Abdelnour/Loriot/Meier/Niggenkemper – Et il y aura… (Veto Records, 2026)

By Fotis Nikolakopoulos 

The music made by this quartet possesses agility and versatility at the same time. They move quite easily from organized sounds to more improvised territories, while at the same time the sounds they produce seem fluid like modern composition and edgy as any good improvised, but jazz based, recording. Veto records has done it again, producing extraordinary music that defies boundaries.

Christine Abdelnour plays alto saxophone with long notes and phrases, Frantz Loriot utilizes his viola in many ways, David Meier reserves his bass drum (and some objects) for rhythmic reasons and not, while Pascal Niggenkemper is always a chameleon with his double bass.

The quartet is not in a hurry, takes it’s time to build, like a slow sculpture procession, the sounds and the atmosphere in both tracks of the cd that plays nearly for an hour. Improvising is a way, a path that allows many ways for the players. Here, all four of them choose to follow a path and follow four different trajectories, in parallel, but play in unison at the same time. I could comment that their music derives from the European avant-garde, a term I do not like because it has so elitism within it. But there are times that it is a proclamation of new ideas and of the willingness to explore sonically.

This is the case here with this cryptically titled CD. Both long tracks are open fields of audio explorations that don’t want to be labeled as anything. Only good, adventurous music that cannot be tagged. One of the best for 2026 so far.

Listen here:
 

@fot.isn

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[AHMED] - Play Monk (Otoroku, 2026)

By Ferruccio Martinotti

It was only a matter of time. In the cosmology of our music, one thing was certain: the orbits of Thelonious Monk and [Ahmed] were destined to overlap, after having crossed in the name of Ahmed Abdul-Malik, Monk's bassist in the late 1950s quartet, heard on 1958's Thelonious in Action and Misterioso, as well as on the album with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall unearthed in 2005. Pat Thomas (piano), Seymour Wright (alto sax), Joel Grip (double bass), and Antonin Gerbal (drums) "make music about (Note: bear in mind this "about" because is the key to almost everything) Ahmed Abdul-Malik, they excavate, re-inhabit, and use a-new the now overlooked documents and fragmentary plans of his mid-20th-century synthetic vision to produce a new jazz imagination for the 21st century. 

[Ahmed] and Abdul share a critical engagement with time, specifically in challenging its linear trajectory and offering sites and modes of synthesis and rupture instead. In their music, fragments of time are scattered and re-arranged in the present". So says the band's official statement, which theoretically should explain everything. Theoretically. Malik (1927-1993), son of Caribbean immigrants, was a NYC bassist, oudist, composer, educator and philosopher, he played with Art Blakey, Earl Hines and Randy Weston and his albums Sahara (1958) and East Meets West (1960) fused aspects of Arabic and East African musics and thought, his committed long-term relationship with Sufi Islam and then-modern jazz and thinking, in revolutionary and vital way. But, as well as honoring these traditions, Malik's straddling, synthetic and inclusive vision is one of the great projects of imagination in jazz. He mixed sounds and ethics, meanings and beliefs in open, experimental ways, without any dogma and this became the true north for [Ahmed]: to visit and re-think his compositions and the process potential in them. This is why we emphasized the adverb "about": neither covers, nor lab experiments in cold musical eugenics; neither free jazz, nor classic (even two super skilled listeners and reviewers like Lee and Fotis, in past reviews, scratched their heads between amazement and ecstasy) but a hypnotic Black Monolith that has cast an enigmatic and fascinating shadow for some years, writing a new chapter destined to remain in the Annals of Music. 

From the very first time we heard them, the immediate reference for us, rather than the music, was the cubist painting, in which we found all the elements expressed by [Ahmed] and vice versa: the break with traditional perspective; the geometric decomposition; the simultaneity of views; the reduced color palette and the use of collage. Art must not portray reality but interpret it, like a cognitive tool, as per cubists’ First Commandment, and Pat Thomas & co. are exactly abiding by that. After 6 albums, (all excellent but “Giant Beauty” and “[Sama’a] (Audition)” are two real, unmissable, t-rex carnivorous records) and a 7-inch, here finally, after having engaged with Monk’s standards in various individual or collective ways, the hesitation is broken and [Ahmed] “Play Monk”: when a title says it all. In 2 CDs recorded in March 2025 at Fish Factory Studios (the same “Sama’a” recording sessions), with a cover photo of the legendary pianist at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, portrayed by the lens of Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter that alone is worth the purchase of the album, 6 standards (“Bye-Ya/Epistrophy,” “Friday Thirteenth,” “Round Midnight,” “Epistrophy,” “Evidence,” “Oskar T.)” are atomized in the particle accelerator, “transforming each composition into a shifting quantum time artifact. The melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, and spatial gestures of each piece become complex vernacular forms, creating a dialogue in time and a (red)shifting lens through which to view our material present. Into the fissures of Monk’s form, [Ahmed] pour their own play, colliding and dancing with Duke Ellington, Cecil Taylor, Caribbean diasporic music, European improvisation, and Jah Shaka in their pursuit of future music,” to borrow Otoroku’s notes. Too much? If you trust just a little bit in your humble writer: NOT.AT.ALL. As usual, they set out and ride pedal to metal, no self-indulgence or self-referential (or falsely free-form) rotating solos, but a “wall of sound” that Phil Spector would have liked to produce, where more than playing the notes, they use them and the ideas in and about them, as a vehicle for their unique imagination, moving from what they know into new uncharted, creative lands. 

It’s too easy to predict that this album will take no prisoners in our end-of-year Top Tens, but it’s even really hard to imagine what other albums will live up to it. We’d like to close with the words of the great Luke Stewart, certainly much more titled than us, in expressing a reflection on Abdul-Malik and [Amed]: “The journey of self-discovery, communing with the eternal sound. A musician steeped in multiple worlds; oceans apart yet closely connected in ancestral memory. Musicians such Abdul-Malik were able to experience the global community of sound warriors, drawing inspiration from ancient cultures to support personal investigation. The connection was made clear, the music of Africa would certainly influence the African in America despite the atrocities of the Middle Passage, chattel slavery and continued racist violence that sought to sever any connection to the continent. The beauty of Malik’s investigation is this original fusion of new music (Jazz) of the African in America with ancient music of Africa. It is a shining example of collaboration in culture, where the music is allowed to shine for itself. This is the inspiration that is being tapped, being explored in this collaboration where rhythm is the basis for the sound. Just like Malik, [Ahmed] allow the spirit of the collective push the sound as the music develops into exalted chaos. Joy Be Upon Us!”I

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Ballister + Luke Stewart - Clocking the Wheel (Aerophonic Records, 2026)

By Martin Schray

When their latest album Smash and Grab came out, I cheekily claimed Ballister might be the best band in the world. I still stand by that statement, and what could be more fitting for Dave Rempis and his Aerophonic label than to celebrate their 50th physical release with a new recording by that outfit? The only question that came up beforehand possibly was what to do to make it special? The answer was relatively simple: You bring in a real powerhouse to give the whole thing even more momentum. And what could be more natural than inviting a bassist for that? Luke Stewart (of Irreversible Entanglements fame) was practically the obvious choice. However, that also means that the expectations for a recording like this are incredibly high.

For Clocking the WheelBallister could have done what we all love them for: simply mixing up their famous cocktail of high energy music, speed metal, free jazz, and brutalistic power, slap it right in our faces, and everyone would have been happy. And of course they do deliver this mix - but they also present another side. Especially in the first part of this double CD, “Carpet Joint,” Dave Rempis (as always on different saxes) and Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello) trade off so effortlessly for three minutes that you’d think you were at a chamber concert. What is more, they leave room for solos, for example for percussionist Paal Nilssen-Love, who presents rhythms with a Latin American flavor, laying the groundwork for two ballad-like interludes - something we’re not used to hearing too often from the band. However, you immediately find yourself wishing they would do that every now and then. The icing on the cake is an almost Evan-Parker-esque solo by Rempis and a one-minute nod by the band to themselves, to one of their catchiest riffs (if such a thing even exists in this kind of music). In this piece, which the band performs as a trio, we are once again reminded of what makes Ballister so unique: it’s the combination of these very different styles and sounds, the way the dynamics flow into one another, that they so effortlessly blend into a cohesive whole.

Finally, Luke Stewart joins in on “Sauce for the Goose,” the second track that makes up the entirety of the second CD, and you’re faced with a changed band. For bassists, it’s not easy to keep up with Ballister - with the trio’s force, its radicalism, its rawness, its unvarnished authenticity. The band could literally run you over. But Stewart immediately immerses himself in Ballister’s sound, locking in with Nilssen-Love’s drumming to catapult the higher voices of the cello and saxophone forward. His driving energy is like a tightly stretched rubber band - elastic, yielding, flexible, but always with enough tensile strength to bounce back like a trampoline, as the liner notes put it. And Stewart is also given plenty of space to make his mark, whether in duo or solo passages.

All in all “Sauce for the Goose” shows that there is still a lot of potential with the Ballister project. Stewart’s presence draws even more energy out of the other three members, giving rise to new sound combinations (the use of electronics shines through here and there and Dave Rempis, in particular, is almost reinventing himself) and dynamics. After twelve albums, Ballister is far from running out of ideas; the band still has plenty in store. For me, they’re still the best band in the world - at least when it comes to freely improvised music.

Clocking the Wheelis available as a double CD and as a download. You can listen to “Sauce for the Goose“ on the Aerophonic bandcamp site, where you can also order the album:  

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Victor Vieira-Branco’s Bark Culture - The Giant is Awkward (Temperphantom, 2026)

By Brian Earley 

 

The most adventurous music offers an exchange with its listeners. Dedicate time and attention to its often unpredictable operations, and receive a return. For me, when I listen to The Giant is Awkward, the latest release from Victor Vieira-Branco’s trio Bark Culture, the return is as immediate as it is sustained. A feeling of something like exhilaration in the moment, of following master improvisers on their way to a circuitous but directing truth.

 

Victor Vieira-Branco is a vibraphonist and composer who grew up in Brazil, but spends most of his time these days in Philadelphia, that is when he is not touring with Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra or Chad Taylor’s Quintet, which played Big Ears this March. With The Giant, his trio Bark Culture has its second release, the maiden voyage being the acclaimed Warm Wisdom from 2024, and is rounded out by bassist John Moran and drummer Joey Sullivan. 

 

Together, the trio makes music that is angular, surprising, and almost always just off center. The opening track, “Palace,” is a representative example of this. After a slanted theme marked by what sounds like finger pounding by vibes and piano, the music descends into a deep madness with Sullivan and Moran following no particular time or engaging in any semblance of functional harmony. But after several minutes of gleefully wild chaos, the band unifies again, rights itself, and collectively enters a second set of thematic material before leaping into yet one more wall of noise.

 

I should pause to state that this release is made particularly special by the presence of guest pianist Sam Yulsman. Yulsman is one of the engines behind the supreme madness one finds on this album, as he smashes and mashes and slams his piano keys in the sections I find to be most adventurous, most dissonant and wild. He even contributed a composition, the second song “Farce,” which, with its asymmetrical thematic unison of vibes and piano leading into surrounded moments of unhinged sonic rantings, is right at home on The Giant is Awkward.

 

Vieira-Branco is composer of all of the other works here. While his compositions are lovely, the interplay of the musicians is what makes this album move from coherent to something really special. Drummer Joey Sullivan seems to me to have a particularly strong musical relationship with Vieira-Branco, and the two are as likely to play their respective percussion instruments with mathematical precision as they are to respond spontaneously to sudden snare rolls, cymbal crashes, or introverted vibraphone bowing. 

 

And all of this is not to suggest Victor V-B’s compositions are not at times stunningly beautiful. Listen, for example, to the penultimate work on the record, “Panic.” The piece is quiet, introspective, full of tenderness and empathy and, in communicating as much, is not at all what I expect when I think of the word panic. The song seems almost guru-like in this way as it flows in and out of time and traditional harmonies to moments of collective improvisation. Panic is a navigable state here, as marked by beauty as it is by its unexpected torsions, but always as composed and improvised as the day itself.

 

The Giant is Awkward is one of the standout releases of this year for me. Its depth of feeling and spontaneously combustible surprises find themselves one minute collectedly astute, and beard grabbing lunatic raving the next. For all of this work’s intelligence and its musicians technical virtuosity, there is never a moment where I feel the energy is not in service of art or the music itself. And this is the adventure Bark Culture has offered to its potential listeners with this album: follow them with attention and effort, and deep pleasure manifests along the path with wisps of transformation sailing in its sonic wilderness. 

 

The Giant is Awkward can be found here.

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Revisit the Serious Series

Back in December, we covered the Serious Series, a concert series in Berlin that showcases a mix of both local and international free music improvisors.  

The entire series is available online from the venue where the series took place last year, the Exploratorium, in Berlin's Kreuzberg district. Below is a video from day one, where we begin the show with series organizers saxophonist Anna Kaluza and bassist Jan Roder, then followed by pianist Marina Džukljev, bassist Christian Weber and drummer Michael Griener. The night wraps up with saxophonists Evan Parker and Peter van Bergen in an effortless duo:

 

More info here.

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Irarrázabal Together

By Dan Sorrells

Two recent releases showcase the versatility and physicality of Chilean double-bassist Amanda Irarrázabal as she improvises with very different partners.

Amanda Irarrázabal - Imprimiendo (Relative Pitch, 2026)

Imprimiendo is a series of "duets" in which one of the partners remains indifferent and unresponsive—or at least, doesn't respond in the manner you might expect. Amanda Irarrázabal plays her bass along with recordings of churning offset printers made at two printing houses in Santiago, Chile. Improvising along with workaday, nonhuman things calls to mind Günter Christmann and others playing with vacuum cleaners and coffee makers on albums like The Sublime and the Profane. In the liner notes to that release,Elke Schipper suggests that improvising with such sounds—the "profane acoustic environment"—is an act of sublimation. There's an ambiguity here I'm happy to leave unresolved. Are the profane sounds vaulted into the realm of art by being deemed worthy material with which to engage? Or, by "internalizing" these sounds as "emotional and imaginary substance," is it the artist's ability to find self-expression that's being elevated? Are these printing presses mere stimulus, or do they partake in the sublime when joined up with Irarrázabal?

There's a soothing familiarity to the structured sound of the printers: like a sheet of graph paper passing through the drums, it provides an orienting temporal grid. But this structure also marks out the comfortable zone from which Irarrázabal quickly departs. On "Panfletos" she enters tentatively, then assertively, syncopated and dancing around the hiss-click of the presses before moving into feathery bowed overtones. These harmonic explorations of friction and bass push through the obvious rhythmic nature of the presses and draw out the richness in their noise. Still, the printing presses are rhythm. It's interesting to hear the subdivisions buried within their repetitive work. These layers are especially apparent on tracks like "Illustraciones," and as Irarrázabal plays more fervently, the presses seem to respond, her rough texture and volume masking more subtle rhythmic elements while intensifying others. In turn, something about the regularity of the presses amplifies the momentum of her improvisations, like the feeling of speed conveyed by trees as they whip by a traveler's window. This phenomenon repeats itself again and again throughout listening to Imprimiendo : the illusion of change in unchanging elements, driven by Irarrázabal's impassioned performance.

It's not clear to what extent Irarrázabal may have arranged some of the field recordings into collages before entering the studio. Some dramatic interest is created by letting them fade in or out, reappear later, varying their volume. On "Copuchas, entrevistas y más," I had not registered that the hypnotic press had largely dropped out of audibility until it suddenly came roaring back, Irarrázabal drawing jaggedly across the strings. The album ends with Irarrázabal unaccompanied: "En blanco." With its pulsing dynamics and cadent bowing, it's anything but.

Phillip Greenlief & Amanda Irarrázabal - La Verdad Es La Verdad (Mother Brain Records, 2026) 

Moving from Imprimiendoto La Verdad Es La Verdad—duo recordings Irarrázabal made with Phillip Greenlief following a 2023 tour in Chile—it's hard not to think of the album that launched Relative Pitch 15 years ago: Greenlief's duo with Joëlle Léandre, That Overt Desire of Object . Here, as there, Greenlief plays at his usual supernatural caliber, mostly delivered with his breathily fluent tenor tone. He's one of the more remarkable and adept reedmen to come out of West Coast creative music (though nowadays, to my great delight and benefit, he's a fellow Mainer). And, like Léandre, Irarrázabal is a white-hot fusion of voice and arco mastery who obliterates any mistaking of body and sound, creator and creation, as being separate or separable.

Opener "Insomnia at the Zoo" is as restless as its title implies. If it doesn't quite come to crescendo, it arrives at a simmering catharsis, a valve releasing just enough pressure to keep the volatility at the pleasing edge of danger. When speaking about duets, it's easy to treat the music like a conversation, especially music with a strong contrapuntal give-and-take. There's a little of that kind of playing here on tracks like "Riverbeds" (what a metaphor: a broad contour guiding rivulets of water, but with paths not quite predictable). For me, Greenlief and Irarrázabal are doing something more like dance, an elemental synchrony of two bodies attending to their shared sense of movement. There's such focus and physicality in the music—just hear the energy being matched in dynamics and register and density throughout a piece like "Collapse"—that it's often nothing like the operation of reason or speech. Theirs is a bodily listening that goes past brain, straight into limb and throat and back out as sound. On the nocturnal "Later on with Constellations," clarinet and voice wend a rising and falling course together—all the way to an altissimo climax—Irarrázabal's bass a whispering countercurrent beneath. As I listen to their listening, I never hear either player deciding what they'll now "say" in response; instead, they work out the answer to "what's our next move?"

The track titled "Cave Paintings" reminded me of the famous prehistoric paintings in Lascaux. In "The Birth of Art," Blanchot wrote "yet by its nearness and all that renders it immediately readable to us," the work in the caves remains "mysterious as art but not an art of mystery nor of distance." This description transcends Lascaux and feels also like "the truth" of La Verdad: that for all the nearness of these gripping improvisations, for all that feels viscerally "readable" in them, there's a mystery at their center which isn't their end but is instead a ceaseless beginning, igniting our fascination—musician and listener alike.

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Hound Dog Taylor's Hand and Joe Paradiso - The Structure and Dynamics Of Disordered Systems (self, 2026)

By Ferruccio Martinotti

What could an old Mississippi bluesman, a Seattle free band and an MIT scholar possibly have in common? Don't worry, music maps the dots and we'll connect them. As one of the legendary figures of American blues, Theodore Roosevelt "Hound Dog" Taylor was an extraordinary guitarist, interpreter of a stripped-down, rocked-out, hypnotic, emotionally powerful, and wildly energizing sound. His left hand had six fingers, a congenital anatomical trait known as polydactyly, which inspired (don't ask us why…) a sonic wild bunch from the beautiful Northwest. Hound Dog Taylor's Hand (HDTH) formed in Seattle in 2010 with Jeffery Taylor, guitars, percussion; John Seman, double bass, piano, percussion; Mark Ostrowski, drums, piano, percussion; Greg Kelley, trumpet; and Joe Paradiso, custom-designed modular synthesizer. They have performed with the likes of Eugene Chadbourne, Acid Mothers Temple, Jooklo Duo, Lori Goldston, Sir Richard Bishop, Lee Ranaldo, Kinski, Chris Corsano, James Brandon Lewis and Mike Watt: all solid swimmers in our cups of tea. John Seman is a truly interesting, larger-than-life cat. With an academic background at the Oberlin Conservatory and the University of Maryland as an ethnomusician, he joins forces with Mark Ostrowski, ingesting every drinkable musical beverage: Zappa, Black Sabbath, free jazz, Mingus, Stravinsky, Motorhead and more. As a festival organizer, John leaves no stone unturned in the musical field. Together with Mark, modeled on the AACM, he founded The Monktail Creative Music Concern, a collective of composers, musicians and artists based in Seattle, “who thrive on the atypical and demanding; the real weirdo stuff.” Could we ever remain indifferent to a mission statement like that? No kidding. And here we are, the scholar. Joe Paradiso is the other partner in crime, a guy who to define smart is a euphemism. To understand who we are talking about it is more than enough to read the official bio infos. Joe is Professor of Media, Arts and Sciences at MIT, where he directs the Responsive Environments group and serves as the Media Lab's Academic Head. He is a pioneer in the development of the Internet of Things and renowned for work in wearable sensing, energy harvesting technology, electronic music systems and controllers. His current research explores how sensor networks and AI augment and mediate human experience, interaction and perception, encompassing wireless sensing systems, wearable and body sensor networks, ubiquitous/pervasive computing, human-computer interfaces, space-based systems, sensate materials, digital twins in virtual worlds and interactive music/media. And the music? you are certainly wondering. A teenage interest in prog rock switched him to synthesizers, and after moving to Zurich in the mid-70s to study at ETH, Paradiso built his own very epic modular synth from scratch: “I was obsessed with building modules, by the end of my stay I had built over 70 of them”. Photos of his creation are readily available on the web, and we highly recommend you to take a look to see what kind of Leviathan we’re talking about. The paths of the Professor and the Hand cross on this album, the group’s seventh, if memory serves: 38 minutes of turbo charged, free-form intensity, declined in a single suite that envelops us like a Texas Twister. “Reverence for the roots of improvised music meets an unbridled passion to push boundaries, making for a propulsive and unpredictable sound.” “A cosmic soundtrack from an alien film noir playing in a half-remembered dream,” the press releases tell us, and we do trust them, because: 1) they say so; 2) we're addicted to press office definitions, and 3) listening carefully to the record confirms the image's correct focus. For those who have never seen an alien film noir playing in a half-remembered dream, we can say that, as reference points, some of Gustafsson’s Hydros projects, Keiji Haino's sonic spirals and, above all, Sonic Youth’s extraordinary (and criminally underrated) works with icp, the Ex, Merzbow, and their double-CD reinterpretations of Cage, Cardew, Kosugi, Maciunas, Oliveros, Ono, Reich, Slonimski, Tenney, and Wolff, came to mind. We’d dare to add the mighty Hawkind as well. The six fingered hand is definitely worth a listen: the surest of the things.

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Satoko Fujii + Myra Melford - Katarahi (RogueArt, 2026) *****

By Paul Acquaro

This review should not be confused for a scientific study, regardless of how convincing it sounds, after all, it lacks all sorts of the necessary quality criteria for a scientific work. It's not really objective, it has questionable reliability and only I can vouch for its validity, but my results suggest that repeated listening to Katarahi, the duo recording from Satoko Fuji and Myra Melford, makes one a better person. The findings, I think, are very strong, I'd say, they are basically unassailable. When listening, one's thoughts become clearer, empathy increases, and creativity soars. A wonder for sure.

 

Myra Melford and Satoko Fujii have been acquaintances since meeting in the 1990s while Fujii was studying with Paul Bley. Over the following years, the two pianists have met and played many times, though they have released just one recording together, Under the Water (Libra) in 2007, which may seem unusual for two such highly prolific musicians. Fortunately, an appearance in 2024 at the Leibnitz Jazzfestival in Austria, captured the two in a dynamic performance that intertwined composition and improvisation in a seamless, living dialog.

 

Katarahi, which in Japanese is a word meaning a heart-to-heart conversation between friends, lives up to its name. Professional musicianship collides with a palpable personal affinity as the two create a work that captures myriad moments of unbridled joy as well as contemplative introspection. 

 

Opening track, 'Interlude 1', begins with a terse and tense repetitive figure on one piano, the other replies with light tinkling plucks from inside the instrument's soundboard, which then moves slowly outwards, becoming a pensive, slightly dissonant melody. It's expectant and barely resolves before crumbling into 'Signpost', at first equally reserved, but with a slight hint of serious playfulness.

 

Towards the middle of the recording, on 'Chalk', the approach changes. Lush chords lead to a dramatic flourishing melody. The notes stream effortlessly, building excitement and tension before a quick resolution and drop into the start of 'Kaiwa', a sharply syncopated piece with some hard edges and percussive foundations. This leads to even more intensity and shared focus in the penultimate 'IV' and finally 'From Sometime.' During these final two pieces, the intensity mounts with sudden arpeggiated bursts and explosive tonal clusters, until the sudden end, received with enthusiastic applause.

 

From track to track, the music is fluid, logically connected, but easy to get lost in. Elements of classical mix with free improvisation, some moments congeal while others deflect off each other. It does not matter where one jumps in to the recording, it can be equally rewarding to listen start to finish, as is to randomly choose a track. Regardless, one is instantly exposed to effects of the music, and the sympathetic and intuitive music making is infectious.

 

The study conducted here on Katarahi has involved very intense close listening as well as very distracted listening methods. While controlling for nothing by volume, I've listened while chopping onions as well as grading papers. One of which made me cry, and during the other, I felt incredibly productive. In conclusion, this release is completely appropriate listening for wherever you are and whatever your are doing, no matter, you're going to do it better. Katarahi is simply a fantastic album.

Myra Melford also speaks with David Cristol about Katarahi and much more in their interview here.

 

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Lazro Léandre Lovens- For Baritone Sax, Double Bass & Drumset (Relative Pitch, 2026)

By Martin Schray

In Bernd Schoch’s documentary “But The Word Dog Doesn’t Bark“ about the Schlippenbach Trio, Evan Parker is asked in the bonus material whether it’s possible to play “wrong” in free jazz. In the conventional sense, Parker says, that’s not possible, but that’s not the point. One might miss an opportunity to contribute something to the improvisation, which is worse - because the moment would be gone forever. In For Baritone Sax, Double Bass & Drumset , there are no such lost moments. Here, everything fits perfectly.

There are several examples on this album where you can hear the incredible timing of three masters of European improv - baritone saxophonist Daunik Lazro, bassist Joëlle Léandre, and drummer Paul Lovens. First on the opener “Temps du Corps 1”, which Lazro and Lovens begin tenderly before the saxophone roughens the tone and gives Léandre the opportunity to join in with her arco bass. Or that moment at the 5-minute mark when the musicians seem to be waiting for the perfect moment to kick things off, which Léandre then conjures up with just a few notes, and Lovens brilliantly picks up the pace before they really let loose. Then there’s another example on “Temps du Corps 3“, when Lazro plays Coltrane-ish lines before he and Léandre drop out and leave the field for Lovens, who concentrates on his toms, which lends the improvisation a dark and gloomy quality; after a very short while the three of them really pick up the pace, increase the intensity (it’s mainly Léandre who pushes her instrument to its limits) and bring the improvisation back to the beginning picking up the ballad-like mood again.

In the end, all of this comes together and is taken to the extreme: the final piece even swings here and there, with heart-wrenching, wailing saxophone notes serving as a counterpoint. Finally, it’s taken to the brink of collapse, before exploding at the very end, creating an atmosphere of extreme musical intensity that oscillates between chamber music and free jazz.

All in all, it’s the somnambulistically confident shifts between harsh and lyrical, dense and open, or accelerated and calmer passages, which create the most exciting dynamics.

It’s certainly helpful that the three were able to draw on decades of individual and collaborative experience within the global improvised music scene on this session. For Baritone Sax, Double Bass & Drumsetis a celebration of timbre, texture, sound and communication. Most of the fascination of this outstanding album comes from Lazro’s rich, expressive saxophone language, which is charmed by Léandre’s guttural yet elegant bass lines and Lovens’ subtle and inventive percussive cornucopia.

For Baritone Sax, Double Bass & Drumsetis available as a CD and as a download. You can listen to it and buy it on the Relative Pitch Bandcamp site:

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Stein/Smith/Shead – Five Nights in the Midwest (balance point acoustics, 2026)

By Brian Earley

 

Asking listeners to pay attention to an entire tour’s worth of music is asking a great deal. But, friends, because you are here you also already know one of the most powerful, even liberating, experiences to be had is patiently, closely listening to sound as it develops, increases or slows in pace, adjusts voicings, and surprises.

 

Well, Jason Stein (bass clarinet), Damon Smith (bass) and Adam Shead (drums) have not quite given us an entire tour of music, but they come pretty damn close. Five Nights in the Midwest is a three-CD set that preserves, well–five nights of music from a recent tour in December of 2025. Each recording presents one entire live musical take with no editing. Stops include The Sugar Maple in Milwaukee, State Street Pub in Indianapolis, three tracks from The Spot Tavern in Lafayette, Indiana (more on that in a second), Dissonant Works in St. Louis, and Reverberation Records in Bloomington, Illinois. 

 

The project is ambitious and it really pays off for those who pay attention. I have spent the past weekend immersed in this music, listening to it over and over, and the experience reminds me of what happens at an extended festival. Excitement and novelty quickly give way to attention fatigue, but the music is just so constantly good, so impressive and powerful, that fatigue yields again and again to something like spiritual enthusiasm and awakening.

 

I cannot possibly discuss each track or set in detail here, there is just way too much music, but here is what stands out to me as important. 

 

First, this is music that is not written out. Three people gather and entirely improvise sound into being for twenty minutes. Or thirty minutes (the longest piece runs 29.26). And, like so much I admire about the world we live in, here is an example of humanity at its best. No really. Night four was captured on film and is available on YouTube by Thom Null. Thom writes this with his video: “Sorry that it has taken me half a year to begin posting these long cell phone videos, but the incessant international holocaust has really had me operating at the lower level of Maslow's triangle, so to speak. Namaste!” Yep. Sounds about right. There is a lot of shit out there, and the vast, vast majority of us know this and have long been aware that thousands of deaths, and likely many more in the future, are happening so a very few people can benefit.

 

It wears us down. It fatigues, but it does not prevail.

 

Stein, Smith, and Shead embody this by acting together for mutual benefit. All three possess shockingly immense amounts of virtuosity on their respective instruments, but this hardly matters to them if these earned gifts are not in the service of beauty and art. Listeners, then, benefit by learning again that the effort of listening, and effort at all, is part of what makes us human (inhuman AI Data Centers don’t just remove the effort-they remove the searching that makes life meaningful, oh and about five million gallons of water each day). 

 

The three musicians focus on giving us one uncut performance from each night of the tour. However, The Spot Tavern in Lafayette is the exception, and this recording preserves three consecutive tracks, titled “set 1,” “set 2a,” and “set 2b” from this location. Close listening reveals why. To my ears, the music here is wonderfully varied, much more so than on the rest of the album. “set 1” functions as many of the pieces do: almost immediate high energy playing by all three. OK, this song takes about 1:30 to reach full energy, but check out almost any other track (say, the State Street Pub set, which is hot right out of the gate and remains that way for nearly twenty minutes). 

 

All three musicians share in the credit for this level of stamina. Each individual’s gifts inspire and propel their bandmates forward. Shead’s drumming, for instance, reminds me of Milford Graves. I know, I know, this is a bold comparison. But Shead’s polyrhythmic dexterity sometimes makes me think he must have eight arms, and the professor is the one of the few other drummers that elicit this response in me.

“Set 2b” from the Spot, on the other hand, proceeds much more like a ballad. The shortest work on the entire album, Stein plays with a breathy introspection. Smith bows atonal angles, but always with tenderness. Shead remains on the smaller cymbals and plays quietly ringing bells much of the time.

The trio clearly was pleased with the results from the Spot Tavern. In fact, they have recorded there before for 2023’s Hum (Irritable Mystic Records). 

 

I think maybe my favorite piece on the entire album comes from the final night, recorded at Reverberation Records. By this point the group has developed a sixth-sense, ESP-like communication system with each other, and they effortlessly build fires to wash them out extemporaneously and quickly ignite them again. On this piece, as on so many of the others, only Smith will lay out. His reasons are likely pragmatic: he has to grab his bow, or a drum stick, or a set of chains (!?) to play the bass. But in this practical restraint Shead often soars over temple wood blocks and slams his dented cymbal while Stein climbs, descends, growls, or sometimes crackles from his lips until Smith reenters, often bowing at a pitch and frequency that sound like he is opening the maws of hell itself. For an example of this, check out the 20.00 minute mark on this final tune. 

 

Someone, likely Shead, screams at about 20.50, the music has worked its way into such a frenzy. And, as the flames cool to embers and the music dies into silence, I find myself feeling lighter than before, like some great weight has been taken from me, some demon exorcized. And here is the gift these three musicians have given us: freedom, shared meaning making, a blessing built from mutual collaboration. 

 

Five Nights in the Midwest can be heard here:

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