Eyal Maoz, Piero Bittolo Bon, Zeno De Rossi - Forced to Feel (self released, 2026)

By Guido Montegrandi

Improvised free music recording develops around some recurring patterns: the single event in which musicians group, play and then disperse – the recording freezes a moment in time; the long term association – each recording a moment in a sequence sometimes with the risk of developing idioms, of creating a comfort zone at the expense of creative freedom; or a core of frequent collaborators meet a guest / guests - in this case the embryo of an idiom is here but it is tested and mutated by the newcomers.

Forced to Feel offers still another possibility being recorded after the group has “already tested its chemistry on stage (…) at a moment of deepened trust and heightened risk, refining a shared language forged in performance and now pushed further in the studio” (linear notes). What I understand is that they are on their way to create an idiom but are still willing to experiment and take risks… their language is still a virus.

Eyal Maoz (electric guitar), Piero Bittolo Bon (alto and baritone sax, shakuhachi, electronics), and Zeno De Rossi (drums, bells) all come to this meeting from different directions with Bittolo Bon and De Rossi having played together many times in many different contexts, and the results are intense. 

A meaningful use of electronics, a sort of underground groove that flows into this sonic universe, splinters of melody scattered into the noise. In the opening piece, Renato’s 'Arcade,' a set of electronic sounds coming directly from a 1980s arcade creates a foundation on which De Rossi builds his texture and Maoz and Bittolo Bon display their fragments of melodies. 

Music then evolves into a more pensive mood in 'Invoking the Ancestors' - the guitar provides a net of arpeggios and fragmented melodies while percussions, bells and electronics create a field for the alto sax to play a eerie song that dissolves into itself.

In 'Nervous Butterflies' a quasi unison of electronics, sax and guitar open the piece developing a swarm of circular motives that evolve one into the other with the addition of the percussion. Something like a jazz-rock guitar emerges over a riff just to develop into angular sounds that seem nostalgic of other times. The drum than brings the sax into a jazzy atmosphere that seems to freeze into the end.

'Moon Hovering' builds on an obsessive percussive patterns and offers the possibility to mark the essential contribution that De Rossi offers to the trio creating a unifying but open and volatile design that enriches sense of global improvisation. The same may be true for 'Part Hypnosis' where the three musicians seem to find a place of their own.

The baritone sax develops an obsessive melody in 'Flickering Wings,' this slowly changes into a deconstructed blues, sometimes some electronic noise adds an ironic note to prepare the finale with De Rossi again in evidence.

'Pull Me into the Blue Water' contains all of the elements presented so far with the addition of the shakuhachi flute that adds rarefaction to the mix. The guitar reacts with dreamy sonorities, the drum marks its path with a sense of necessity.

That’s it. After many listening sessions, I feel that all of the fragments, the different sounds, the different attitudes gather into sonic nebulas each with its distinctive features but with an overall inner coherence. Undetermined and yet beautiful.

You can listen to and download the digital album on bandcamp.

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Paradoxical Frog: Kris Davis, Ingrid Laubrock, and Tyshawn Sorey: Live at the Village Vanguard – July 21, 2026

By Brian Earley

My daughter and I walked up Seventh Avenue on a balmy, post-thunderstorm July night to one of the most well-known, and most sacred, of all jazz venues on the planet, the storied Village Vanguard, to catch the opening night of a week-long residence by the trio Paradoxical Frog.

Readers of the Free Jazz Blog might care to know this was a historical occasion and one that involved the reuniting of three musicians often discussed here at the FJC: pianist Kris Davis, saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, and drummer Tyshawn Sorey.

Behind the famous red doors that evening would perform an avant-garde trio that had not played together in over a decade. And the band’s unconventional leanings are perhaps less alien to the Vanguard than one might first guess. Davis and Sorey have performed at the Vanguard countless times, and Laubrock’s appearance is as rare and welcome as the recent celebrated stint of the James Brandon Lewis Quartet in the West Village club. This is to say nothing of the audience in the house that night: I spotted Sylvie Courvoisier a few seats behind me, and encountered William Parker outside the doors after the first set had concluded. Davis actually opened the show fact-checking the record. “I was corrected on social media,” she said. “It has not been fifteen years since the three of us played together; it has been eleven.” In any case, for listeners to either of the group’s two Cleanfeed recordings, 2010’s Paradoxical Frog, and 2012’s Union, it had been a long wait to hear these three masters perform in this distinct context.

The opening night’s set consisted of four long compositions, all of which have appeared on record at some point. The first performance, a combination of Laubrock’s “Masterisk” and Davis’s “Union” spanned over twenty-nine minutes. Seeing the work live allowed me to confirm just how through-composed these Paradoxical Frog pieces are. Note the extensive paper scores in Davis’s and Sorey’s hands and the extensions on Laubrock’s music stand: a necessary tool to display the lengthy writings of each work without requiring the saxophonist to flip pages of these surprising compositions that challenge functional harmony and defy circular rhythm.

 

The third work was “Whistlings” from 2020’s Blood Moon, the Intakt Records duo of Davis and Laubrock. The live performance, over twice the length of the original recording, featured Laubrock on soprano saxophone and Tyshawn Sorey on a sonic array of material, at times the room so quiet that Sorey’s percussion would consist of simply waving his brushes in the air, an effect that hauntingly filled the room with audible whisperings.

The set concluded with Sorey’s “Slow Burn,” clocking in at over sixteen minutes and featuring the mysterious repetition of single notes on Davis’s piano keys. It was moving to see these three unite again, and I am certain I do not speak alone in voicing my hopes for more work in the future, maybe even a Live at the Village Vanguard recording to place among some of the mythical voices who have passed through that hallowed underground room.

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Fermín Suárez, Shantala Ferreyra, Gonzalo Goicoechea - Las Instancias (625 Discs, 2026)

By Sammy Stein

Las Instancias comprises Shantala Ferreyra on clarinet, Fermín Suárez on double bass, and Gonzalo Goicoechea on drums. Ferreyra is an Argentinian clarinettist and composer who graduated from the Jazz Performance Program at the Manuel de Falla Conservatory in 2024. In 2025, she released her debut album featuring her original compositions performed by her quintet, and in 2026, she was awarded a scholarship to study composition in Basel, Switzerland. Her work combines composition and improvisation.

Suárez is a double bass player, improviser, songwriter, and composer from Rosario, Argentina. His artistic work encompasses a wide range of genres, including jazz, tango, Argentine folk, improvised music, and classical, often mixing, stretching, and breaking the limits between languages and traditions. He co-created the punk-tango and avant-garde ensemble ‘La Rompiente’ for which he composes and arranges. In 2026, he started the solo project ‘Ola de sótano’, a double bass and vocals set with electronics, featuring songs, improvisations and spoken word. He’s also a frequent collaborator of composer and pianist Rocío Giménez López.

Goicoechea is a drummer and educator specializing in jazz. He began his studies at the Leopoldo Marechal School of Arts and later continued at the Manuel de Falla Conservatory. Since 2021, he has performed with a variety of jazz-oriented ensembles.

After a year devoted to live performance and composition, Las Instancias is released by the Argentine label 625 Discos, and captures the result of their ongoing collaboration so far.  

With no harmonic instrument, the trio leans into timbre, register, and the register distances between clarinet, bass, and drums. The pared-back format serves as the foundation upon which the group builds its identity and scribes its musical language.

The ensemble work their way through various compositions (mostly written by Ferreyra and Suárez) that constantly flirt with the edges of jazz and improvised music, exploring their aesthetic possibilities and different orchestration combinations. 

Recorded during a session in Rosario, the album seeks to become a living reflection of a live performance, with all its nuances and dynamism. There are fierce solos rooted in jazz language contrasted with moments of introspection expressed through a more abstract idiom, all while maintaining a strong sense of tension and attention. There is a sense of a group whose members perform in proximity, without separation or post-production tricks. The recording is an intimate encounter between both the musicians and the listener. The absence of a harmonic instrument becomes a presence: a framework that pushes them toward inventive orchestration, elastic structures, and an exploration of musical language.

This album contains some standout solos and ensemble work. There is a subliminal quality to this trio that makes the music fun, as well as profoundly interesting to listen to. Don’t be fooled by the opening bars of the first track. ‘Lampara Nueva’ starts like a traditional jazz piece, but develops into something extraordinary, the dialogue flowing between the clarinet, bass and percussion like water, flowing back and forth, with a swing here, a change there, and something just for the heck of it anywhere you might care to drop in. There is a taste of traditional jazz, particularly in the drum solos that emerge from the ensemble work, particularly in the second half of the number, but there is also much free playing.

‘Mucho Agora Mismo’ starts with a gentle bass solo and works itself into a frenzy, the clarinet delivering fiery solos across the percussion, with many variations in between. This is a track of many parts, blended seamlessly together. Just beautiful.

‘Dos Veces Agosto’ is a track of harmonies, rhythms, and counter-rhythms, with some bass solos, clarinet that works around the theme, and explores many musical avenues, while maintaining a connection with the central theme. ‘En Meyo’ is a clarinet solo track, with Ferreyra meditating on a theme, while ‘Ok/Off’ is a track where all three instruments lock into the same rhythmic pattern, creating a hypnotic dynamic. A bowed bass emerges, warm and resonant, before the trio returns to their lively, idea‑trading interplay.

‘Pegao’ is introduced by a bowed bass solo, over which the clarinet drops, adding light touches and a rapid change of texture, which the drums enhance, adding their own feel and colour. It is worth listening to this for the changes and rhythmic patterns that evolve, disappear, and re-emerge, led largely by the bass, whose voice is central to this number.

The album closes with a second take of 'Mucho agora mismo' which is extravagant and allows each musician to deliver improvised music of the highest calibre.

Las Instancias are three musicians whose shared curiosity has shaped a sound that feels both stripped back and richly alive. There’s a cohesion that makes the music both fun and deeply absorbing. You hear three musicians who trust each other enough to take risks — to push, to pull, to leave space, to fill it, to let the music breathe and then ignite. It’s intimate, inventive, and full of personality.

 

Get it on vinyl here: https://elasticstage.com/625discos/releases/las-instancias-album  

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Karoline Wallace - Eon (Sauajazz, 2026)

By Brian Earley

 

Alene. Voldsomt Alene.

 

Alone. Violently Alone. These are the lyrics highlighted by crescendo, volume, and underlined by Karoline Wallace’s celestial voice, in this case, a voice electronically transmuted to sound like Tuvan throat singing, at the apex of Eon’s opening track, “Tycho.” It turns out, much of Eon employs loneliness, separation, and uncertainty as lyrical motifs. But Wallace’s Norwegian text never collapses into isolation. Her opening musings in “Tycho,” named for the famous and complicated Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, marvel at the distant shining above us, Skapt i vill kraft, created by wild force. So much of the lyrical work by Wallace resounds with interior weather, the cosmos within that counters with enthusiasm the supernovas and aurora borealis without, the fiery and magnetic and kinetic elements of the universe that, like the imagination, contain the power to create and destroy.

 

What does it mean, after all, to be violently alone?

 

A wild, eternal roar iseach being. We are made of star stuff and ultimately whirl in oneness with the most distant corners of the universe. Oneness is never aloneness, and words like buldrer(roars),klinger(rings), andfunkler(sparkles) are as present as any other words of emphasis on this astral and exploding album.

And the music buoying these lyrics into the electric air is filled with a quiet simmering that always contains the potential to whip and whirl in fiery bursts and detonations at any second. Take, for example, what happens after “Tycho” quietly opens with Karl Bjorå’s sparse albeit off-center guitar strumming. As the music builds to its thunderous Alenecrescendo around the 3:30 mark, Martin Langlie begins smacking and slapping the cymbals with increasing excitement. A cello, played by Joel Ring, becomes more obviously audible. And out of the enveloping cosmic atmosphere emerges Signe Emmeluth’s alto saxophone that bursts through the spheres with noise and screaming, as it roars with presence. Emmeluth, it grows apparent, shadows Karoline Wallace’s ethereal vocal line from early on in this work. Only at this explosive point did I become aware of it, however. Wallace’s lonely voice was never alone, it turns out.

The album’s second song “Bittelille meg,” or Tiny little me, dances ahead blithely bouncing over a four note ostinato cello line Ring plays with joy and wonder.

 

Tiny little me, listeners are told in Norwegian, lives in a quiet house, but it’s not quiet inside me . “Klokkestein,” follows and calms down all the flaring effusion. Bjorå and Ring play a two note sequence over which Wallace’s vocal lines soar with soothing beauty.

 

This calm interiority is juxtaposed with outward ebullience throughout the entire album. Just listen to the second half of “Klokkestein,” as it shifts into a near house, EDM club track. Or better yet, turn to the wailing opening call of “Atlas,” a high point on the record, as it discharges around the one minute mark its wild energy into the exploding star half of this album always is. The song then proceeds for four minutes oscillating between fire music and the lonely call of evening somnolence, eventually crashing the two states together into one wall of sound.

 

“Karamellgneis,” a meditative work leading to the album’s hushed ending, is marked by up and down tuning and sliding mid-track by Bjorå’s guitar and Ring’s cello, and by Martin Langlie playing the banjo as Wallace reminds us Again and Again Again and Again We were…And we are again And will always be.

 

I have neglected to mention perhaps the core and mantle of Wallace’s project in Eon: geology. On the record’s inner sleeve Wallace writes “In this project, I am inspired by deep time—geological time. An eon is the longest unit of time in the geological timescale.” And, about “Karamellgneis” she writes gneiss “was formed by being pushed beneath the Earth’s crust…The heat and high pressure made it soft as caramel.” I rarely stop to remember that the natural state of rock is also caramel in texture, so accustomed I am to the unyielding formations in which I generally encounter them. But then again, the stars are tiny sparkles on clear evenings in my perception, and not the impossibly giant masses of nuclear fusion they are eons away in outer space.

 

Eon, Wallace’s third album as leader, is a master stroke of musical experimentation and cosmic poetry. Her lyrics and compositions manifest for listeners again and again that all is one, we are never alone, that large is small, quiet is noise, and what is far away is also intimately close. There is no need to feel sad for what has been lost to the past, and to live for anything other than the present moment. But even Wallace's very philosophy culminates in paradox as she ends the record with her father’s words: “It’s easy to say/Live for today,/When I tomorrow/Live for yesterday.” 

 

Karoline Wallace’s Eon can be found on Bandcamp:

 

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At Jazzwerkstatt Peitz

Jazzwerkstatt Peitz has a special place in the history of jazz festivals in Germany. First held in the 1970s and lasting through the early 1980s in the former East Germany, and then reinvigorated in 2011, the festival has been been parts cutting-edge, politically-subversive and nostalgic. After a generational change at the helm, Marie Blobel, daughter of the festival creator Ulli Blobel, has been updating, tweaking and re-inventing the weekend-long event, and winning the Deutscher Jazzpreis 2026 for Festival of the Year along the way. 

The Free Jazz Blog will be heading there in a couple weeks and will tell you all about it. In the meantime, enjoy this choice clip of an improvisation workshop from last year featuring a stellar cast of uncompromising musicians, namely Frank Gratkowski on alto sax and flute, Lotte Anker on saxophone, Kazuhisa Uchihashi on guitar, Antonio Borghini on double bass and Toma Gouband on drums.  

Learn more about the festival here and on the Free Jazz Blog here.

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Camila Nebbia/Chris Corsano – Six or Seven Ways Towards Becoming Undone (Relative Pitch, 2026)

By Fotis Nikolakopoulos

I was lucky enough to catch Argentinian expat tenor saxophonist live very recently. It was a trio with double bassist Goncalo Almeida and percussionist Sylvain Darrifourcq, promoting their music for Defkaz Records. Leaving the other two great musicians out for the time being, I was impressed by Nebbia’s versatility and the flexibility of her sound. Her tenor saxophone easily traveled from free form improvisations, to one note growls to supporting a tri-folded interaction between the musicians.

Here on this cryptically titled CD where Relative Pitch has nailed it again, Nebbia shows another side of her playing, the fiery one for sure. Chris Corsano is well known of course and you don’t need me, dear reader, to point out that he is one of the best drummers around for this century. He has build a vast, polyrhythmic and diverse discography but he can still –and want to- “play”. Meaning: fire music as in the tradition of free jazz.

But, why another sax-drums duo is needed nowadays, since we are saturated with so much music? Well, leaving personal taste aside (certainly trying not to objectify it) this is a CD that clocks around one hour and is full of feelings and sentiments. Joyfully energetic providing an unbreakable interaction between the two artists, the seven tracks that comprise this recording, seem like a definitive answer on how free jazz (especially the micro-scale of the duo) should be heard in 2026. Even though Corsano has done it before in the crucial duo with Paul Flaherty, here, this duo with Camila Nebbia is redefining a part of, once, radical but marginalized music that we called free jazz or, better (sic), free music.

Maybe it is, but I have this feeling that it’s not, a coincidence that one half of the duo is this time a woman. Apart from the serious ongoing debate about the participation of women in jazz based musics the truth still is that this is a great CD full of small scale ideas, gestures, details, free blowing polyrhythmic barrages that make it a must listen. And one of the best for 2026 so far.

Listen here:

@fot.isn 

 

Please note: Six or Seven Ways Towards Becoming Undone was also covered by Brian Earley here. 

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Joel Futterman Solo and Duo

By Paul Acquaro

It's a little bit like finally going to that restaurant, the one that you have known about for awhile, maybe it's just down the block from where you live and have walked by countless times and always thinking, "hmm, should really go there." Then, one day you do and it's excellent, leaving you to wonder what took so long? 

 

The music of pianist Joel Futterman has been something like that for me. I knew the name but not the music, however, this has changed. My experience began with the two releases Absorb and Reflective from late last year featuring this pianist playing solo and followed by Transcendent Universe, a duo recording with bassist William Parker. Let's dig in...

Joel Futterman - Reflective (Squidnote, 2025) 

Where to begin with this feast? Perhaps Reflective offers a choice entry point, an appetizer in some sense with its set of short improvisations, however, be warned, it is rich enough to be served as a main course. 

 

Reflective is essentially a quiet album. It is sparsely played and there seems to be deliberate attention given to each note's spacing, rather than an approach with speed and density, everything feels carefully considered and played with careful attention. Within the range of the albums 19 short tracks, the genres of modern, classical and free jazz mix generously.

 

The first track establish the spaciousness and the next few follow through in this manner, punctuating the reflective, flowing improvisations with bright bursts notes, like for example the fourth track which ends with in an energetic melodic charge. Track five, on the the other hand, swings back to the open spaces, but now bright chords are placed gently next to each other, setting the stage for the next expressive burst. 

 

An aptly titled set of improvisations that whets the appetite for more.  

 

Joel Futterman - Absorb (Squidnote, 2025) 

Absorb stands like a counter argument to Reflective. Comprised of four longer tracks, the focus shifts away from the very deliberate passages with the distances of the notes carefully measured to one where texture and tempo take center stage. 

 

'Absorb Part 1,' the longest track at just shy of a half-hour begins with a strong, stately proclamation and then quickly picks up in tempo. Futterman's right hand plays an ever expanding set of quick, darting phrases while the left hand keeps the melody it from flying off the keyboard. Half way through the track, there are crashes of notes, atonal splashes, in the midst of the relentless piece providing a center point for the somewhat symmetrical second half.

 

The second track, which is just slightly shorter at 23 minutes, also begins with a distinctive statement and then rapidly unfolds with quick stabbing notes whose intensity rapidly grows. Tonal clusters collide as rhythmic motion pushes and pulls the track the along. There is again a relentlessness to the piece, keeping the energy high and the listener engaged.

 

Tracks three and four, together just over 20 minutes, add up to the last third of the album, and both carry on with the general approach that has been set and introduce a final contrast. Again starting with a bold statement, track three erupts into a flurry of melody and counter-melody, giving way to some classic jazz harmony towards the end. The final track, however, breaks the mold, beginning with a rapid set of notes and then opening up to more spacious passages. Overall, the pieces seem more compositionally minded than on Reflective.

 

Joel Futterman and William Parker - Transcendent Universe (Burning Ambulance, 2026) 

Although Cecil Taylor’s name has so far not entered the picture, his presence inevitably looms over this music - particularly in the way both pianists use rapid arpeggios and splintered atonal chord clusters as expressive devices. Their shared intensity at the piano is mirrored in another common thread: their musical partners. Futterman worked with longtime Taylor collaborator Jimmy Lyons in the 1980s, as well as with bassist William Parker, who himself spent many years associated with Taylor. On Transcendent Universe - a Futterman/Parker duo released on Taylor biographer Phil Freeman’s Burning Ambulance label - the two draw on these long-running connection with striking clarity.

 

Presented in three variable length tracks, 'Transcendent Universe Part 1' kicks off the album with a musical punch. Parker's bowed bass squeaks abrasively over a sustained chord from Futterman. Then, the two engage in a rapid chase. The music tumbles through the speakers like a fight scene in a movie that destroys everything thing in its path. Occasional legato passages help add contrast and build tension. Both hold their own, Parker plucking at the strings with a audible physical force and Futterman generating vibrant explosions of tone. After five minutes or so they both pull back, catch their musical breath (and who knows, maybe actual breath as well as this was a live, first-take, no overdubs recording), and begin building the tension anew with percussive extended techniques from the bass and laser focused passages from the piano. 

 

The music simply breathes - melodically, harmonically and rhythmically. While completely improvised, the intense passages give way at times to endearingly melodic moments that are kept from becoming to sweet through dissonance and rapidly morphing musical ideas. Sometimes voices can be heard, the musicians singing their ideas, but it is not enervating like a Keith Jarrett recording, rather it provides a glimpse into the musical headspace, giving the music a charge of live energy.

 

Parker is back with the bow at around the 18-minute mark in the track and he's pulling the sound tightly together. Futterman responds with a rapidly repeating figure, the two are locked-in, which is a state that permeates the recording. While it's temping to do a play-by-play analysis of the music, this is only a third of the way into the recording!

 

Transcendent Universe keeps unfolding, recombining, and surprising, ultimately emerging as a portrait of two musicians leaning into risk, density, and lyricism. What begins as a torrent of sound becomes a dialogue, then a meditation, then another eruption. By the time the final gestures fade, the lasting impression is not just intensity but connection. And in that sense, we come back to Taylor’s presence, which is expressed as a continuation of his musical legacy, audible in the high‑level interaction and uncompromising musical expression. Futterman and Parker's music extends the space he carved and creates music that feels both rooted in precedence and utterly new.

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Nolan Hildebrand – Noise Trip Explosion (Redshift Records, 2026)

By Nick Ostrum

As the title indicates, Noise Trip Explosion is intense. I am tempted to label it unrelenting or something of the sort, but it does not quite reach that intensity of harsh noise, at least for extended stretches. Rather, the noise on this trip is glitchy, it comes in starts and stops, and Nolan Hildebrand's mixer feedback and live electronics are complemented by saxophones, violins pianos, guitars and percussion. Notably, it is also composed through a series of sound inputs and generative graphic scores that leave ample room for intermittent relenting and pivots. (For more on the set-up, loops, and feedback that produce the graphic scores and the musicians’ interactions with them, see the liner notes.)

Rather, Nosie Trip Explosion is diverse in sound and personnel. Hildebrand occupies the roles of musician and composer, and is joined by a coterie of musicians, whose own backgrounds run from contemporary classical to jazz and free jazz to abandoned warehouse micro-noise. Hildebrand himself is even absent on the surprisingly open but still dark Raw Data Speed Demons, where Roan Ma deploys both electronics and violin, and the final summative track DADA BENDER, which is a percussion sextet “with fixed media.”

Having listened to a lot of noise recordings that fall short, sometimes in ways I cannot quite put my finger on, I can vouch for Noise Trips Explosion. Hildebrand is never just making noise, as if anyone really can outside of some predetermined system. Rather, he acknowledges, constructs, analyzes, and reconstructs his choice (sometimes generated in and adaptive in real-time) system to great effect and clamor. What is more, some of the strongest tracks, such as knurl cracked green and the 16+-minute portals II (everywhere and everything right now) (which must be a nod to Everything, Everywhere, All at Once), stray from delight in sheer electro-noise especially through the more traditional instrumentation of the rest of the crew. Portals II in particular draws noise into harsh free jazz and vice versa with real aplomb. DADA BENDER is also a standout in its collision of percussion and beats with glitched circuitry and cartoon effects that amalgamate into a techno-dystopian march of shrapnel, laser sounds, and other sonic dregs, and scraps of various live percussion to prod it along. This particular bender, and this entire sonic trip, is well worth the abandon.

A side-note on the artwork: it is a glitchy and colorful throwback to earlier days of home computer/internet abstractions and fits the deceptively scrappy aesthetic of the album perfectly.

Noise Trip Explosion is available on CD and as a download via bandcamp:

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bloodcog - musics for a savage planet & planete sauvage *****

bloodcog - musics for a savage planet (whi music 2026) 

bloodcog - planete sauvage (whi 2026)

By Gary Chapin 

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!

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Camila Nebbia and Chris Corsano - Six or Seven Ways Towards Becoming Undone (Relative Pitch Records, 2026)

By Brian Earley

 

"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. 

 

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