitar into something that resembles a synth pad, leaving the bass and sax to their polyrithmic dance. 

 

Track four, the midpoint of the concert, introduces hints of psychedelia, with its effects-heavy guitar and a saxophone that at times sounds like a half-remembered dream, but the music and the mood are in constant evolution and the underwater feeling is soon spirited away by a massive bowed bass riff and a desperate shriek.

In the latter half of the album the music takes on a mysterious quality and something else takes center stage: Moe's fantastic vocal performance. While the vocals and lyrics are present throughout the record (MoE is a rock band at their core at the end of the day) it feels like at a certain point all four musicians collectively decide to give priority to the vocal performance for a while. And what a performance it is! Full of passion, melody and angst, ranging from hissing whispers to operatic highs, often in conversation and sync with Emmeluth's altissimo notes, it's endlessly engaging and captivating Takahashi and Skaset then take on a more active role, guiding the band towards a final crescendo of distortion, blister-inducing bass playing and squealing sax overtones. For the second time on the record the band proves to be just as capable at bringing the energy down as building it up, something arguably harder to do convincingly, and they close the concert out with a slithering bowed bassline enveloped by Moe's soaring vocals.

All four musicians are extremely talented and have a very assertive voice. The challenge for the band then becomes creating music that's balanced and doesn't particularily revolve around any one musician and I think they pass this challenge with flying colors. The players know exactly what and when to play, when to be active and when to play support in order to serve the music first and foremost. Emmeluth in particular is fantastic at exchanging ideas with the others, always picking the right notes to embellish a guitar chord or supporting a vocal melody,. There are no flashy solos or traditional jazz or even rock forms, just collective creation of a kind of music that revolves around attitude and emotion. It's an elating, moving and lively album, beautifully recorded and presented. I hope to hear this lineup together again soon.

 

Released on digitally and on CD by Conrad Sound.

 

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