Félicia Atkinson – The Flower and the Vessel (Shelter Press, 2019) ****

By Kian Banihashemi

Félicia Atkinson is a multifaceted French artist who I have just recently discovered last year with the release of her collaborative album with Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, titled Limpid as the Solitudes. That album quickly warranted many listens and became one of my favorite musical experiences of 2018. This year Atkinson returns on Shelter Press with a solo release that spans seventy minutes. Without looking deeply into the context of this album, there are some influences that stand out. The cover displays the Japanese art of arranging flowers known as Ikebana, and I believe there is no other visual depiction to more accurately describe the music on this album. Using human constructs and designs to represent the natural world in a different, but just as delightful manner. This introspective record is a product of Atkinson's more recent experiences, and one of her outlets used to connect to the natural world around her. The influences on her music aren't direct or derivative, in fact they're almost hidden. Morphed, underlying, and abstracted; they are presented through Atkinson's own personal perception. And the result is always as beautiful and natural as the source material.

Many different techniques are applied in the making of this album, with a prominent one being Atkinson's ASMR whispering. While ASMR has become more popular during recent years, Atkinson's application of this unique sensation never appears to be kitschy or tacky. The ASMR is not overdone, and in fact adds to the sometimes disorienting and intimate atmosphere that this album provides. This is mostly due to the variety of vocals that Atkinson implements into her soundscapes. For example, the muddled fluid speaking on "Shirley to Shirley" comes in pulsating waves that are reminiscent of the tides. While on the subsequent track, "Un Ovale Vert", there is much more space for the vocals to open up, as chimes indicate the presence of a soft breeze, with delicate vibrations surrounding you. The smallest sounds come echoing back, supplying an entrancing experience that requires your full attention. The song "You Have to Have Eyes" is the best example of this immersion and serves as a very profound listening adventure. The intense buzzing drone contrasted with the slowly pouring poetry creates a moment that transcends time; you can live in this space.

"Linguistics of Atoms" is a stark and bleak break in the album, taking you right to the gateway of "Lush" and "Joan" which draws you into a dense, forested world where life is found everywhere. Behind this, some brooding and contemplative keys are sure to warn the listener of a darker unknown lying hidden in the shadows. "Open / Ouvre" and "L'Enfant et le Poulpe" are more curious explorations with tones and note placement, as well as the close-to-the-ear whispers. And while perhaps both of these tracks are explorations concerning some of the same aspects, they are not much alike. Sometimes it may seem that certain sounds are misplaced or obtrusive, but deeper repeated listens can show you the contrasts and complements which these sounds hold, and their more sublime presentation compared to previous songs on the album. The closer, "Des Pierres" is the only track recorded in an actual studio setting as Atkinson creates an alien surrounding while Sunn O))) guitarist Stephen O'Malley shapes crushing drones that have the ability to move mountains. At twenty minutes long, "Des Pierres" is a monolith of a piece while never in the slightest appearing to be repetitive or drawn out. In many ways, it is a summary and bookend of this project and the mindset behind it. Implementing many of the techniques prior, to create art that is vital and lasting. Throughout this album I listened to the words being spoken, the poetry that is so personally orated, but kept getting caught on one word here and there. It is a difficult to task, trying to mentally transcribe it all but perhaps the beauty lies in its mystery. From here I can only guess where Atkinson will go next, but I have no doubt that it will be a product of her creativity and educated understanding of the oneness that encompasses our underappreciated planet. The Flower and the Vessel is not limited in how it may impact you, this project touches upon more than just the sense of hearing. A whole spectrum of sensations is available to explore, and it's surreal to know that we have such easy access to it all.

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Here to Play - Here to Play (s/r, 2019) ****½

By Gregg Daniel Miller

Like a sonic kitchen-garden, “Here to Play” is a bit messy, homegrown
yet welcoming.

Neil Welch (tenor sax + effects), Kelsey Mines (bass), and Gregg Keplinger (percussion) have put together an engaging array of free play sounds. It’s best on big speakers–to capture the range of that double bass. This grouping is not quite a sax trio, because the relationship between the three instruments is much more egalitarian. Generationally apart, these 3 musicians have been important players in the current renaissance of creative music in Seattle, and this is their first release as a trio.

Neil Welch (the sax half of Bad Luck) can make his tenor sound like pitched air around a windbreak. He has full control of multiphonics, flutter and mouth noise effects, electronic pedals. Plus, he can create instantly engaging melodic lines–and then throw them away at will.

Kelsey Mines’ throbbing bass and bowing brings to mind the heavyweight (sadly departed) Dominic Duval–his sure, resonant sound; Mines’ is somewhere between Duval’s work with Joe McPhee on Trio X and his CT String Quartet. Mines’ interesting other project (Earthtoneskytone) with guitarist Carlos Snaider is a smoother affair, featuring angular compositions and abstract lyrics, strongest when they both sing. Here to Play is looser, less about prepared precision and more about communicating free expression as such.

My first exposure to the playing of percussionist Gregg Keplinger was on disk 1 of the unbelievably great Not Out for Anywhere on Sol Disk (2004), with Reuben Radding (bass) and multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter – one of Carter’s very best outings, by the way. Keplinger can play the hits like he means them. His drumming smacks of Elvin Jones for whom he manufactured drums, once upon a time, but then he played a month or so ago at Café Racer in Seattle in a percussion duo (with Jen Gilleran) without any proper drum kit—all miscellany, cymbals and sticks and resonate objects (including, from Gilleran, metal gingerbread music boxes with turn-the-crank random). There was space and sensitivity, playfulness and glee. All that abundance shows up on Here to Play.

“Arwen’s Dance” is perhaps the strongest straight-ahead statement with multiphonic overblowing as the hymn, and free soloing all 3 at once. This tune rocks out, as does “King Kep.” There are moments in “Arwen’s Dance” where the whole band simply flies.

“Storyteller” parts 1 and 2 and “Sonic Wind” are open-form, searching numbers, the former featuring arco bass over miscellaneous crash percussion, the latter led by long-held multiphonic notes singing– like where the wild things are for real, and gentler than you’d have thought.

Adorno wrote of radical music that it should be a “herald of the threateningly eruptive, the ungrasped.” Here to Play is in that tradition—though as a tradition, a style, an approach to sound-making and collective improvisation, with a history, NAMES, forms and instrumentation, we have to take up the question of what this music means today for us. Maybe it is something less (radical), now, and all the greater for that, as it develops and matures. The roots are there. Now come the flowers and the fruits.

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Tomas Fujiwara - 7 Poets Trio (RogueArt, 2019) ****½

By Olle Lawson

Tomas Fujiwara – Drums/compositions.
Patricia Brennan – Vibraphone.
Tomeka Reid – Cello.

“I’d like to tell you as little as possible about this music...”  (Fujiwara, liner notes)

Tomas Fujiwara knows how name his bands – The Hook Up, Triple Double and now we have the wonderfully titled 7 Poets Trio, another unique release from Parisian label RogueArt.

Opening with a rainfall of brushes, 'Blend' meticulously builds and blossoms as we try to place which instrument in the trio could be producing the sound of resonating water glasses.

The gracing beauty of Tomeka Reid’s cello draws out contextual atmosphere and a beckoning narrative but hold on – is that an electric piano now?

As the piece develops over its 18 minutes and segues into KP Mexican musician Patricia Brennan’s vibraphone becomes fully discernable in its acoustic rendering. Fujiwara’s patterns of evolving drumming slowly move to the fore – ever present, yet so subtle in their evocation – a whirring sewing machine of meshed, percussive complexity suspending the trio’s living tapestry of sound. As bowed cello moves to pizzicato – and with surprising bounce – Tomeka takes a solo of sorts as her lines cross-weave the intricate interlocking vibe-chimes and revolving drum shapes. These pieces were specifically conceived with the trio’s sound-personalities very much in mind.

'A Realm Distorted/Questions' leaps into action with a stop/start rhythm full of two-note stops, imbuing a kind of oblique chamber funk. Ms Reid stealth-walks her bass line then moves into a free-cello squall before the trio descend into full chiming breakdown, to near silence, finally arriving at an almost nursery rhyme-like theme – Ms Brennan vocalizing along as she explores her full tonal palette – before Tomeka closes the piece by artfully drawing melodies in the air.

Fujiwara opens 'Cruisin’ With Spencer' with a carefully constructed solo drum foundation, effortlessly mapping out a rolling sound web for Brennan to adorn with a shimmering of clear vibraphonic tones.

Fujiwara’s deceptively simple Brooklyn street walking beat carries Spencer with a tip-toeing urban swing that features some of Ms Reid’s most accomplished cello ‘bass’ playing committed to disc, thus far.

'Gentle Soul' begins as a more abstract affair – a trio improvised opening of drum skin, rustled papers, bowed strings and digital vibes. Pulling free of this textural mesh is a plaintive cello refrain of such warmth that it almost becomes a hook – one could dance or cry to this music.

At six minutes – and replete with a false-stop – Ms Brennan tumbles back in with a now distorted sound, turning her vibraphone into a 70s electric organ or flanged electric guitar (maybe even a touch of wah pedal in there) before a short coda ties up the last threads of this moving tapestry.

It is no surprise that every piece here is a dedication and Fujiwara has succeeded in creating a uniquely orchestrated sound for this clearly personal project. There is such generosity, restraint and warmth in both the writing and drumming that lucidly showcases such a diverse array of sounds from the other musicians – at times there could be 7 Poets at play – but always held tightly together with Fujiwara’s subtle percussive interlacing.

Intriguing music.

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Elliot Galvin - Live In Paris, At Fondation Louis Vuitton (Edition, 2020) *****

By Sammy Stein

Live In Paris At Fondation Louis Vuitton ​is a solo release from Elliot Galvin. Galvin has prodigious talent which early in his career maybe lacked direction but not now. His confidence and experience have grown to such an extent that he sets his own path and it is for others to follow if they are able. Galvin plays entirely improvised, an aspect which in itself displays the confident place from which he is now playing. His quick thinking and understanding of two part arrangements, whether in harmony or as a counter-intuitive but musically linked exploration shows his musicality and ability to think in the moment. He has built himself a reputation as one of the rising stars of European jazz and improvised music. He plays solo and in trio, and is a key member of Mercury Music Prize nominated band Dinosaur, and a free jazz duo with saxophonist Binker Golding. This album assures him of his place not as a rising star but as one who is set for the long haul.

For four albums Galvin’s critically acclaimed trio with bassist Tom McCredie and drummer Corrie Dick has been the main focus and they have achieved many great things. Elliot has proved he has quite the gift of keyboards, along with an extensive arsenal of electronic and extended acoustic sounds.

On this recording, we hear Elliot Galvin just on piano - no electronics, no echoes, no tinkering - and it is a revelation in every sense of the word. Stripped back, laid bare, the talent before the listener is personal, and nothing short of brilliant in its creativity, lyrical story-telling and musicianship.
The iconic Fondation Louis Vuitton building is a new cultural centre designed by American architect Frank Ghery adjacent to the Jardin d'Acclimatation in the Bois de Boulogne of the 16th arrondissement. Ghery’s extraordinary glass sails float above the surrounding parkland. This live recorded concert was described as being completely spontaneous, free improvisation, an approach that matches the free-flowing lines of Ghery’s architecture. That Galvin's strengths have moved beyond arrangement and keyboard exercises is now crystal clear. Each of the tracks demonstrates Elliot Galvin's ability to improvise to a very high level, and to express his musical ideas into compelling and moving forms in the instant.

I asked Galvin about his feelings recording the album and he told me, " I didn't expect this concert to become an album. I always wanted to make a solo piano album, but it never quite felt like the right time. After I finished this concert and listened back to the recordings it just felt right, everything fell in the right place and I wanted to share it with people because it sounded like me. Solo, improvised piano is where I feel most at home, it's where I started when I was 6, just making things up and seeing what I could create. In many ways it feels exactly the same now."

After initial applause from the audience 'As Above' begins suddenly and without fanfare as Galvin launches into a thunderous opening run, followed by series of gentler 4s over chords and a beautiful openness comes into the music, the notes clear with definitive space between them, each placed with the exactitude of an expert. It is beautiful, it is changing and it is definitely challenging for the player. Galvin makes good use of the entire keyboard and offers changes in rhythm and tempo yet there is a linkage throughout the entire piece. The quietude of the middle section contrasts with the opening and ending. What comes across in complete clarity is the quality of the piano which Galvin is playing. Apparently this is a Steinway of considerable age and quality, here possibly having one of the greatest workouts of its life and the tone is wonderful. The thundering section which follows the central respite is followed by another change, this time open strings and echoing pedalled notes. It is a beautiful way to open the CD.

'Time and Everything' begins as a quieter study with the (just in tune) top notes of the piano being worked effectively over reverberating low notes before there is a single repeated note which heralds the onset of a more melodic line. This evolves into almost classical progressions and a diversion of right and left hand which is staggering in its complexity, yet delivered with the practiced ease of a master. The second half of this track is pure beauty.

'Coda' is short, sharp and rather sweet as Galvin thumps out chords in logical sequences on the piano with extended and shortened related gaps, showing his timing as well as his playing is well honed. There is that touch of madrigal style which is often part of Galvin's style inserted again as well.
'For J.S.' is fun, lively and enjoyable. Galvin uses the spaces in this piece almost as much as the notes which are played, creating an effective and enjoyable effect. There is a lovely section where both hands are running up and down scales in almost perfect opposition so they come together, then veer apart yet it is all somehow connected. In the middle section there is a clever run with the right hand taking a break-neck speed down the keys, to be taken up seamlessly by the left hand so the full extent of the keys are covered as a single run. The final section is darker, heavier and atmospheric.
'Broken Windows' is eerily charged at the beginning with slow, gentle higher end notes which are put together in pairs and triplets to impart a sense of relaxed playing before the piece develops, and the sharps give it that sense of glass broken, pieces falling and shattering, out of the solid frame and onto the ground, drifts into minor keys adding to the effect. A clever and well delivered piece with great atmosphere and nuance.

'So Below' is simply a clever, dexterous delivery of great improvised music. It swings from light to heavy, offers thunderous lower notes with trinkling lighter upper octaves and numerous bangs, plucks and slides over the keys at different points. A highlight of the album - but not the only one.
This entire album is another revelation from Elliot Galvin - this time not only of a great pianist but also of a natural improviser, weaving patterns, creating different landscapes and taking the listener with him on the lyrical journeys he creates and travels through as he plays. What is striking is the silence of the audience and the sheer business of the piano as almost without knowing it the ears are assailed first with lightness and joy and next minute by tumultuous hefty chord lines of volume and strength. Listening to this musician you are taken someplace else, lifted and driven - which is what great music does.

If all this was not enough this was not enough, I was trying to think what was so different about this recording and it hit me - Galvin has introduced an element of emotion and feeling- he includes soul, almost pathos. The recording has caught a moment in time when Galvin was at his improvising best, and he shared this with the listener - and it is a good thing.

This CD is impressive; it shows the maturity of this young musician who feels as if he has been on the scene for a long time but is still relatively young. The sense here is that Galvin is a musician who will enjoy a long career in jazz, the only barrier to this is being if he himself decides not to. Enjoyable, hugely engaging and such an impressive performance. Elliot Galvin, in his quote to me said this sounded like him. Well, I am glad he has done this solo recording and revealed just part of the potential he has. For once, words fail to express the wonder felt at this music.

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A Year of Insubordination

By Dan Sorrells

Insub—previously known as Insubordinations Netlabel—is a label run by long-time creative partners Cyril Bondi and d’incise (who sometimes work as the duo Diatribes). Over the years, the label has released music from their many multifaceted projects, as well as from other like-minded musicians. The four albums released in 2019 spanned the spectrum of experimental music, from one-man studio experiments to lengthy, orchestra-sized engagements.

Michael Pisaro/Insub Meta Orchestra – Achilles, Socrates, Diotima (The Poem of Names, No. 2) (Insub, 2019) ***½

Magnus Granberg/Insub Meta Orchestra – Als alle Vögel sangen mein Sehnen und Verlangen (Insub, 2019) ****

These two long commissions highlight the considerable aesthetic space that’s still available within the narrow ambit of minimalist, indeterminate music. Michael Pisaro is a longtime Wandelweiser member, and while the collective’s label has released work by Bondi and d’incise in recent years, I’m not sure they’ve directly engaged with Pisaro’s music before now. Magnus Granberg has an established working relationship with the pair, and all three have performed each others’ work across several releases on labels like Insub, Another Timbre, and Edition Wandelweiser.

The Pisaro piece shuffles awake with almost incidental sounds, the 28-strong Insub Meta Orchestra trying their best to sound a fraction of their size. As the piece approaches its second half, some more-or-less conventional orchestral swells appear, which gradually splinter into shimmering spectral shards as the music becomes more dense and ominous. It’s tempting to try to chase down the significance of the names in the title or the relationship between this piece and “The Poem of Names” (the third movement of 2018’s Shades of Eternal Night), but I suspect these are fool’s errands. Knowledge of the process doesn’t necessarily elucidate Pisaro’s work; how much of this is a result of specific instruction or improvisation spurred by broad compositional suggestions changes little for the listener. I get the sense that the genesis of much of Pisaro’s music lies in the tension between arranging some deeply private elements with others meant to invite interpretation. Still, it’s not hard to hear in those opening moments the same weather captured in the field recordings from Syros that were used in last year’s piece: gusts of wind, or the surf rolling onto the shoreline. As with past engagements with Pisaro’s work, I’m always compelled to listen, but often leave feeling there’s an unbridged gap. There’s something inscrutable in his music that I’m desperate—and always feel I’m failing—to understand.

In contrast, the Granberg commission felt easier to engage with and ultimately to digest. It’s often quite beautiful music, but didn’t lodge in my mind the way Pisaro’s does. The instruments are more individuated in Granberg’s piece, which is moody but also brightly highlights the variety within the ensemble. Diffuse shapes and hues phase in and out as activity is passed between subsets of musicians. The silences and gaps serve a structural, framing function, implying a ghostly pulse that keeps a feeling of forward momentum. It’s a comfortable piece of music that can surprise in its fine details, but in marked contrast to Pisaro’s unsettled spaces, lacks the dangerous undercurrent of uncertainty. The Granberg is walking a forest path in the long rays of the late afternoon sun; the Pisaro is trying to make your way out in the dark as the rain sets in. Pisaro once said in an interview that he was “deeply challenged by the idea of silence,” which had “come to mean contingency” to him. How far to open that door to contingency is a question to which both of these commissions offer distinctive answers.

A Spirale & Chris Cogburn – Autocannibalism (Insub, 2019) ***½

A brief, precarious set crafted almost entirely from guitar and saxophone feedback (the Italian duo of Maurizio Argenziano and Mario Gabola), subtly—even imperceptibly—bolstered by Cogburn’s percussion and electronics. “Autocannibalism” is an apt and slightly humorous description for this medium, which is always at risk of running away from its creators and consuming these fragile improvisations. The group’s approach is interesting, in that they don’t create the expected long-form drones of beating sine waves, but instead work in smaller gestures, relying on volume control and proximity to ease short tones in and out of existence. I imagine simply maintaining control of the feedback partly necessitates this approach, and the result is more often a call-and-response dialogue that juxtaposes tones of varying grit and clarity rather than a sustained effort at timbre-building or teasing out harmonics. These snippets culled from basement recording sessions are probably the only way this music can come to life, but they’re of interest nonetheless.

d’incise – Assemblée, Relâche, Réjouissance, Parade (Insub, 2019) ***

The four short “L’Angland de St-Donat” pieces that beginAssemblée, Relâche, Réjouissance, Parade are studio assemblées of “bowed metallic objects,” electric organ, harmonium, banjo and bass, and are softer, more elastic explorations of the lodes d’incise has mined more energetically in groups like La Tène. Each presents a ritualized constellation of small sounds around reedy harmonium and organ drones. The longer “Le désir” pieces are stranger, but more effective. In these works, resonating metal sticks are bowed over a background of detuned organ recordings. The repeating three-note motifs that undergird “Le désir certain” are deceiving, set against a pedal drone that makes them sound slightly out-of-tune, creating a dizzying, destabilizing effect despite their lockstep rhythm. And this is before you add in the skittering bowed-stick improvisations, which sound a bit like uncooperative, spacetime-warping violins. It certainly occupies a novel space, although at 15 minutes, it slightly overstays. “Le désir serein” relies on overlapping sustained organ drones, creating weird, psychedelic pockets of dissonance. Throughout, a steady repeating note sounds out, a guiding light providing bearings in the dark. Of the two, it’s the easiest to become immersed in, and is a pleasantly disorienting experience.

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Dan Weiss Trio Plus 1 - Utica Box (Sunnyside Records, 2019) ****

By Lee Rice Epstein

It seems every year there is at least one piano trio album that upends and reinvents one of the oldest formats in the genre. In this case, it’s not quite a trio, as the first transformational move made by drummer, composer and bandleader Dan Weiss is to add a second bass player. But the result is much more than the sum of its players, as Weiss and pianist Jacob Sacks are joined by bassists Thomas Morgan and Eivind Opsvik together and separately, the four together drawing on some of Weiss’s finest compositions to date.

Much was made, rightfully, of Weiss’s Starebaby, a fantastic album of metal-jazz with a band I was lucky to see live at the Angel City Jazz Fest a couple of years ago. That band delighted several of u s and has apparently recorded its follow-up album. In the interim, however, Weiss returned to one of his earliest groups, a trio with Sacks and Morgan. And the group jumps right into the deep end with the nearly 20-minute-long title track. The liner notes describes the subtle, gradual shifts of “Utica Box” as “a la Morton Feldman,” but this is texturally different from Tyshawn Sorey’s Feldmanian piano tri o . In Weiss’s hands, texture rhythm, and melody warp in unpredictable ways. In the opening minutes, the trio plus one balances Sacks’s piano with a loping, hypnotic beat. The combination sounds like a backing track custom-made for producer and rapper RZA. Later, when Weiss shifts into a hip-hop/EDM-inspired rhythm, it’s Sacks who restrains the group, maintaining a brilliant combination of timbre and tempo, as the meta-commentary of the titl e provides a framework for Weiss, Sacks, Morgan, and Opsvik to meditate on a seemingly linear melody from prismatic angles.

The album features three of these lengthier songs, “Utica Box” at the start, “Orange” at its center, and “Bonham” as the closer. In a number of ways, each one of these showcases Sacks’s mutability. He’s become one of the foremost players, with an ability to push himself to remarkable limits. Around the midpoint of “Orange,” he takes a 180-degree dynamic pivot that opens the door wide for Morgan’s excellent solo. Separating each of these extended tracks are relatively short excursions, “Jamerson,” “Rock and Heat,” “Please Don’t Leave,” and “Last Time One More Time.”

“Last Time One More Time” is one of the more contemplative and evocative songs on the album. The title, inspired by Weiss’s daughter, was, interestingly, one of his large-ensemble compositions, reconfigured for this quartet. I haven’t heard the other arrangement, but this appears to have been completely overhauled, as it fits the two-bass voicing beautifully. Morgan previously performed on David Virelles’s superb Mbókò, in a double-bass quintet with Robert Hurst, but he comes at Weiss’s music from a completely different angle, and his duet with Opsvik on “Last Time One More Time” is wonderful.

Throughout, I was repeatedly reminded of the album’s cover art, where an outline of an orange contrasts with orange paint in the shape of a pear. However Weiss does it (and it is an amazing feat), his music lives in a binomial space, each half provided equal room to breathe and stretch, or else both sides fold together into something like an orangear or pearnge.

Album available direct from Sunnyside Records, and you can visit Dan Weiss here.

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Michael Formanek Very Practical Trio - Even Better (Intakt, 2019) ****½

By Stephen Griffith

It was only a matter of time for this group, with Mary Halv orson and Tim Berne, to happen. Before they all appeared on Formanek's Ensemble Kolossus release, they'd had their fingers in each other's recorded pies. Formanek and Berne have worked since Bloodcount in the 90s, and the bassist and Halvorson make up two thirds of Thumbscrew. Berne has worked in small groups with Bill Frisell, Nels Cline and Marc Ducret so the genre bending Mary should be an intriguing guitar foil for his insistently probing syncopated lines. Also it's almost impossible to imagine their paths having never crossed in venues like The Stone or at festivals. So clearing busy schedules with other working groups led to this.

I was fully expecting to like this just fine for an initial statement from three musicians I enjoy, while still wanting it to have the more-than-the-sum-of-the-parts synergy that comes from extended interplay as a working group. This disc is truly Even Better than that; a fully mature sounding statement as a collective entity. Formanek composed all the pieces, except for Scott LaFaro's "Jade Visions" closing cut, surely with knowledge of how the lines would sound as played by the other two. And how each has the ability to maintain the rhythm in a drumless trio giving free rein for the others to venture hither and yon while veering away from a chaotic mess.

Things get off to a rousing start on "Suckerpunch" with Formanek and Halvorson playing a stop and go syncopated uptempo line before Berne enters with a slower counter melody which Mary joins up with before they go their separate ways, none stating the original motif but not straying completely away from it either, before ending it with a satisfying return. "Two Pillars" might refer to the saxophonist and guitarist framing the opening with parallel long tones. Berne has long had a haunting tone effectively employed on slower tempos and in this setting it's nicely augmented by the guitar through parallel fragile clear notes, or smeared with delays or shimmering reverb laden chords.

But kudos to the nominal leader (there's no "apostrophe s" as his group, per se, but he's obviously top billed) for these compositions enabling a blending of distinct talents while ebulliently holding up his end on bass. I've been a fan of Formanek for around thirty years but lately he seems to have reached a new plateau. In the last year and a half I saw him with Thumbscrew and a duet with his son, Peter; in both settings his bass was more aggressively out front, in a good way, than I'd previously recalled. But seeing the Elusion Quartet with Tony Malaby, Kris Davis and Ches Smith, where they transformed the compositions on their disc into something different and better, was the real stunner. Hopefully the Very Practical Trio can find time to tour and try to do something similar to this already very enjoyable release.

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Dead Neanderthals – Ghosts (Utech Records, 2019) **** ½

By Nick Ostrum

Ghosts was truly a welcome surprise. I have been following the Dutch duo Dead Neanderthals for years now. The band’s core, Otto Kokke on sax and René Aquarius on drums, has remained constant in personnel, but has transformed the project from a spazzy, blow-until-your-eyes burst act to a group focused on long, intense siren-sounds overlaying a steady, thudding percussive rhythms. The intensity is still there, but it is more focused than on their earlier efforts.

This transformation has taken place incrementally over the a few years and many releases. Some, such as the pivotal Body Horror and Polaris (both released by Utech in 2013), grabbed me right away. Much of the band’s work in between those releases and this one, however, has seemed like a study of extended tones and drum repetitions, sometimes in collaboration with other musicians (Nick Millevoi, Colin Webster, others). Although some of these albums really work (such as Worship the Sun), many give the impression that these guys have a big vision that they are searching for but have not yet realized. Ghosts might be that realization.

The two tracks on Ghosts, aptly titled “Bone Hill” and “Death Bell” deploy many of the same ideas as the band’s earlier releases. There are loud and tempestuous. It is often difficult to figure out if Kokke or Aquarius provides the propulsion. Both, members of the group, however, are slightly more restrained than on previous efforts. This is not quite the free blow-grindcore hybrid characteristic of Kokke’s and Aquarius’ early work. Instead, it is relentless, almost punitively so, but measured. It peaks just a few seconds into the first track, then transforms that peak into a panicked plateau.

Ghosts also sounds fuller than a lot Dead Neanderthals’ earlier work. Some of this is a result simply of better recording and mixing (cheers to Martin Wolterink) that abandons some of the punk-rock (or maybe Arthur Doyle?) ethos that fed the band’s first few EP’s. Much, however, also comes from the addition of Scott Hedrick on guitars and keys. Although the music here is that much more propulsive, that much more inspired than some of the digital-only releases that paved the way to it, it also has that much more sonic density. And that density makes it not just heavy, but also bright. Eerily, almost terrifyingly bright, but stunning nonetheless.

Ghosts is available on digital and LP, accompanied by some beautiful, surrealist digital collage artwork by Pierre Schmidt.

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Latest Trio albums from Joëlle Léandre

By Eyal Hareuveni

New trio albums with French master of the double bass Joëlle Léandre, one with a new trio and another with a working one.

Robert Dick / Joëlle Léandre/ Miya Masaoka - Solar Wind (Not Two, 2019) ****½

Three master improvisers in their first ever recording session - New York-based flutist Robert Dick and koto player Miya Masaoka, who also plays assorted percussion instruments, and French Léandre, who also vocalizes-sings, recorded on September 2018 in New York. The 12 collective, acoustic free-improvisation stress the urgent passion of Dick, Léandre and Masaoka to search for new timbres and voices, resisting to follow familiar strategies and dynamics, until it is almost impossible to identify instruments and their players. Still, this ad-hoc trio succeeds to sound like a seasoned, working trio that has found its very own aesthetics.

Some of the concise pieces sound as if the draw inspiration from extraterrestrial winds and ancient journeys as the first “Whispering of the Stars”, where the trio acts like they are communicating with friendly aliens. But this atmosphere soon changes on “Speed of Silence” when Dick explodes-vocalizes through his flutes - glissando, bass and contrabass, while Léandre and Masaoka intensify the stormy-chaotic vein. Léandre’s low-end bowing on “Chronotype” and “How Old Is Your Shadow?” trigger like-minded sounds from Dick and Masaoka’s bowed koto, solidifying the cryptic spirit of this piece. You can marvel at the delicate, magical interplay of this trio on the exotic, last piece “Adiabatic”.

Australian, New York-based pianist Marc Hannaford who contributed liner notes to Solar Wind writes about the paradox of “attributing agency and intention in spite of my inability to tell which musician is making which sound. Furthermore, this paradox of disembodied-yet tangential interaction emerges from lucidity rich musical textures in which textures sound overlap, interfere, evade and encircle each other, rather than extreme textural density. This recording reveals the lush, playful beauty of this paradox”. And indeed, with each listening you may decipher another enigmatic element from the imaginative, microtonal sonic universes that Dick, Léandre and Masaoka construct and deconstruct instantly and constantly, alone and together.

To purchase the album: https://sellfy.com/p/zjkdbx/

Tiger Trio - Map of Liberation (Rogue Art, 2019) ****

Another trio of master improvisers that features Léandre with pianist Myra Melford and flutist Nicole Mitchell. The Tiger Trio, titled after a saying of Orson Wells who boasted that he had “the great honor of swimming in the company of a tiger”, gravitates towards dense, free jazz textures than the abstract, extraterrestrial flights of the trio of Dick, Léandre and Masaoka trio. Map of Liberation is the sophomore album of this trio, following Unleashed (Rogue Art, 2016), recorded live over two days at a gallery in 19 rue Paul Fort, Paris, and at Festival Jazzdor, Strasbourg, both in France on November 2018.

The 11 free-improvised, acoustic pieces are titled as Buddhist virtues but by no means call for passive, quiet meditation, more like a deep dive with a hyperactive tiger. These pieces stand for a total commitment for the art of free-improv, for passionate, poetic fury and the urge to be one with one’s instrument and fully aware of the moment. But this trio also expresses a profound - spiritual and emotional - need to to search for new ways to confront one’s instrument and find in it new sounds and meaning, alone and together.

You can feel how this trio suggests the right kind of “Courage”- as one of the pieces is titled, for Mitchell, Léandre and Melford to abandon familiar modes; to enjoy, playful “Compassion, as another piece is titled; or experiment with troubling “Reflection” of the self and contemplate, in a quite loud manner, the concept of “Emptiness”, or in reserved, thoughtful manner the meaning of “Steadfastness”. All as a tight trio that has explored its very own “forest of sounds liberated by the instrumentalists” - to quote French journalist Fançois-René Simon who wrote the liner notes - and has found its balanced communion. Now you can understand why the last three pieces answer to the titles “Respect”, “Humility” and “Honesty”.

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Zlatko Kaučič Quintet - Morning Patches (Fundacja Słuchaj) *****

By Stuart Broomer

There’s a question once posed by John Cage that seems to invite an expanding variety of answers, something about what’s more musical, a truck driving by a factory or a truck driving by a music school.

Percussionist Zlatko Kaučič’s quintet adds another environment to the mix, a church, and has musicians standing in for other elements: bassist Silvia Bolognesi and three reed players: Michael Moore on alto saxophone and clarinet; Michael Colonna on clarinet and bass clarinet; and Albert Cirera on tenor saxophone. “All music is by” assigns the work to the five musicians, usually a sure mark of collective improvisation, though the music has qualities of thoroughness, reflection and inevitability that suggest it might all be notated and then rehearsed until it sounds completely natural. It often invites a long, slow inhalation followed by a similar exhalation.

The music is profoundly grounded, even to the extent that Kaučič lists his instruments as “ground sounds,” his various percussion instruments, some unidentifiable, laid on the floor of St. Martin's Church, in Šmartno, Slovenia. He’s a discreet presence, almost spirit-like, often making discrete sounds, isolated flurries, taps, rattles, brushes and cymbal sounds. His initial contribution to the sublime “September” sounds like off-hand knife sharpening. His duet with Bolognesi on “Mlaj” hovers between the invisible, the accidental and the sublime.

About that music school? Moore, Bolognesi and Colonna are all skilled free improvisers, highly inventive, disciplined musicians whose sonorities, intonation, evenness and attention to details of dynamics and inflection would delight an academician (at least one open to free improvisation in a church). The abilities to develop continuous and evolving form are at the highest level, and it’s a performance that in 1960 would have stunned Jimmy Giuffre and George Russell, two of the finest minds in jazz history and pressing, by degrees, towards a similar art, whether improvised or composed.

Albert Cirera? His presence, too, is sometimes discreet. He supplies concordant melody, rhythmic force and lightly overblown tones to the collective, including some that sound flute-like. He’s also capable of great subtlety, but when the three winds dance around one another with repeated rhythmic figures on the brief “Jutranja,” his contributions are the honks. On “Strehe” his feature amid Kaučič’s rattling metal, he’s playing hard-edged multiphonics—dissonant, industrial--with something rattling, likely foil or metal, on the bell of his horn. He follows with a high whistling line broken by occasional low-end rhythmic blasts. Coming to the fore, he’s the truck driving by the music school, the debris of an exploded factory falling on music school and church alike.

While the others play musical instruments, Cirera plays an irrepressible noise machine. It’s the element raising this music from perfection to something really great.

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