bloodcog is Phil Hargreaves on woodwinds/EWI, Richard Harding on Chapman
Stick and ambiences, Richard Harrison on drums and objects, Fran Bass on
electric bass, and Pete Smyth, analog electronics. On these recordings they
engage in a venerable tradition of improvising a soundtrack over the film,
Planete Sauvage (Fantastic Planet), a 1973 science fiction masterpiece of
animation and disquiet.
There’s ample precedent for this. James P. Johnson, Fats Waller, and Count
Basie played for the original — venerable — silent pics. Miles Davis
recorded his improv for the film Ascenseur pour l'échafaud. Bill Frisell
played over (or behind?) Buster Keaton films. Marc Ribot took a spin.
The bloodcog quintet provides a mixture of non-idiomatic free music,
electronica, musique concrete, found sound, and noise that could be
industrially deafening or could be a close recording of a bug chewing loudly
on a leaf. Hargreaves’s winds sketch a story — or character or scene — but
still the whole thing seems wonderfully, drivingly abstractly expressionist,
a musical experience that references nothing, that makes allusions to
nothing.
Or so it seems.
The two albums take the music from the recording sessions and present it to
us in two different ways. Planete Sauvage (Improvised Soundtrack) is the OST
recording. Seventy minutes of music improvised directly to the film. Savage
Planet takes the material from the two takes and curates chunks of it into
13 distinct, self-contained tracks. There is some music on Savage Planet
that is not on Planete Sauvage, and vice versa, and I was surprised that
this mildest of curation and editing created a genuinely different listening
experience for each. Maybe it was just the pauses between tracks for breath.
But no, the two are related, of course. The Venn Diagram has a good amount
of overlap, but also a good amount of distinction.
A third way to listen to the soundtrack is to watch the film with the
soundtrack. It’s a genuinely transformational experience — both because the
music and film are each so good, and together even better, and because the
exercise of hearing this music in three ways provides hypnotically
fascinating insight into how music and images can so profoundly change each
other. Sadly, you cannot watch the film because there’s a copyright dispute
going on. This is what is known in the industry as A DRAG!
Each album is great, and the entire project is something you can really
immerse yourself into. Five stars!
"When you hear music, after it's over, it's gone, in the air. You can never
capture it again." These, as many readers of the Free Jazz Blog will know,
are the famous final words of Eric Dolphy’s mythical work,
Last Date
. While other recordings have come to light over the years, in many ways
these also serve as the final words of Dolphy’s life, as he died a mere 27
days after Last Date’s recording.
I evoke Dolphy’s words here because of the grabbing and somewhat cryptic
title of the first album recorded together by saxophonist Camila Nebbia and
drummer Chris Corsano. Last Date was a functional title; it
provided listeners with useful information about the record they were to
hear, and it held weight. It most certainly was intentional.
As I listened to Six or Seven Ways Towards Becoming Undone I found
myself returning again and again to this title. What the hell does it
mean? Was I chasing specters, pumping meaning into a mere throw away
phrase by Corsano or Nebbia? But I also kept returning to Dolphy’s words.
Music, afterall, can become undone, and as it turns out, Nebbia
and Corsano do a masterful job of achieving this in each piece. The duo
make a tacit pact with their listeners as each song opens, only to wipe
away expectations completely by midsong. For example, the album opens with
a burner: “Shattered Things.” Nebbia slides around her instrument’s keys
like an oiled snake as Corsano works urgently on cymbals and snare. By the
one minute mark, the piece feels like it wants to reach through the ceiling
as Nebbia holds long notes with multiphonics and screeches in death-ray
like effects, roiling up and up and up as Corsano opens ringing crashes on
the ride cymbals and drops explosions on the toms. It is as though Rashied
Ali were playing with John Coltrane AND Pharoah Sanders at the same time on
Interstellar Space.
The kinetic maelstrom continues, but somewhere around the seven minute
mark, I realized that the music had furtively gone quiet. Nebbia leaves
tons of space and silence and Corsano softly swipes the high hats or bows
other cymbals. And, by 7:50 the piece has entered total silence. It must be
over, I thought. But the two musicians continue extemporaneously creating
overtones and whistles and shimmering effects for over three more minutes.
The piece becomes undone, but the two recreate new expectations
well before the work finishes.
This coming undone happens again and again on this album. Well,
seven times, since there are seven total songs. Although the final track,
“Unadorned/Never Better,” only sort of follows this approach, remaining
largely atmospheric and meditative, with Corsano playing what sounds like a
gong or a sheet of metal and Nebbia whispering overtones. At times it
becomes almost impossible to tell if I was hearing a saxophone or a drum
kit, as the sounds whistle and ring out. This work serves as an entirely
new direction for the album as a whole, and in that sense, serves another
method of becoming undone. So, let’s call it six or seven times,
or ways, of becoming undone.
I want to be clear, however, that Nebbia and Corsano do not repeat one
pattern the entire way through the first six tracks. While, “Shattered
Things,” and the following pieces “Cast-A-Spell,” and “Sunken House” all
possess Interstellar Spaceintensity and searching at times, the
songs move surprisingly into sonic territory I did not anticipate. My
favorite work is a piece titled “Dead of Night.” The fourth of the seven
works on the album subverts expectations by opening with the saxophonist
playing her horn whispery, airy, and breathy. Corsano adds accents with
sticks and rolls with what sound like his fingers. This song retains its
quiet openness, and, in this way, the undoneness isthis song. The
piece is seductive, however, and plays with expectations as the two appear
to build intensity, only to continue searching through the silence. But,
by the 5:40 mark Nebbia’s horn is screaming with more volume than at any
other time on the record.
“A Paper Cut in Smoke” sees Nebbia both whispering and honking her
instrument. Corsano even nearly plays a groove a quarter of the way in.
“Nothing is Fixed” remains a highlight of the album, and works mysteriously
and lyrically. I swear at times I hear Ben Webster blowing breathy ballads
on this tune.
Six or Seven Ways Towards Becoming Undone is a masterpiece that
leaves me, at least, asking questions about impermanence. All things, as
the opening work states, may be shattered, and nothing may be fixed, but we
strut and fret our way through paper cuts in smoke not to signify nothing,
but to be “Never Better.” All songs must become undone as they fade and
end, but the next adventure is waiting to bloom sonically somewhere from
the silence.
At the end of this summer, the Free Jazz Blog will be heading to Antwerp to
check out the Summer Bummer festival. Held over the last weekend of August, it's been on our 'bucket list' of
festivals over the past few years as its reputation has leaked across the ethers. Today, we present an interview with programmer Koen
Vandenhoudt, about the festival's origin and concept ... but first a short impression of event from the festival itself:
Paul Acquaro: How did the very first edition of the festival come into
being?
Koen Vandenhoudt: The first edition of Summer Bummer came into being as the
celebration of 25 years of Freakscene, my radio show at Antwerp’s Radio
Centraal, so originally it was Freakscene’s Summer Bummer. But even then it was a combined effort of music enthusiasts, supportive
artists and a lot of volunteers that made and still make it happen.
PA: What do you think distinguishes your festival from others in Europe?
KV: We work purely by content, and though we pioneer many artists and give chances to lesser known and
emerging artists, we go less by trends or commercial choices. At Summer Bummer we often present artists in constellations that have never
happened before or that are brand new. That’s super exciting but hard to promote. People want the hear and see
things before hand. So to see people coming from all over the world to witness this musical
adventure, gives us a good feeling. It’s a trust kind of thing built over
the years.
Another important thing is that we never do overlaps. We use multiple stages but always make sure that people can see all the shows -- and very important, it’s a community thing, where people can hang out, meet
the artists, participate in an installation, enjoy some nice homemade food
or score some excellent records.
PA: What guides your programming choices from year to year?
KV: We would like to say the artists and the ever changing amazing music they
make. The international network and knowledge we built from within our Sound in Motion organization - volunteers, professionals, artists and like minded organizations - over all the years is pretty vast. This means that from all
over the world we are continuously fed with the ins and outs of the music
world.
On top of that, we support musicians over the long term, from the early stages,
where the artist is new and unknown, to the moment where the international
stage starts noticing.
PA: How do you decide when a project is “right” for the festival?
KV: That’s a very subjective process and impossible to pin-point exactly. We
sometimes set out a kind of wish list or some minor themes but this
very often gets overruled by the sheer quality of surprising offers or by
the fact that every day is a day of potential musical discovery. Being able
to keep this flexibility, this room to manoeuvre is crucial...
PA: How do you balance presenting established artists with discovering new
voices?
KV: Since the first Summer Bummer edition and also in our nomadic concert
series, our Dropa House residencies and our Dropa Disc label, we always
balanced the older generation with established artists and the up and coming
generation. In an age where pioneers of improvised, adventurous and
experimental music are rapidly forgotten and disappearing, it’s super
important to stage these different generations together. Sometimes we can
combine them, like Peter Brötzmann with Farida Amadou and Thurston Moore, or
Cel Overberghe with Adia Vanheerentals and Ornella Noulet (60 years of age
difference), and Joe McPhee with Mette Rasmussen and Dennis Tyfus is also a
good intergenerational and genre defying example.
And sometimes it’s
exemplary of how the past is still more than relevant and moves into the
future, like the trio of Barry Guy, Evan Parker, Paul Lytton or the historic
duo of Fred Van Hove and Brötzmann. As said earlier we support musicians over the long term. Therefore some artists who are considered established these
days still have a strong bond with Summer Bummer and Sound in Motion as an organization. Being able to show how these artists evolve is something very
beautiful and exciting to witness.
This year we have some beautiful examples
of this with the world premiere of Rodrigo Amado, one of the hardest working
reed players around, in a trio with the legendary bass player/icon Joëlle
Léandre and the genre hopping genius drummer and electronics manipulator
Gerald Cleaver, not a trio we requested but a proposal by the artists
themselves.
And what to say about one of the all time greats, Alexander von
Schlippenbach, who will play this years Summer Bummer in a duo with
phenomenal drummer and one of the most prominent representatives of the
scene Paal Nilssen-Love, another request by the artists themselves and super
exemplary of everything we stand for. And maybe the ultimate example of
mixing up generations, gender, established and new artists is the passage at
Summer Bummer in 2024 of Fire! Orchestra CBA and Fire! Orchestra CBA Youth.
Mindblowing and very inspirational indeed.
PA: Are there artistic boundaries you intentionally avoid—or intentionally
cross?
KV: Crossing artistic boundaries is inherent to the invited artists. Creating
the platform to cross potential boundaries is the essence of Summer Bummer
as a festival and to Sound in Motion as an organization. Just look at this years program and you know what we mean.
PA: What do you hope musicians experience here that they might not
elsewhere?
KV: We once published a book with the title Food For Thought asking the
artists how they experienced playing for Sound in Motion. One of the answers was: 'Feeling at home away from home.’
We like to think and hope that we are part of a handful of organizations and
festivals that actually make this happen. That we can create the perfect
environment for artists so they can focus 100% on their craft and artistry.
PA: What do you hope audiences experience here that they might not
elsewhere?
KV: That there’s more than just mainstream music, forced upon everyone by mainstream media. And that, unlike mainstream channels will make you believe,
it is not by definition difficult music. Even alternative channels struggle
with this, shying away or being apologetic when music is abstract or noisy
or not following known paths, as if there’s something wrong with it. No,
embracing the unknown and enjoying it full on is the way to go.
PA: How do you see the festival’s role within the local music community?
KV: By showing the international dynamic of adventurous, improvised and
experimental music and putting local musicians in the spotlights,
introducing them first hand to international mainstays the Summer Bummer
Festival tries to open international doors and opportunities.
PA: What is one thing that we didn't ask you that you think we should have?
KV: Sound in Motion is a nomadic organization, how does that relate to the
concert series and the festival, and what's the importance of this within the
field of improvised and experimental music and free jazz?
Sound in Motion uses a "nomadic" model that fundamentally shapes both its
ongoing concert series and its annual festival. In fields like free jazz,
improvised, and experimental music, this structural fluidity is not just a
logistical choice—it is an aesthetic and philosophical necessity.
Experimental and improvised music has historically suffered from being
ghettoized either as purely academic or overly elitist. By refusing to stay
inside a traditional, high-art institution, Sound in Motion actively
de-academizes the genre. Bringing free jazz into a rock club one week, a
community art space the next, or a cultural center the week after meets
diverse audiences where they already are, embedding avant-garde sound into
the community fabric.
Free jazz and free improvisation are built on the rejection of rigid
frameworks, fixed charts, and predictable patterns. As a nomadic organization, Sound in Motion mirrors this artistically. When an organization is not connected to a physical building, it avoids the
institutional inertia that forces venues to book "safe," commercially viable
acts to cover high overhead costs.The organizational structure is as
improvisational, adaptive, and high-risk as the music itself.
Because we must constantly collaborate with different physical venues and
artistic spaces, Sound in Motion inherently builds an inter-connected
infrastructure. We do not guard our audience; instead, we aim to
cross-pollinate with the crowds of the partner venues. This creates a robust
safety net for touring experimental musicians, making Belgium a vital
European hub for artists who rely on agile, grassroots bookers to sustain
their careers.
Reza Askari is a German (son of an Iranian-born father and a German mother),
Cologne-based double bass player, composer, and educator (he is a professor
of jazz bass at the University of Music Wuerzburg). His main band is the
Roar trio - with clarinet and tenor sax player Stefan Karl Schmid and
drummer Fabian Arend, augmented by vibes player Christopher Dell (who is
also an educator who teaches architecture, urban design, and planning) in
its last two albums - the self-titled album (QFTF, 2022) and Zen World
Cables (Boomslang, 2024). The fifth album of Roar has a cryptic title, xAYb
v8v dYAx, and the trio hosts Dell and Canadian trumpeter Lina Allemano (who
splits her time between Toronto and Berlin). The album was recorded at
Deutschlandfunk Kammermusiksaal in Cologne in April 2026.
Askari was mentored by German double bass players Dieter Manderscheid and
Sebastian Gramss, but has played with other innovative double bass players
like Barre Philips and Mark Dresser, and is well-versed in the free jazz
legacy. But Askari sees the acoustic, unamplified Roar quintet as an
improvising modern jazz band that adapts the logic of extreme metal bands
with their asymmetrical or symmetrical cycles, collapsing forms, obsessive
repetition, abrupt ruptures, and overwhelming physical force. He mentions
metal bands like Meshuggah, Car Bomb, the Melvins, and the Dillinger Escape
Plan that have a distinct architectural and emotional language that he
wanted to transform into a detailed improvisational context.
xAYb v8v dYAx distills the powerful, physical, and constantly shapeshifting
rhythmic patterns of metal bands into layered, more nuanced, and spacious
yet still restless patterns. Askari, Dell, and Arend sketch complex,
polyrhythmic architectures of a modern jazz trio or a chamber music
ensemble, while they keep trading leading roles, often reaching surprising
reductionist or atonal territories. Schmid and especially Allemano act as
free agents who can add disruptive, sometimes even abrasive touches, and
they always do so, but thoughtfully and poetically. Allemano’s economic
interventions always charge the music with intense, emotional impact. This
tension stimulates and enriches the unpredictable, often fragmented rhythmic
dynamics of this quintet.
The Roar quintet does not seek to replicate the massive polyrhythmic
patterns of Meshuggah or other metal bands, but captures the nervous,
punkish rhythmic spirit of such bands. This quintet refuses to subscribe to
the common, familiar order and instead challenges itself with shifting
contrasts and structural chaos, always questioning, negotiating, negating,
and reassembling Askari’s compositions. The code-like, palindromic titles of
most pieces intensify that feeling. The outcome is thought-provoking, epic,
and makes you return to the album again and again, not to decipher the
cryptic titles, but to enjoy its free spirit.
Bijou is a French noun meaning “gem”, “treasure”, or “jewel”. It’s often
used in a formal or figurative sense to describe something particularly
beautiful, precious, or valuable, similar to the term “gem” when referring
to a beautiful house or object. And it’s the title of Flo Stoffner’s new
solo album - his first since Norman (Veto Records, 2014). However,
it differs significantly from his earlier recordings.
Stoffner has been an integral part of the European free jazz scene for many
years. As a guitarist, he ranks among the best in his field alongside Fred
Frith, Olaf Rupp, and Noël Akchoté. No wonder - when John Butcher and Paul
Lovens choose you as a collaborator it certainly counts as a mark of
distinction.
After many duo and trio releases, Bijou highlights Stoffner’s unique
style as if he were freed from the constraints of having to communicate with
others. “This time, I made short recordings here and there over the course
of several months. I deliberately wanted to immerse myself in this process
over a longer period of time. For me, it was really all about the process
itself, since I learned and discovered so much through this engagement with
myself and the instrument. I also wanted to make the very quiet playing
styles audible - the ones that are hard to hear when other musicians are
playing along”, Stoffner emphasizes. Therefore, Bijou is more purist
than the solo albums before, on which he used effects more frequently. On
the one hand, it becomes clear that his technique is shaped by the British
school, especially Derek Bailey and John Russell; on the other hand, his
sound has clearly emancipated itself from his role models. Flageolets are at
the center of his style, he contrasts them with hard, individually struck
notes. The result is a very open sound, as if a wild ECM album was being
played in a DIY style by a post-punk guitarist (e.g., Durutti Column’s Vini
Reilly). You won’t find any ethereal lightness here, it’s more like being
Nero in the first Matrix movie, dodging the ricochets, which come flying at
you not in slow motion, but in real time. The whole thing sounds like a
hailstorm descending on an abandoned Tibetan monastery where the chimes have
been left behind. This becomes particularly clear in the album’s final
track, “Bijou 6.” Amid all the roughness and harshness, a stark beauty
flashes through consistently, so that despite its jarring contrasts in high
and low flageolets, the piece is reminiscent of ambient music. But even
though Stoffner seems to play with a greater sense of freedom, he still
feels that it was a major challenge to play without a partner because it was
sometimes difficult to get to the point. But don’t worry - on this wonderful
gem, he has succeeded without exception.
-A sentence proposed by Noam Chomsky that he claimed was grammatically
correct, but meaningless.
In 2015, I attended a concert of the band Kaze in a downtown Ottawa
nightclub. Between sets, the musicians were selling CDs, surrounded by a
crowd of fans. I picked out a few CDs and was still hunting around when I
saw one I didn’t recognize. The print on the back was tiny, the room was
dark and I didn’t have my reading glasses. But I figured I’d try my luck and
purchased it without even knowing who was on the CD. It was TOC’s album
Haircut and it became one of my favorite albums of 2015, and I’ve been
an enormous fan of TOC ever since.
TOC consists of Peter Orins on drums, Ivann Cruz on guitar, and Jérémie
Ternoy on keyboards. (Peter is also the drummer for Kaze.). On
Haircut,
TOC creates complex rhythms that are a delight to listen to, with Cruz in
particular treating his guitar like a percussion instrument. The rhythms
have an almost hypnotic effect which I found fascinating.
I very much liked the idea of adding a saxophone to TOC. They had previously
collaborated with Dave Rempis on Closed For Safety Reasons, and
that was a terrific album. On this album, Jean-Luc Guionnet proved to be an
excellent choice for collaboration. FJC readers will recognize Guionnet
from multiple reviews, including a 5 star review for his duo with Will
Guthrie, his more recent album with Diatribes, as well as his work with the
band The Ames Room.
This album consists of a single 33 minute track, and the band is more than
capable of sustaining the listener’s attention throughout the piece. It
begins subtly with TOC playing some textural percussive sounds inviting
Guionnet to join them. As the rhythms build in complexity, Guionnet’s
playing builds in urgency. He plays beautiful serpentine lines, but
occasionally sounds like he’s calling out to the others as he plays a single
screeching note. As the piece proceeds, Guionnet’s overblowing ratchets up
the tension and TOC responds with their own intensity. The last 8 or 9
minutes of this album are pure, thundering bliss.
French writer and filmmaker Georges Perec was known for using wordplay to
explore identity, loss, and grief. His 1974 book Espèces d'espaces is equal
parts essay and prose poetry, exploring the concept of space from an
individual bed to the universe. It also serves as an inspiration for one of
the most intriguing albums of 2026, Open Space.
On it, veteran French actor Pierre Baux eloquently recites Perec’s writing,
and a trio spontaneously creates music inspired by it.
The album opens with “SPACE”. French cellist Vincent Courtois plays muscular
refrains, off of which Dutch clarinetist Fie Schouten bounces her plaintive
lines. Portuguese drummer Sofia Borges provides the percolating cadence
that drives the haunting melody, which not only echoes the essay's words but
also goes beyond them. Thus it forms a lyrical fusion of two forms of
expression
A cinematic ambiance permeates the entire recording. For instance, on “The
Bed and The Room” Courtois and Schouten engage in a tense duet that shows
influences of Western classical music. Borges’ crashing cymbals, chiming
bells, and rustling brushes add to the mysticism.
The three musicians demonstrate sublime camaraderie, with the focus
primarily on the collective performance rather than individual solos. On
the poignant absurdist “The Country-Borders”, in response to Baux’s emotive
monologue, Schouten lets loose fiery, urgent wails while Courtois bows out
crystalline and angular phrases with passion. Borges’ thunderous
polyrhythms underscore her bandmates' improvisation and the anti-war message
of Perec’s poem. Meanwhile, on “The Letter” the serene ensemble sound is
laced with melancholy. Borges contributes soft, jingling percussion that
dramatically punctuates Schouten’s languid, undulating clarinet and
Courtois’ darkly smoldering cello.
This collaborative record perfectly marries provocative poetry with equally
stimulating musical extemporizations. Its singularity, though, goes beyond
its structure. Each of the performers brings their idiosyncratic styles and
seamlessly overlaps them for a multilayered work that is moving and
memorable. Open Space makes for a rewarding listening experience even for
those who may not know French.
Anyone who has experienced someone close, and especially a young one, who
was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, would be familiar with the
existential and emotional rollercoaster that awaits all around those ill
ones, along with the grief-filled, compassionate yet helpless years to come.
Danish keyboard player and composer Anders Filipsen, the leader of the local
experimental, electroacoustic ensemble The Black Nothing, experienced
Alzheimer’s disease when his father was diagnosed four years ago. He
composed a ten-part suite, Midt i en Fremtid (In the Middle of a Future),
about the time he spent with his father, which composed passages, free
improvisation, and graphic scores. He says: “This album is the sound of a
time when what once was ceased to be, and something new emerged. It is a
loving song to the moments we share now – in the midst of all that has
disappeared”.
The different parts of the suite function as tableaux of moments marked by
gradual decline, filled with silence, relating to the inevitable time when
the ill ones can not share their thoughts anymore, repetition, and
intensity- a landscape where presence and memory meet in sound. The ten
musicians - vocalist Qarin Wikström (who sings in Danish, but the lyrics
were translated to English), trumpeter Emil Jensen, clarinetists Carolyn
Goodwyn and Jeppe Højgaard (who also plays the flute), cellist Soma Allpas,
double bass player and cellist Nils Bo Davidsen, electronics player Mads
Emil Nielsen, percussionist Victor Dybbroe, drummer Bjørn Heebøl, and
Filipsen on synths - use their idiosyncratic voices to create a unified
expression in which individual playing and collective sound merge.
The introspective, reflective, and chamber spirit of this suite emphasizes
the vulnerability and the often helpless feelings of attending to those
suffering from Alzheimer's when “everything that’s known is gone”, as
Wikström sings in the opening piece, “Synker og Stirrerr (Sinking and
Staring). “Nelly” captures Filipsen’s father's last memory and gently
addresses the realization that when time, with its many memories and
experiences, loses its meaning, and all that is left is the present.
The power of this thoughtful, insightful suite lies in its emotional
restraint, best expressed by Wikström’s fragile voice, and its kaleidoscopic
individual colors, suggesting a nuanced yet abruptly shifting, unstable, and
not always comprehensible new reality, faithfully representing life with
Alzheimer’s disease. But Filipsen orchestrates this suite not as an
expression of melancholy and loss, but as a statement of compassion and love
to the most closed ones, and the opportunity to let them go, embraced by
their dear ones. Or as he wrote in “I stilhed findes ord (In Silence There
Are Words): “...Room for honesty, peculiarity, and unbearable sorrow / Come
take my hand”.
Today's Sunday Video is from the power trio Helicopter, which looks to be 2/3 of Free Jazz Blog favorite Gorilla Mask with Simon Camatta in the drum seat. "Brighton" from Camatta is a taut, fist-pumping number that should help get your day started right!
Recorded live at Loft, Cologne Germany, February 23rd 2026
Peter Van Huffel - alto saxophone
Roland Fidezius - e-bass
Simon Camatta
These are recent and distinguished bands united by the extent to which
they’re refined, defined and expanded by electronics, harbingers not of the
future but of the immediate present, multiplying and expanding through
degrees of transformation, each a legitimate heir to the kinds of informed
complexity pioneered by musical outsiders like John Benson Brooks and Sun Ra
and literary outsiders like Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs.
Alexander Hawkins -- No Nation but Imagination (Intakt, 2026)
Pianist/composer Alexander Hawkins has already covered a broad musical
spectrum in his career, from
Togetherness Music for Sixteen Musicians
featuring Evan Parker to Carnival Celestial, his brilliant
reinvention of the piano trio with bassist Neil Charles and drummer Stephen
Davis. No Nation but Imagination may be his most striking work yet,
with a trans-Atlantic quintet that links Chicago-resident flutist Nicole
Mitchell and drummer Hamid Drake with British musicians Rhodri Davies, here
playing harp and electronics, and turntablist/sound artist Matthew Wright.
That’s not a predictable combination, and it immediately lives up to that
promise of the unlikely: it’s music that can find a groove, but it’s a
groove that hasn’t exactly happened before, suggestive in some ways of the
unpredictable musical culture of Intakt label-mates Elias Stemeseder and
Christian Lillinger and their Umbra series of recordings.
Liner note author Peter Margasak has traced the project’s complex lineage
and associations, beginning with Hawkins’ enthusiasm for the Mandingo Griot
Society, a band that Drake played in in the 1970s with Gambian kora master
Foday Musa Suso. Mitchell has played with a kora master more recently, the
Malian Ballaké Sissoko. Those associations with the harp-like kora triggered
the inclusion of harpist Rhodri Davies, who has also worked extensively with
electronics, also the arena of Matthew Wright. The resultant ensemble bears
a certain resemblance to Wright and Evan Parker’s Trance Map in its
integration of acoustic and electronic instruments and processing, the
result here a mix of live and studio recordings with further processing.
It’s music that has covered tremendous ground just coming into being, and
it’s fascinating how the most exotic of technological procedures admit of a
certain alien prettiness, a provocative banality, evident here from the
opening “Solo Way Far Gone”: mysterious electronic piano tinkling, at once
bearer and judge of the merely pretty, is here elevated by degrees of
mystery and alien artifice. The first real group track, “Resolution Each and
Every,” suggests that some 1950s exotica by Martin Denny (e.g., “Quiet
Village”) has been recovered by some distant and unknown civilization
(perhaps Kurt Vonnegut’s refined Tralfamadorians), then altered, expanded
and broadcast back to earth, with Mitchell’s flute assuming multiple
identities amidst the complex percussion and a certain general wobbling of
harp and synthesizer, with the music stretching far beyond the merely
exotic. So too does “Mirror No Border”, which bristles with Hawkins’
percussive piano flurries and Mitchell’s alternately piping and soaring
lines.
The more extended pieces create increasingly complex spaces. “Lullaby Much
Further” combines near silence with a dauntingly mysterious collection of
sounds and a complex web of connections, while “Hocket Fierce Peaceful”
achieves the contradictory character of its title by setting a flute of
almost unearthly tranquility amidst a maze of abstract and decorative
electronic keyboards.
Sofia Borges - Rieko Okuda - Peter Van Huffel -- Lagrangian Points
(4daRecord, 2026)
Equally mixed in its combinations of the acoustic and the electronic,
Lagrangian Points
differs significantly in being a documentary recording of a live performance
from Berlin’s Morphine Raum, all the electronic processing going on
simultaneously with the acoustic. Sofia Borges plays drums. percussion and
electronics; Rieko Okuda, piano, keyboards and electronics; Peter Van Huffel
alto and baritone saxophones and electronics.
According to the liner note “ Lagrangian Points are zones of
delicate balance where forces align and bodies can remain suspended. In that
sense, the trio forms a system of its own: each voice holds and is held by
the others, maintaining a moving equilibrium, with enough space left open
for the imagination to drift beyond its edges.” That particularly double
identity is linked to the presence of electronics employed by each trio
member, to the extent that instrumental identities can blur into one
another.
The opening “Ghost Currents” initially seems to emphasize Okuda’s electronic
keyboards and Borges’ percussion, but within moments the music’s distinctive
complexity is apparent, many of the sounds traceable to their acoustic
origins, but nonetheless operating in a transformative state, the three
elaborating waves of sound that might suggest a wholly electronic extension
of an improvising ensemble akin to Cecil Taylor’s trio with Andrew Cyrille
and Jimmy Lyons.
“Parallax” introduces a subtle world of discreet electronic distortions,
near-invocations of piano strings and metallic percussion all of these
combining to suggest alien transmissions from space as well as a distinctly
human music. Just as Alexander Hawkins’ electronic webs on
No Nation But Imagination
can make Nicole Mitchell’s flute seem alien, Van Huffel’s alto here might be
purely acoustic at times, yet his aptitude for abstraction is such that his
alto suggests something quite different, almost a harmonica, its voice
swimming in an electronic maze, until electronic alterations to the
saxophone draw it wholly into an intermediate zone floating between the
acoustic and the electronic.
With the final track, “Hypnopompia”, Van Huffel’s saxophone initially
provides an acoustic line in an alien soundscape, but as the surrounding
sound grows increasingly menacing (there is a suggestion of hybrid alien
predators), his sound gradually mutates, becoming closer and closer to the
world that surrounds him, achieved with a brilliant combination of acoustic
and electronic techniques. As Van Huffel moves further towards the
electronic, Borges briefly inhabits the acoustic role, but the ultimate
group movement will be almost wholly electronic.
These two remarkable recordings together articulate a new terrain,
reflective of an increasingly mediated world, one in which the likelihood of
deception conditions interpretation, one in which art and its appreciation
might increasingly stretch both creative and interpretive acts toward
surveillance.
