The Tomeka Reid Quartet - dance! skip! hop! (Out of Your Head, 2026) *****

By Gary Chapin

Every once in a while I’m reminded that I have a sweet spot in music and when that spot — that spot of sonic, cosmic equilibrium — is hit, then things in my head are just, in a profound way, going to be okay. The spot is defined by a deep groove, reckless composition, and a romance with the outside. Think of records by Eric Dolphy, Air, the Jazz Passengers, or Mike Formanek. My point (and I do have one) is that the Tomeka Reid Quartet (featuring Reid, cello; Mary Halvorsen, guitar; Jason Roebke, bass and cassette; Tomas Fujiwara, percussion) hits that spot dead on, and I am five stars happier than before I listened.

I wasn’t surprised that this was so. Reid comes out of an org (the AACM) that pioneered groove outre music, and she’s part of a group … or movement? school? tribe? “group of people who play all the time on each others’ records” … for whom this sort of Hemphilian tomfoolery is bread and butter. I’m talking about the nexus that includes (but is not limited to) Reid, Halvorsen, Fujiwara, Nick Dunston, Patricia Brennan, Adam O’Farrill, and the late, wonderful, Susan Alcorn.

This particular record telegraphs its intentions with its title, “dance! skip! jump!” It’s a string ensemble with percussion, and the title track timbrally evokes Black string bands. It’s got the lightness and ebullience (both necessary if you are going to “skip!”) Fujiwara’s brushes do a lot of the levitating. The second track, “a(ways) For CC and CeCe,” starts in a knotty place with the drums and bass giving attitude. When Reid enters on cello, It becomes an ode, loving well. “Oo long!” sets a hip and sinister groove. I am charmed by the pun title and want to know what it has to do with the apparently hip and sinister tea. “Under the Aurora Sky” enters a balladic or pastoral space, introspective. “Silver String Fig Tree” is a freer, more expansive conversation between the players with some interesting structures supporting it — for example, a section were Reid repeats a five note riff with a lot of space, and the others live on top of that.

Best of 2026 so far.

Read More

Beatrice Arrigoni, Maddalena Ghezzi, Francesca Naibo - Monologo Addosso (Habitable Records, 2026)

By Sammy Stein

Monologo Addosso comprises Beatrice Arrigoni (vocals), Maddalena Ghezzi (vocals), and Francesca Naibo (vocals, guitar). It is produced by Luca Martegani. Beatrice Arrigoni is a singer, improviser, composer, and performer with a range of projects under her belt. She participated in the 2023 “improvisation voice and electronics” workshop led by Valèrie Philippin at IRCAM in Paris and studied improvisation with Stefano Battaglia and vocal technique with Renaissance and Baroque singer Elena Carzaniga. She has performed at many festivals and events.

Maddalena Ghezzi is an Italian singer, composer, and improviser who settled in London in 2009 and now works in London and Milan in the fields of jazz, improvised music, and vocal and creative experimentation. As a leader, she has released five EPs, all part of her Minerals series: Amethyst (with Thodoris Ziarkas), Halite (with Ed Blunt), Opal (with Francesca Naibo), Emerald (with Maria Chiara Argirò), and Dolomite (with Ruth Goller), and two albums with her band FUWAH. She has performed at the London and Milan Jazz Festivals and many venues.

Francesca Naibo is a guitarist from Vittorio Veneto but Milanese by adoption, who plays many genres, including classical, electric, fretless, and pedal steel. Having spent years researching solo performance, she focuses on exploring the fields of free improvisation and contemporary music. Her interest is particularly focused on using both the acoustic and electric nature of her instrument, venturing from roaring drones to microscopic vibrations. She studied in Venice, Milan, Bern, and Basel, graduating in classical guitar and free improvisation, and collaborated with various European musicians, especially in Central and Northern Europe. She has worked with many composers and musicians, and her album Namatoulee, received critical acclaim

Monologo Addosso is a sonic work which work that reworks and transfigures the poetry of Elena Cornaggia in order to fully convey its expressive depth. The result is nine ‘sound paintings’ with great dramatic power, in which electronic inserts, the use of extended techniques, polyphonic and contrapuntal writing interact to compose an evocative and expressive mosaic of colours.

It is very much an ‘out of the box’ concept with the interaction between poetry, sonic effects, and vocals creating a merging of the arts. The imagery the music creates is powerful and incredibly profound.

The music and interpretation of words and pictures create an intersection where poetry, music, and electronic effects come together to create something unique. Different styles are linked, with the vocals creating beautiful harmonies, explorative diversions, and snippets of spoken conversation to weave a landscape of colour and evocative sonic portraits.

The purity of sound, created by vocals, guitar, or electronics, is presented sometimes as a raw, material element, or a primordial essence, a lyrical and ecstatic evocation, abstraction, idiom: the work's sonic journey invites the listener into profound contemplation, expressing the urgency of an internal’ monologue capable of releasing energy and revealing the essence of all things.

What this album is also is intensely feminine. That might sound like a strange thing to say as a reviewer, but there is a sense of power and deep connection between the women who created this recording that is palpable and creates a deep sense of sisterhood.

'A Mani Aperte' opens the recording, and this is sensual, where the women produce short vocal sounds, including ‘dings,’ intakes of breath, and sighs. It sounds mad, and it is, but it is also very effective at engaging the listener. The final third comprises atmospheric electronics topped by a beautiful melody, gorgeously worked harmonies that contrast and provide a grounding, before the short trills and whispered effects complete it and act as a reminder that the track began in this tone.

'Tra il sonno e la parole' features harmonies backed by warping, echoing electronics that fade, allowing the electronic effects to come to the fore, but gently and with the guitar adding definition in a melody. The harmonies are beautiful, with deep contralto and sweet soprano melding to become as a single unit with many parts.

Throughout the album, the vocals adapt to the soundscape, either enhancing the effects, or contrasting with purity and beautiful harmonies. From the rickety tickety effects on 'Dentro Alle Squadro' to the standout 'Mi raccogliesse,' which features harmonies that break into a variety of sounds, from clucks to melodic inserts and explosive effects, portraying the variety of essences that womankind encompass perhaps.

There are echoes of ecclesiastic harmonies and madrigal singing, alongside improvisation and imaginative electronic effects on some tracks. 'Paessagio mentale' is intense and deeply emotive, while Implodo esplodo is held together by a madcap, chattering spoken harmony line, the voices performing as percussive instruments before the slow build-up of electronic effects overpowers the vocals, which retreat into a deep hum that develops a regular rhythm akin to breathing, and whispered inserts and snippets of voice.

The closing track, 'Quando il cervello prude' showcases each musician and is a beautiful, atmospheric way to end the album – and go back to the start.

A powerful, beautifully worked project, this is for listening again and again.

.

Read More

Two by The Outskirts–Sort Of: Orbital,The Outskirts and Marta Warelis (2/2)

 

By Brian Earley

Disc Two

Friends, there is just so much music on Orbital that I needed to write two reviews to cover all its beauty. Seriously, I was listening to a new release by a fairly popular band this morning that clocks in around 40 total minutes of music. The first song on Disc Two of Orbital, “Spherical Harmonics,” contains more than 41 minutes of improvised mayhem by itself. The second improvisation, “Angular Momentum” runs nearly a half-hour. That’s an hour and ten minutes of music on just disc two! Disc one is over 70 minutes long. Damn! Ingo Frank, and Dave have some serious stamina.

What makes disc two of Orbital really special is the addition of pianist Marta Warelis. Recorded in Antwerp nine days before disc one, this version presents Håker Flaten, Rosaly, and Rempis in an entirely disparate context. If disc one was a propulsive trio romp, the addition of the Polish born pianist results in a thunderstorm where the lighting is hunks of lava.

Everything is big on this disc. The song lengths are big. Dave’s saxophone is big and bluesy and sultry; just listen to the 13.00 minute mark on “Spherical Harmonics” or, hell, check out Dave near the beginning of “Angular Momentum” where his big, fat vibrato and breathy tone evoke Ben Webster or even Johnny Hodges. The first nine minutes (nine minutes!) of “Spherical” is nonstop energy-power music where Warelis swipes violently upward in glissandos, thunder smacks the lower octaves of the keys, or tumbles piano notes like a waterfall made of glass where everything breaks but the momentum of the music. Ingo rams forward driving, chunks of bass plucking, and Frank hisses, smashes, and makes the cymbals scream.

To be fair, “Angular Momentum” is filled with moments of quiet reflection, intelligent space, and subtle interplay. In fact, I really admire Rosaly’s discipline and restraint on this piece. He often holds back, drops out, or plays softly, and the result is pure beauty, as it offers a chance for listeners to hear Rempis and Warelis interact. Listen, for example, from roughly 4:00 to 7:00 on this work. Warelis plays sustained midrange single notes and a prepared piano that sounds like a stopped mbira or harpsichord while engaging with Dave in a stunning and varied call and response sequence (one of many on this disc).

The second work blows softly to a close. Warelis slows her pace, Frank softens his thwacking and shaking, Ingo opens up sonic room in a near ostinatto formation, and the music ends with the sound of only Dave’s breath.

I couldn’t recommend this album more to both long time listeners of these artists and to those finding themselves, like the rest of us, hearing Dave, Ingo, and Frank play with Marta Warelis for the first time. The delight of the trio making new of things past, and in its forking of lighting with Warelis, both make this a valuable listening experience and an angular tapestry of harmonics for our time. 

 

 

Orbital can be purchased artist direct at https://www.aerophonicrecords.com/catalog. 

Read part 1.

Read More

Two by The Outskirts–Sort Of: Orbital,The Outskirts and Marta Warelis (1/2)

By Brian Earley

Disc One

I remember sitting in the audience with my wife at the Philadelphia Art Alliance in the spring of 2013. We were listening to The Engines, it was a cool April evening, and the band’s signature combination of spontaneity and precision was sharp that night.

I don’t wish to descend into nostalgia here, but I find myself thinking frequently about Dave Rempis’s old band recently as I have acquainted myself with his latest album for Aerophonic Records: Orbital. Orbital is not a new album by The Engines, but it isnew material from saxophonist Rempis, drummer Frank Rosaly, and bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, a band that titled themselves The Outskirts, and played together from 2007-2009, smack in the middle of the years the Engines were active. While The Engines released a handful of recordings, The Outskirts released exactly zero. In fact, if it weren’t for Rempis’s now legendary COVID era 15-week, 15-livestream, 15-album release series we would not have access to any recorded evidence of The Outskirts at all.

On July 1, 2020 Dave took to the internet to perform solo and announce the release of the album You Deserve To Dance by the Outskirts, a recording he tells the audience that “never saw the light of day” because the original “multitrack files that allow you to mix a record were lost in a terrible hard drive accident.” The band, however, was given a rough stereo mix that allowed Rempis, over a decade later, to release the music. That night on the livestream, Dave did not perform any songs by The Outskirts, but he did play “Four Feet of Slush,” song four on The Engines album Wire and Brass reviewed at the time by The Free Jazz Collective.

“Four Feet of Slush,” it turns out, is the very first song on Orbital . Followers of Dave Rempis’s music will likely find this shocking as, first, Rempis, who pushes so urgently forward in the moment, performs songs from his past, and second, a Dave Rempis album contains songs,written-out songs. I mean, Dave never does this. His bands collaborate spontaneously, improvise live, sometimes for hours, and these works get recorded and Dave releases some of them on Aerophonic Records, often with the help of engineer Dave Zuchowski, artist Lasse Marhaug and others.

And The Engines songs do not stop there. Listeners will recognize “Cascades,” “Hover,” “Strafe,” and while it is not listed among the track titles, “Going Dutch,” a deep track from a 2015 digital only Engines album titled Green Knights. “Going Dutch,” found here on “Strafe-Glass Part 1” however, reminds me of early Ornette Coleman albums, if Sonny Rollins were the front man with the flexible time and forward swinging of Billy Higgins and Charlie Haden. Or, more aptly, the tune reminds me of the playing of still another Rempis band from the early aughts: Triage. In fact, the one non-Engines song on this performance is “Glass,” a tune recorded by Triage on 2003’s twenty minute cliff.

Orbital is far from reactive or sentimental, however. The trio takes these songs and makes something new and strange out of them. See, for example, the 8:25 mark of “Strafe,” when Dave and Frank explore improvised atmospheric sounds, more searching than swinging. But Ingo, Rosaly, and Rempis honestly sound like they are having a blast on this record and, given a thematic basis for mood and timbre, the group launches ahead, driving, laughing, and transforming these old tunes.

If you are anything like me, you would probably rather forget all about 2020, and on the Outskirts release stream from that July, before playing “Four Feet of Slush,” Dave quips the song applies to the time: “Let’s call it ‘Four Feet of Shit,’ how about that?” But those livestreams and the accompanying releases raised thousands of dollars for working musicians, and honestly helped me to stay afloat during that period of uncertainty. The past, even without nostalgia, can light up the present, as do my fond memories of the April concert in Philadelphia. So, although we may be walking through four feet of shit again in 2026, The Outskirts have arrived to provide the soundtrack one more time and to gift us a little warmth where there was none before.

Orbital can be purchased artist direct at https://www.aerophonicrecords.com/catalog. 

 

Read part two.

Read More

Peter Evans Being & Becoming - Live At Bimhuis

This is a treat - the full concert of Peter Evans' Being & Becoming at the Bimhuis in Amsterdam in 2023, with Peter Evans on trumpet, Joel Ross on vibraphone, Nick Jozwiak on bass and Michael Ode on drums. The quality of the recording and the editing are - as usual with Bimhuis TV - excellent. 

Reviews of the band can be found here: Ars Ludica (2025), Ars Memoria (2023), and their original "Being & Becoming" (2020). The music is tightly composed with lots of room for improvisation. Some of the soloing and interplay are absolutely spectacular. 


One of our Sunday Interviews with Peter Evans can be found here. 

Read More

Harriet Tubman & Georgia Anne Muldrow - Electrical Field of Love (Pi Recordings, 2026)

By Ferruccio Martinotti

It touched us a lot, discovering, some years ago, that a band was named after one of the legendary figures of the anti-slavery movement, Harriet Tubman. A runaway slave who, despite being physically disabled by the terrible conditions of segregation that she was forced to endure, didn't hesitate to help dozens of women and men like her on the road to freedom via the legendary Underground Railroad. Our band was formed in 1998 and features Brandon Ross on guitar, with previous collaborations with, among others, Archie Shepp, Henry Threadgill, Cassandra Wilson, Arrested Development; J.T. Lewis on drums (beating for Lou Reed, Don Pullen, Herbie Hancock) and the legendary Melvin Gibbs on bass, a trusted longtime partner of Bill Frisell, Henry Rollins and Arto Lindsay. 

Raised with Miles, Funkadelic, Hendrix and the sounds of the New York streets as their soundtrack, Tubman aim to contribute to African-American culture through a clear and focused mission statement: “Our music reflects the essential impulse of the wave of energy that entered and embraced the world in the 1960s: depth, creativity, communication, spirituality, love, individuality, determination, expression, revelation. We feel that the choice to perform Open Music has a value and relevance that connects with re-awakening, the new search for restored meaning that we see and experience wherever and whenever we perform.” This Open Music, which we can easily translate as Great Black Music, is fittingly contextualized in the present, with the Ghosts of the past clearly in the room but not as intruders rendering it a dusty museum practice. So the blues fades into noise, electro and free take on psychedelic nuances, doom and dub have no dividing lines, in an ongoing free and powerful flow. 

After I am a man (1998), Prototype (2000), Ascension (2011), Araminta (2017) and The Terror End of Beauty (2018), here is finally the new work, Electrical field of love. Alongside the three aces, this time we find the voice of Georgia Anne Muldrow, a true, disruptive novelty of the album. With a solo career of around twenty albums behind her and a series of prestigious collaborations (Yasin Bey, J Dilla, Madlib, Erika Badu), Georgia obtained a Grammy nomination in the Best Urban Contemporary Album category in 2018, while in 2020, under the moniker Jyoty (given to her by Alice Coltrane, a family friend), she recorded Mama you can bet, hailed by the NYT as one of the 20 best albums of the year. In 2022 their paths crossed at the Detroit Jazz Festival when Muldrow was invited to jump on stage: "it was the gig of my dreams. When Brandom called me later to do the recording, I almost fainted", is the memory of Georgia who adds in relation to the studio work: "I love to play free. I grew up in this music so it's my comfort zone. Brandon and I always seemed to be in spontaneous unison, it felt so natural to echo each other harmonically. Melvin synthesized everything beautifully. I didn't even need to explain myself, they already knew. And I call JT 'liminal trash', like someone who screams and whispers at the same time”. According to Maestro Melvin: "When people get with Tubman, they enter our world. Georgia Anne has a multidimensional mind and she jumped right in like she's one of us." 

A final note to the role of producer Scotty Hard, essential as in the group's two previous albums. A protégé of Teo Macero, Hard applied the production technique used on "Bitches Brew," "In a Silent Way," and "On the Corner," distilling and reassembling over six hours of material before arriving at the finished product. "Two days of summoning the gods and finding inspiration in each other's creative flow," Scotty said. Benevolent gods and inspiration through the roof, we say.

Read More

LDL (Urs Leimgruber / Jacques Demierre / Thomas Lehn) - the eerie glow of jellyfish (Relative Pitch, 2026)

By Eyal Hareuveni

The free-improvising LDL trio - Swiss soprano sax player Urs Leimgruber, pianist and keyboard player Jacques Demierre (who also collaborates with Leimgruber in a duo), and German EMS analogue synth and sound processing player Thomas Lehn - emerged from the trio LDP - Leimgruber, Demierre, and the late American double bass master Barre Philips, which worked between 2001 and 2021, and hosted Lehn in Willisau (jazzwerkstatt, 2019). LDL recorded its debut live album, in the endless wind, in 2023 (Wide Ear, 2024), continuing LDP’s aesthetics, which recorded most of its albums in live settings.

the eerie glow of jellyfish was recorded live at the Kaleidophon Festival in Ulrichsberg, Austria, in April 2024 (where LDP + Lehn performed in 2019), and features a five-movement suite. Demierre plays the amplified spinet (which he played in the duo album with Leimgruber, It Forgets About The Snow, Creative Sources, 2021), so two keyboards - the acoustic, harpsichord-like spinet and the vintage analogue synthesizer, both augmented by Lehn’s live sound processing, embrace Leimgruber’s soprano sax at the center of the sound image.

the eerie glow of jellyfish is an uncompromising, tension-filled, and volatile improvisation, relying on deep listening and thoughtful, precise exploration of the performance’s acoustic space. LDL is deeply immersed in a stubborn, collective process of continuously filling and emptying the sound space, allowing the unorthodox instrumentation and LDL’s idiosyncratic sonic palettes to manifest themselves in the most personal and freest manner possible. This captivating process suggests LDL as a live organism that acts within an unpredictable, highly resonant, and often noisy, yet hyper-attentive dialogue where elusive structure and spontaneous, individual musical events are in constant negotiation. LDL always challenges and disrupts the individual sonic palettes and never resorts to familiar sonic options or narratives.

the eerie glow of jellyfish offers an insightful listening experience that transforms the soprano sax, spinet, and the analog synth into new, surprising sonic dimensions. LDL’s profound sensibility of listening liberates its instruments, far beyond our preconceptions. It is a sonic journey that visits close and faraway exotic, otherworldly, and the freest sonic territories, but with deep roots in European free improvisation and contemporary music.

Read More

Nomad War Machine / Susan Alcorn - Contra Madre (VG+, 2026)

By Martin Schray

When Susan Alcorn passed away unexpectedly last year, it came as a shock to the free jazz scene. At the age of 71, she still had plenty of plans, including trio albums with Lori Freedman and Mat Maneri on the one hand, and with Ingrid Laubrock and Leila Bordreuil on the other. But obviously there were other projects as well, such as her collaboration with Nomad War Machine, the Philadelphian improvisational metal duo consisting of drummer Julius Masri and guitarist James Reichard. Alcorn’s roots lie in the Texas Western swing scene of the 1960s and 1970s, which she repeatedly combined with new classical music and free improvised music. So, in retrospect, it’s not surprising that she was constantly looking for new challenges and that metal could be an appealing starting point for her to explore new musical territory. Apart from the fact that Masri and Reichard have also been interested in country music, there was another intersection: Alcorn was enthusiastic about oriental music (she had studied the oud and the maqam) and Julius Masri, who comes from Lebanon, is also deeply rooted in Arabic musical traditions. Also, James Reichard has always been interested in xenharmonic music and open guitar tunings, which are more at home in the music of the Middle East.

The music on Contra Madre cannot deny metal influences, however the atmosphere presented is rather gloomy rock. It’s primarily Masri whose driving rhythms are responsible for this rock element, while Reichard throws in hard power chords or atonal arpeggios, over which Alcorn then lets her pedal steel float lightly. The alternative to these rather quiet parts are those when the pedal steel and the guitar start fighting. It sounds as if Ry Cooder was jamming with Earth and at some point they throw tonality overboard. This can be heard exemplarily in “Boiling Vortex”. The piece begins almost idyllically, as if it wanted to describe a picturesque landscape, before an alienated blues riff quickly emerges, foreshadowing evil. The vortex is by no means a gently swirling pool of water. The musicians take their time to build up this dark atmosphere. After about four minutes, violence reigns supreme, the tempo increases, the music seethes, howls, crashes and screams from all corners until the improvisation literally threatens to boil over. Even as a listener, it takes your breath away - and the tension doesn’t cool down until the end of the piece.

In the liner notes Lee Gardner of VG+ Records says of Alcorn and the album: “I started the label because of Susan. (…) All throughout 2024, she kept talking about this record that she'd made with these "metal guys" from Philly. (…) I texted with her on a Thursday in late January of 2025 about meeting the following Monday to make plans to talk about the new record. She suddenly, shockingly died the following day. I would eventually hear the record she made with Julius and James, and would meet them for the first time at a memorial concert for Susan in Philadelphia. I’m honored and humbled that they have trusted me to put this one more bit of Susan’s music out in the world.“

We, the listeners, are glad that VG+ made this wonderful recording available for us. Certainly one of the highlights in 2026 - even if it’s only March.

Contra Madre is available on Vinyl and as a digital download. On bandcamp you can listen to “Boiling Vortex“ and buy the album.

Read More

Orchestra of the Upper Atmosphere = Theta Seven (Discus, 2026) *****

By Gary Chapin 

Martin Archer’s confluence of avant, prog, improv, electronics, krautrock, and big band is one of my favorite ongoing projects in the field, and my joy at this release is matched only by my being bummed out by the fact that this is the last recording the band will be putting out. The enterprise has come to a close. Theta Seven serves well as a valedictory effort — a capstone. Here’s the personnel:

• Martin Archer – woodwind, keyboards, software instruments
• Steve Dinsdale – drums, keyboards
• Lorin Halsall – acoustic and electric double basses, electronics
• Yvonna Magda – violin and electronics
• Andy Peake – piano, keyboards
• Walt Shaw – drums, percussion, electronics
• Jan Todd – vocals, voices, melodies, electronics, guzheng, electric Harp-E, lute harp, cross strung harp, hulusi flutes, metal Noisebox, waterphones, found sound recordings, electronic samples
• Terry Todd – bass guitar

The method of The Orchestra of the Enlightenment mixes composition, improv, and collage. For two frenetic days the band gathers and records all base tracks. Afterwards, Martin Archer takes the recordings, does overdubs, “radically” edits, and collage until, finally, the mass of granite has been shaped into a piece of work that reflects Martin’s original vision along with Brit prog, avant jazz, electronics, psychedelia, and trippy cinema soundtracks. There is a lovely Ummagumma-ish-ness to parts of this that I didn’t realize I missed.

The music is presented twice, once broken into eleven tracks, and once presented as a single hour-and-a-quarter-ish track of the whole thing. I prefer the latter, since every moment of music depends on where it came from and where it’s going. The segues and fades of this collage work are all on point.

There are many specific points that struck me extraordinary and have made this a many-spins-five-star album. After an evocative and lovely duet between the bass and the guzheng (an African zither-type), the second tune lets out all the horses. The drums fall into that ensorceling, mid-tempo “set the controls for the heart of the sun” groove that’s going to be the foundation for much that follows. The bass launches a repetitive, funky riff. A horn section of sorts, electronics, violin, haunting vocalese, electronics — overlapping melodies, almost, at the level of the arrangement, a round. On top of the pile is Archer’s baritone saxophone — which has a majestic timbre.

Martin Archer’s Discus puts out so much great stuff it’s easy to take for granted. But five stars is five stars, even when Archer makes a habit of it.

Read More

Street Fight - Stoic Hardcore (Profound Whatever, 2026)

By Richard Blute 

The band Street Fight consists of Itta Nakamura on drums, João Clemente on guitar and Nuno Jesus on bass, and this band absolutely cranks. I’m tempted to leave this review at that and just tell the reader to go hit PLAY. You’ll understand quickly.

Their music is somehow very familiar and yet new and exciting. It’s the standard configuration of a power trio, electric guitar, electric bass and drums. Part of me was hoping they’d launch into some Disraeli Gears, and while that didn’t happen exactly, the trio did a fine job of demonstrating just how flexible this combination of instruments can be and how much great music it can produce.

The short track Iron Resolve is pure noise, sounding a bit like one of Sonic Youth’s heavier tunes. Equanimity is a great track, the bass and drums find a deep groove and settle into it. Feet were tapping listening to this one and Clemente’s guitar work here is really sharp.

The track Paradox Of Calm is, paradoxically, not calm at all. Clemente starts by playing some funky guitar lines straight out of Fear Of Music-era Talking Heads but then the guitar suddenly goes fuzzy and the tempo slows to some sludgy metal. This band obviously wants to surprise their listeners and keep them on their toes. With musicians this talented, the surprise is always a good one.

The centrepiece of the album is a 5-part suite called The Storm. In the first part (The Eye), Nakamura has switched from a standard drum kit to percussion and Jesus is playing an almost drone-like line. In the second part (The Eyewall), the bass is especially thumping as the funky tempo of earlier tracks returns, but now Clemente is playing some classic rock guitar, and the combination works just as well. In part 3 (Rainbands), Nakamura is showing off his skills (and they are many) with the track at first being largely an interaction between guitar and drums. But with part 4 (Uplift) the tempo and style change again. It might be the best track on the album. Bass and drums are once again locked into a groove and the guitar becomes more and more intense. Then Nakamura’s drumming really takes off and the whole suite builds to a startling conclusion.

This album is a fine example of a band finding the sweet spot between guitar rock and improvised music and exploring it for all it’s worth. It was also an introduction for me to the very cool Portuguese label Profound Whatever. I’ve been exploring their other offerings, in particular further collaborations between Nakamura and Clemente, and I predict I’ll be reviewing more of their music in the future.

Read More