Jim Hobbs and Timo Shanko - The Depression Tapes (Relative Pitch Records, 2025) *****

By Don Phipps

When one thinks of great sax-bass collaborations, a few albums stand out:

• 1977’s Soapsuds, Soapsuds, an amazing duet between the late sax and composer extraordinaire Ornette Coleman and the late bassist and composer extraordinaire Charlie Haden.
  
  
• The two volume 1976 recordings on Improvising Artists (Dave Holland/Sam Rivers Vol 1 and Sam Rivers/Dave Holland Vol 2) showcasing the late great tenor sax and flautist Sam Rivers and the dynamic bass and cellist Dave Holland.
  
  
• Then there’s last year’s Parlour Games, a 1991 live recording of the incredible Tim Berne on alto and baritone sax and the equally unreal Michael Formanek on bass.

And now, The Depression Tapes, where the talent and mastery of Jim Hobbs and Timo Shanko are on full display. Hobbs alternates between Lee Konitz cool, Ornette bluesy wails, and his own personal gritty style – a style that uses delicate riffs to produce piercing lines that feel contained and open at the same time. Shanko provides Hobbs with a rollicky foundation that encourages exploration while laying down his own monstrous roller coaster runs and hard bop plucks, revealing a technical virtuosity at the highest level.

One need look no further than the improvisatory masterpiece “Trials and Temptations” to grasp the excellence of this album. Here the sound of Shanko’s bass – meaty, wooden Hadenesque - shines through. As the number progresses, Shanko attacks the strings of his instrument with extreme precision. And towards the end, he is constantly on the move up and down the neck, playing inside and outside – his fingers always moving. Hobbs lets Shanko carry the piece, choosing to play above the raging river of Shanko’s sound. However, Hobbs’ wailing phrases, while melancholy, embody grace. Together, the two musicians create stunning musical poetry.

Another cut that deserves the label masterpiece is “Departure.” The sorrow expressed suggests loss – the loss of a friendship, the death of a loved one, or other goodbyes that stick in one’s gut as much as one’s head. Sorrowful in mood, Hobbs’ notes blend beautifully above Shanko’s bowing, almost like a wounded bird. The improv possesses a dignity - a perseverance despite the odds. Hobbs takes it out towards the end – an overwhelming wail of anguish. This is surely a lament for the ages.

In 1989, Hobbs and Shanko helped form the Fully Celebrated Orchestra, but this is their first duo record. The album provides a testament to their long-lived collaboration. Engaging with the present – seeing the complete and utter lunacy that governs our current world – the madness - it’s important for one’s sanity to have the music of The Depression Tapes . The duo proves that there is always a creative spark – a subtle but distinct light - in the darkness. Highly recommended. 

 

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Christer Bothen - L'INVISIBLE (Thanatosis Produktion, 2025)

By Don Phipps

Clarinetist and composer Christer Bothen’s L’INVISIBLE (in English - the hidden, unseen, or invisible) is a fascinating bluesy abstraction, music that suggests David Lynch’s Red Room – a dreamscape where things feel both oddly in and out of place – like wearing a wrong size shirt that’s still presentable. This enigmatic kaleidoscopic endeavor is sustained by Kansan Zetterberg’s expressive bass and Kjell Nordeson’s cool vibraphone and hot drums.

The music, recorded as two parts, seems maze-like. The labyrinth is deep and navigating it hints at a journey to the unknown parts of the human psyche. In “Partie 1,” Bothen quotes Ornette Coleman’s classic “Lonely Woman,” an unexpected curve ball in what feels like a cat on the prowl in some dark alley. There’s a film noir aspect to the composition – a grayness of black & white. Zetterberg alternates between individual note plucks and staggered strumming across the strings. Bothen’s clarinet rips at time but mostly its full voiced and spatial, providing an interesting counterpart to Nordeson’s abstract vibraphone phrases, phrases replete with pedal work that imparts an ethereal quality.

In “Partie 2,” Bothen begins with a repeating motif in the clarinet’s lower register while Nordeson develops his vibraphone dissonance and harmonics. Midway all hell breaks loose, as Nordeson moves to the drums and the trio pushes forward like a space vehicle launch – accelerating with rapid intensity. Bothen squeals out his stratospheric lines and the tune darts here and there like some kind of high-speed chase down a darkened freeway. Bothen then moves inside the piano, where he rummages about as Zetterberg uses his bow to create a sonic platform. Nordeson’s drums are hot here but under control. The bottom drops out –Nordeson resumes his work on the vibraphone and the trio evokes the bluesy dreaminess of a dark foggy evening.

Albums like these are to be savored. They bring one closer to mortal thoughts and beliefs, and how they all jumble together to create reality within one’s mind. Just what is a dream anyway? Where does it go and why is it many times beyond recall? Is this what Huxley meant by the doors of perception? Perhaps Bothen means none of this with these ruminations. Still, in this music one cannot escape the hidden and unseen.

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Lingyuan Yang – Cursed Month (Chaospace Records, 2025)

By Nick Ostrum

Cursed Month is the first release by guitarist Lingyuan Yang’s trio with pianist Shinya Lin and drummer Asher Herzog. From the first notes of the opener Ritual Fire, one gets the sense the rest of the album is going to big and tortuous, but also structured. Think heavy prog with idiosyncratic elements. Parts of it draw on hard rock, parts on Second Viennese School dizzying atonality (Schoenberg’s Op. 33a comes to mind), Zappa-esque warped time signatures and tempos, and Tzadik-leaning tightness and rapid-fire genre-blending. The problem is that that description makes this album sound like a muddle; it is anything but.

Cursed Month has clarity despite the bucket of techniques and styles it flings at the listener. That clarity lies in Yang’s vision, and his frequent use of pointillistic guitar cascades. Where other guitarists would fall into dense and dissonant chords, Yang doubles-down on tight staccato plinking and prismatic sound refractions. He punctures rather than threads his way through the thorny overgrowth that Lin and Herzog lay for him. For its part, the rhythm section is tight and heavy. Lin can go on tears and lay catchy melodies, but he more frequently takes over the backing role of the absent bass. Then again, I am not sure this is really missing that bass between Herzog and Lin’s pulsing clunk. Yang and Lin also entangle in tight torrents and swoops. Amidst the cacophony. Cursed Monthalso has its shimmery, brittle, and just plain beautiful moments. The beginnings of Spring Snow and The Song of the Mist are among them. However, even in these tracks, that warped prog drive inevitably takes over, and Yang stomps his pedal to unleash a stream of clicks and computer-bug stutters over Lin’s more delicate scales.

Having listened to this album on repeat over the last couple months, I am still not sure exactly what to make of it. It is dark and disorienting. It is playful and unpredictable. It fuses unlike elements in convincing ways. It is a contemporary, postmodern form of fusion in the best and least restrictive senses of the term. Through it all, one hears the haunt of the cursed month, but this trio has found a way to deconstruct, reconfigure, and redeploy what made that month, whenever and wherever it was, so cursed, and, in the end, has made a damn fine album.

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Anna Högberg Attack - Ensamseglaren (Fonstret, 2025)

By Ferruccio Martinotti

Emerged from the Viking Cauldron of the Fire! Orchestra, Anna Högberg was one the most exhilarating potions we’ve had the chance to swallow along the last 10 years: two excellent records along with her group Attack (the self titled of 2016 and the sophomore, Lena, 2020) granted her fully deserved international attention, while lateral projects such as Doglife (Fresh from the ruins, 2017) and Se och Hor (Se mig, hor mig, kann mig, 2017) confirmed the status of a real top-notch musician. Given that, as you surely know, the writers of this Blog are working hard, they, like “16 Tons” miners, dug out the 4 records as above and the concerned reviews are filed at the disposal of the readers. 

To describe Anna’s most famous patrol, Attack, what’s better than Maestro Mats Gustafsson’s words: 

“Anna Högberg as a modern free jazz standard bearer, keeping it all together, her rich alto sax leading the ensemble into layers of high octane outburst and sensational melodic variations. Her tone being able to cut landscapes open, to melt your brain as we know it. Check the two tenor sax axes out! Elin Forkelid Larsson and Malin Wattring know how to attack matters, how to structure solos and ensemble work with intense warmth and melodic beauty. Drummer Anna Lund punctuating the flow, laying fundaments of possibilities for the others. Pianist Lisa Ullen adding her thorny but detailed phrases to the picture. And then the deep sounding bass maestro Elsa Bergman with an unusual imagination of how to position her own language and bass lines into a collective of attacking free jazz”. 

It was enough, more than enough, to fall in love and become addicted to Högberg's music, however and wherever declined. Then, after the highly celebrated album Lena, Anna disappeared from the radar and what we just read/heard was that she was working as a nurse, whilst continuing to practice her instrument and seldom playing with other musicians. Bad, too bad but we kept looking over the horizon, searching for any sign of musical life. At last the news of a forthcoming album was confirmed and the fever pitch finally began to decrease: Ensamseglaren found its place in our shelves. Two pieces (“Ensamseglaren/Inte Ensam” and “Gnistran/Ematopoesi/Emlodi”) played with a brand new outfit (just Elin Forkelid as an appreciated return on tenor sax): Niklas Barno, trumpet; Maria Bertel, trombone; Per Ake Homlander, tuba; Dieb13, turntables; Alex Zethson, piano; Finn Loxbo, guitar and saw; Gus Loxbo, double bass and saw; Kansan Zetterberg, double bass; Anton Jonsson, drums; Dennis Egberth, drums. Anna, alto saxophone, as a rule. 

The mood that informs the record is of grief and sorrow for the loss of her father, the “Lonely Sailor” of the title, pictured on the record’s cover as a young boy, as she, in a very touching way, expressed in the liner notes:

”You had already put away all the nautical charts, loosened the moorings and steered out among the skerries. Mum stood waving from the jetty. You were alone, you wanted in that way. It was to be just you in the boat this time. I called out to you. I think you heard me and felt less lonely. We couldn’t carry each other anymore, no matter how hard we tried. We washed our wounds on the shore and scattered tears and rose petals in the bay”. 

The music can’t avoid these feelings and apparently does nothing to do so. Heavy clouds are incumbent, waters are grey, rotten seaweed all over, the air smells of storm: haunted atmosphere, shows the picture; amazing, jaw dropping sounds, shows the Attack. The distorted, infectious drone guitars, the atonal piano interventions don’t leave any doubt, the boat is at the mercy of the streams, peace turning into chaos and the other way around, a very few and foggy landmarks. But when the band unfolds all the sails and set a large ensemble route, even delivering almost fanfare-esque texture, here it really seems that such a collective dimension could be powerfully helpful to ease the mourning: not yet a flat sea, still some malevolent, sinister waves but the navigation became more secure and some rays of sun is now able to pierce the leaden sky. Music as the healing force of the universe, we’d dare to say, shouldn’t it sound too poorly banal and derivative. A true masterpiece, we firmly state.

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James McKain / Damon Smith / Weasel Walter - ....seeing the way the mole tunnels... (Balance Point Acoustics / International School of Evidence, 2025)

 

By Richard Blute 

“I’ve always been attracted to extremity in music. I started listening to free jazz at the same time I was listening to punk and no wave in the ’80s. I put them on a somewhat even keel, and although they were different idioms, I felt they were saying similar things. That’s really the core of my aesthetic—I want music to be wet with bodily fluids, a certain bloody-mindedness that’s part of my music and attitude. I want to see sweat and blood, a little pain and struggle in music. This is not a style—it’s an abstract idea applied to music, and I’m more interested in those essences.”

-Weasel Walter, All About Jazz interview, 2009.

I spent most of my teen and student years listening to hardcore punk and other extreme music. So I feel a great affinity for the quote from Walter above, and that attitude can be found in abundance on ....seeing the way the mole tunnels... by James McKain, Damon Smith and Weasel Walter. Listening to this album for the first time, I felt the same rush of excitement and the same desire to bounce around my office that I used to get when I picked up a new Dead Kennedys album.

Weasel Walter is a drummer, guitarist and composer. His most well-known band is probably The Flying Luttenbachers, which he describes as brutal prog. He has a band called Vomitatrix, whose music he describes as acid grind. He has a band called Cellular Chaos, a noise-punk band. (It’s my favorite of his ongoing projects.) He tours regularly with Lydia Lunch, legendary singer of the no-wave scene. But he’s equally at home with jazz. I saw him perform a fantastic duo with Vinny Golia. His album with Damon Smith and John Butcher, The Catastrophe Of Minimalism, is superb.

Damon Smith is one of free jazz’s great bassists. He has developed a highly expressive language for improvising on bass which is well-displayed on this album. His label, Balance Point Acoustics, is a fine repository for his music. I find myself exploring it often. Check out the album with Walter and John Butcher mentioned above, or Mimetic Holds or Groundwater Recharge, which are favorites of mine.

I’m less familiar with saxophonist James McKain, only having heard him previously on the 2024 album A Man’s Image with James Paul Nadien, Jared Radichel and Tom Weeks. It’s a fine album with the two saxes providing an intense slashing attack. It was on my 2024 year-end list, and listening to it again now, I should have ranked it even higher.

On ....seeing the way the mole tunnels…, McKain is ferocious right from the opening notes of the first track, Wrecked Brain in the Capital. Walter’s drumming is unrelenting, pushing his partners on to more and more intense music. But he can also be more subtle, adding texture to the more quiet sections, as on the track A Cloud Which Does Not Last. Smith switches back and forth between bowing and plucking his bass, so that at times he’s conversing with the sax and at times adding more percussion. What I like best about the music is that it is very much a conversation. None of the three of them are grabbing the spotlight, every note struck is in response to something their partners have played.

Fun side note. All of the titles of the album come from the poetry of German novelist, poet and playwright Thomas Bernhard. I’ve never read his poems, but I have read a few of his novels. His style could be described as lyrical ranting. He wrote in an obsessive freeform style about all the ugliness he saw in the human condition. But at the same time, there’s an almost hypnotic beauty in his writing. It can also be hysterically funny. I can hear all of those aspects of Bernhard’s writing in this great album.

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KnCurrent - KnCurrent (deep dish records, 2025)

By Stuart Broomer

KnCurrent is a quartet organized by patrick brennan, the New York-based alto saxophonist and musical explorer. Among his recent projects are a substantial book of his reflections on sound, Ways & Sounds (the book) Audio Edition, available in both print and audio download editions, and the 2023 recording by his quintet patrick brennan sOnic Openings - Tilting Curvaceous (Clean Feed, 2023), previously reviewed on Free Jazz Blog. While Tilting Curvaceous explored brennan’s complex composed cells with a conventional quintet format -- trumpet, piano, bass and drum kit supporting his work -- Kn Current is a radically different conception, setting brennan’s hard-edged, expressionist saxophone amidst a minefield of collectively improvising, amplified strings, with Cooper-Moore, more typically thought of as a pianist, on diddly-bo, On Ka’a Davis on electric guitar and Jason Kao Hwang on electric violin, an ensemble that expands the sonic field into a maze of percussive and electronic strings. brennan’s brief liner note connects the group’s informal architecture to the flexibility of the strings’ electronic resources:

“As much as common practice codifications of pitch & rhythm might enable musical architectures & connections, what about the other sounds, the ones that can’t get so glibly mapped as they fly between the cracks & boundaries? How then to interact with this spectrum if not directly? What combust here is the empathic chemistry among these extraordinarily imaginative musicians.”

A brief word of explanation might clarify Cooper-Moore’s “diddly-bo” and its life beyond the “boundaries”: it’s a bass register string instrument, held horizontally and played either as a plucked instrument or with two sticks, one used to strike the strings percussively, the other employed as a slide, creating glissandi. Fine video examples of his work with the instrument in another remarkable NYC band, guitarist Brandon Seabrook’s trio with drummer Gerald Cleaver, are available on youtube.

While Cooper-Moore still lives partially in the world of acoustic music, Davis and Hwang are often highly electronic here. The group’s startling texture is apparent immediately in the opening “slip apophatica”, beginning with a maelstrom of fluctuating electronic burbles, beeps, whirs and glissandi, a more elusive development of the proto-electronic music of Forbidden Planet, before Brennan enters as an insistently human presence, his saxophone at once convulsive, choked and explosive by turn.

The six tracks that follow are evenly split between longer quartet tracks and shorter works by the strings. The shortest of these is “Dné Wol”, a perfect miniature, little more than a minute long, a solo by Cooper-Moore revelling in the diddly-bo’s bass register, as low as a piano’s but with the pitch-bending, shape shifting, percussive possibilities of an electronically enhanced bass. “micro circus” begins with Davis’s guitar. Already a glittering transforming presence, it’s eventually joined by the wobbling wonder that is the diddly-bo’s unique character and by Hwang’s violin. “Must be ‘Who Say’” is a string trio that begins with Hwang’s sound sufficiently distorted that only the shaping trace of the bow distinguishes it from Davis’s guitar which eventually achieves its own electronic pre-eminence.

A sense of dueting shapes the quartet track “polyneuroreceptive”, propelled initially by brennan’s joyously liberated alto and Cooper-Moore’s propulsive bass lines, gradually adding Davis and Hwang to the mix, the technological transformation of the strings ultimately suggesting not automation but a richer human universe. 

ṣumūd صمود , at 9:22 the longest track, its title Arabic for “steadfast perseverance”, is also the most developed, from Cooper-Moore’s opening compound of sounds, suggesting at once electric bass and microtonal percussion, gradually adding Davis’s highly electronic guitar, then brennan’s twisting, shifting alto explosion, to ultimately conclude with a solo by Hwang in which the violin’s character is genuinely electronic, not merely amplified, extending to eery sounds that are at once electronic and liquid.

The concluding “tewetatewenni:io” embraces a contrasting, near-acoustic dialogue, shifting from the pre-eminence of diddly-bo and warmly vocal, lyric alto to Davis’s subtle guitar lines and the ultimate collective design of the full quartet. It’s a remarkable ultimate transition, the cloak of alien mystery gradually evaporating to reveal a relatively clear and joyous empathy in now near-natural voices. The whole program is a rich and resounding success.

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Poor Isa + Evan Parker & Ingar Zach - Untitled (Aspen Edities, 2025) *****

By Nick Metzger

Incredible music here from the Belgian duo Poor Isa - augmented this time round with Evan Parker on saxophones and Ingar Zach on percussion. This is the third release from the duo who work mainly in banjos and woodblocks following “let’s drink the sea and dance” in 2019 and “Dissolution of the Other” in 2023. It may sound like a meager palette, and it is, but the duo work serious witchcraft with these tools. Their sorcery spans the gamut from knobby twang to scratchy percussive to eerie daxophonian and to some quietly introspective and surprisingly meaty nodules in between. The players are Frederik Leroux and Ruben Machtelinckx , both prolific collaborators and both primarily of the guitar persuasion. Here their surreal avant-folk project (for lack of a better term) is transported to a different plane altogether with the addition of Evan Parker and the prolific Norwegian drummer Ingar Zach . The elements they bring to bear make for a remarkable listening experience, one full of unique soundscapes and novel amalgamations that feel veritable and emotive in their revelations.

The album is split into five very different pieces with Poor Isa providing their broadest recorded stylistic variations thus far. The first track is called “Clearing” and it begins with eerie floating tones that overlap and dance, seemingly exchanging words. The piece is sparse and warm, slowly building a warbly stasis that Parker interrupts with some of his most careful and probing playing to date, each note feeling properly considered and carefully placed so as not to scare away the fish. On “Ply” Parker plays in popping, honking, squawking birdsong against a spare mixture of shifting rhythms and skeletal, chiming folk drawl. There’s a sharp, simple melody played by one of the banjos that recalls the abrupt toll of a grandfather clock, with the patter of preparations and woodblock sounding like clockwork.

Zach provides sparkling percussive elements as accompaniment for a simple and sombre banjo melody on “Untitled 7”. This whole album is steeped in a heady melancholy that is embodied remarkably well on this piece. Its contemplative pacing yields some headspace to the listener and sets up a quickening on the next track. For “Two way” Poor Isa goes full clawhammer over an understated, yet propulsive rhythm from Zach. The chicken scratching rolls like a river without restrain, coursing in alternating melodies and scuffed drumming. Then Parker joins in and the thing becomes truly extraordinary. Some carefully considered language again from the master reedsman, showing just how versatile and acquiescent his playing can be. The final piece makes up a third of the runtime and is called “Hewn”. Parker starts off delicately with bright serpentine passages played at a half, and then full speed, rousing the banjos into wispy, fingerpicked melodies that Zach accents with bells and chimes. The track is a languid exploration of the sounds on tap for this fellowship and closes the album in careful and pensive fashion.

It’s an excellent record and a unique listen that I’ve been hard pressed to find a good contemporary for. All things said it’s one of the best albums I’ve heard this year. It all works so incredibly well that the disparate elements arrive as multiplicity rather than discord, although there’s still plenty of the latter to be had herein. If I have a single complaint it’s the run time which is a lean 29 minutes - however, the damage done in this brief interval is so evident that the gripe is a very minor one. In fact, had any more meat been on the bone the essence may not have come through as richly as it does here. This doesn’t feel pre-conceived at all and has the energetic drive and personal stylistic deviations that are the very signposts of a group completely lost in the magic of their creation - the quartet huddling close to protect the flame. Highly recommended.

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Angles 11 - Tell Them It's The Sound Of Freedom (Fundacja Słuchaj, 2025)

By Stef Gijssels

Martin Küchen's Angles Ensemble must for sure be one of Sweden's most appreciated mini-big-band, with a recognisable sound that is truly unique. Sorry, I mean Europe's most appreciated larger ensemble. Every album is one to look out for, and this one does not fall short of the high expectations. 

In three long tracks, the music is as infectious, as exhilarating, as enchanting, as compelling as ever. 

The band members are Johan Berthling on double bass, Alex Zethson on Fender Rhodes, Juno 106, Mattias Ståhl on vibraphone, soprano saxophone, Konrad Agnas, Michaela Antalova and Kjell Nordeson on drums, Susana Santos Silva and Magnus Broo on trumpet, Josefin Runsteen on amplified violin, Eirik Hegdal on baritone and alto saxophones, and Martin Küchen on tenor and soprano saxophones. Fans will immediately notice the triple drums and the double trumpet line, as well as the addition of a violin to the line-up. 

As mentioned on previous reviews of the band, its messages is a political one, comparable to "the people united will never be defeated". It expresses a deep sense of injustice, drama and sadness about the fate of oppressed people that can be overcome by collaborating, by rallying them together - the real people - in a joint movement to stand up, heads raised and tackle the enemy with the confidence and energy of the collective power, here captured perfectly by its title "Tell Them It's The Sound Of Freedom". This is music that can only be fully appreciated in a live context. This is music that requires a large audience to share with, to become part of it, to be included into its total sound. 

Even if the music is avant-garde, its roots go very deep into the communal music of village bands and funeral bands. Its sweeping themes, the brilliant arrangements and the powerful soloing are all here again in full force, in full energetic power. This is music that can only be fully appreciated in a live context. This is music that requires a large audience to share with, to become part of it, to be included into its total sound. A Dutch author of the 19th Century described art as the "most individual expression of the most individual emotion". In the case of Angles, it's almost the exact opposite. It's art as "the most collective expression of the most collective emotion". 

The title song starts the album, slowly, sadly, with a madcap violin to start the soloing, followed by the weeping saxes, before falling back into perfect harmony of the entire orchestra, that leaves some space for the bass. Single instruments, like the vibes or the violin add exquisite touches to the ensemble's slowly progressing theme. The piece is only 11 minutes long, but for me it could go on forever. Incredibly moving. 

"A Night In Schwabistan" pumps up the tempo, starting with some chaotic rehearsal sounds, until the "one, two, three, four" starts the entire band in full power, uptempo like a steamroller in a car rally. The title refers to the region of Swabia in Germany, as it is sometimes called humorously, referring to the middle-eastern countries with names ending in '-stan'. Zethson's keyboard is the instrument that keeps the entire piece together, producing mesmerising rhythmic chords throughout. Again, the arrangements and collective changes in the composition are brilliant and overpowering. 

The final track, “Youngblood Transfusion,” opens with a drum intro that leads into the main theme, woven together by interlacing saxophones. The band eases in gracefully, settling into a beautiful mid-tempo groove. What follows is a sequence of deeply sorrowful solos—first from the saxes, then from the violin—before the piece disintegrates into sparse sonic fragments… only to regroup and surge back with full force, horns united and aimed toward the future in a moment of triumphant energy.

But just as quickly, the music collapses again, yielding to another burst of drumming and clearing the space for Susana Santos Silva’s solo—powerful, though in my view not quite loud enough—calling the full ensemble to rise, join her, and propel a grand finale that is relentless, unstoppable, joyful, and overwhelming.

Another winner.

Everything is great: the compositions, the arrangements, the playing, the freedom, the vision, the lack of perfection that makes it so human and close. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

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Lao Dan - To Hit a Pressure Point (Relative Pitch, 2025)

By Paul Acquaro

At the Moers festival last spring, woodwindist Lao Dan played a solo show in a hair salon. It was a small storefront in the town's shopping area and it was packed. Eager listeners were arrayed outside on the sidewalk, in the chairs and along the walls, making a bit of space for Dan in the middle of the narrow space. The free jazz musician from Szechuan, China has been slowly making an imprint on the Western free jazz scene over the past few years and last spring in Moers he had no trouble filling the space with his robust sound, whether playing the saxophone or various traditional flutes and woodwind instruments. His approach was one of being fully in - musically and physically, he moved through the small space with purpose and vigor, embodying the sound the he was making. The music on To Hit a Pressure Point, a solo recording from Dan out on the ever bold Relative Pitch label from New York, is a perfect encapsulation of this experience.

The 9 tracks on To Hit a Pressure Point have a flow, to listen to them is an experience, and one that is best done from start to end. Not to say that you cannot enjoy it if you pick a random spot, there is beauty and ruggedness, refinement and rawness at any entry point, but following the whole stream reveals the complete picture. In fact, it is possible to think of it as a stream, running down from a remote mountain top, the winter snow melt adding volume and force. It begins small, a narrow rivulet, and as it flows, it grows fuller and stronger. At times, Dan's physicality is audible, a grunt, a shout, are like rocks in the stream, forcing the water to bubble around them, creating new currents and waves. Other times it pools into tranquil pockets, calm and peaceful, for a moment, before continuing on.

Dan's sonic vocabulary belies a great deal of study, there are elements of classic free jazz as well as Chinese folk music, and something that also was a part of that solo Moers performance: punk. The movement, the sound, the fierce emotion behind his playing is captivating - not always easily accessible, not always easily digested, but like a rugged hike along a mountain stream, worth every mesmerizing moment.

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MOTUSNEU + Steve Swell - War der Clown gar nicht echt? (Boomslang, 2025)

By Paul Acquaro

Drummer Steffen Roth, along with bassist Stephan Deller and saxophonist Bruno Angeloni have been working together in Leipzig since 2022, their first recording Ospedale from 2023 wonderfully captured the group's dynamics and improvisational prowess. For their follow up recording, on a hunch that it would work out, they invited New York trombonist Steve Swell to join them.

 

War der Clown gar nicht echt? ('Was the clown truly not real?') is the culmination of a tour throughout Germany performing as a quartet - Swell is not really a special guest, rather he quickly became an integral part of the group's sound. So, while the clown question remains unanswered, it can be positively said that the connection between the trombone work and Angeloni's fierce woodwind playing is obviously happening. 

 

The music is, simply, fierce and well-connected, a post-modern explosion of sound captured in the studio.  From the opening moments of '7,' the group is already in feisty form. It begins lightly, with the drums and sax creating a sound texture. Then we hear the brass percolating. Strokes of the bass strings intermingled with the other tones as the soup thickens. Pure improvisation and strong listening is happening here as Roth and Deller engage at a particulate level to create a sonic bed for Angeloni and swell's exchanges. Its detail oriented and open to anything.

 

Assuming from the naming of the tracks, simply numbers from 1 to 8, there is an intentionality to mixing up the sequence. Later in the sequence, on track '4', which comes in at place 3, the drums kick things off again with an impressive roll leading to a melee of sax and bass, the latter which goes off on an inspired tangent. Then we hear the trombone sneaking in between the three.

 

There are contemplative moments as well as all hell-breaking-loose ones (the middle of '5' is a little musical volcano) but what is most impressive is how well the working trio quickly became a well oiled (but still plenty squeaky) quartet. War der Clown gar nicht echt? is an album that one should take some time with, let it grow and then decide for yourself what is real or not.

 

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Ches Smith - The Self (Tzadik, 2025)

By Don Phipps

What makes Ches Smith special? Is it his musicality – the trap set as symphony? Is it his incredible multi-instrumental talent (on The Self  he plays drums, vibraphone, timpani, glockenspiel, chimes, tam-tam, and small percussion)? Or is it his ability to use these instruments to craft free form music that conveys complex feelings and thoughts?

The Self  highlights Smith’s abilities to bring it. There’s the ac/dc approach on vibraphone on “The Problem,” which alternates between dreaminess and energy. There’s the funk of “Stems From,” where Smith uses the glockenspiel to create a rotating motif wrapped by syncopated snare and bass drum. Or for those who prefer flashy drumming, there’s the wonderful “In Two” and “Light Spirits,” with cascading snare rolls and cymbals juxtaposed against bass drum pedal syncopation, or the beautiful tom tom beats on “Freely Stated,” where the strokes are hard and fast but the sound produced flows and rolls. And his free form brush work on “Subtly” is not to be missed.

Or check out his use of the vibraphone and chimes on “Vertiginous Question,” which turns ethereal and blends with what almost sounds like electronics at play. Or the fascinating use of the glockenspiel to suggest a clear night of twinkling stars on “Constellation View.” Perhaps the masterpiece of the album is “Empty Individual.” Not only does this composition demonstrate Smith’s endearing musical all over drumming, replete with bass drum pedal work that startles and impresses, but to this he adds the glockenspiel for just a couple of precise notes in the middle of his drumming escapades! The music continues to roll about in a fine rage, with some sudden explosions and incredible cymbal and gong play, elements that slip in an out of the tune like changing lanes on a speedy highway.

The important thing with The Self  is that Smith makes it happen – from trampoline bounces to adventurous safari rhythms (“Get Out There And See”). Finally, one would be remiss not to comment on his use of the bells (or chimes as he refers to it). “Menm Bagay La” illustrates this perfectly, where he recreates the sound of chimes blowing in the breeze.

Smith, who in 2025 has participated on Myra Melford’s excellent Splash, Clone Row where reviewer Aloysius Ventham wrote “I suspect it will be my album of the year”, and John Zorn’s Impromptus, is covering the bases. The Self shows that he continues to develop and expand and it’s exciting to hear his expanding artistry. Enjoy!

 

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The Real McGregor

Ogun Records has just released to YouTube a restored version of a short film called "The Real McGregor" from 1967, documenting Chris McGregor's Blue Notes. Filmed at the height of London’s 1960s jazz scene, the group was newly arrived from Apartheid South Africa and sparking a wave of adventurous music. This rare film captures their only known visual record from that era, set within Ronnie Scott’s legendary Old Place at 39 Gerrard Street. Originally the first Ronnie Scott’s club and later run by John Jack, the basement venue became a round‑the‑clock hub for young British jazz musicians to rehearse, perform, and experiment.

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Taupe - Lemonade Tycoon (Minority Records, 2025)

By Sammy Stein

Experimental trio Taupe comprises saxophonist, composer, and arranger Jamie Stockbridge (Agbeko, Martha Reeves and The Vandellas, John Pope Quartet and more), drummer, composer, and improviser Alex Palmer (Logan‘s Close, Blue Giant Orkestar, Pippa Blundell, SMIRK, and more), and guitarist and electronic musician Mike Parr-Burman (Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra and a variety of projects including Dome Riders and more).

Taupe has performed at jazz festivals, punk clubs, and venues in the UK and Europe. They have opened for Deerhoof, Melt Banana, and Richard Dawson, and have been featured at the 12 Points! Jazz Festival and selected for Jazz North’s Northern Line. In 2023, they received the PRS International Showcase Fund Award to perform at the Sharpe showcase festival in Slovakia.

Lemonade Tycoon is announced by two sets of repeated blasted phrases, before the rhythm kicks in, and it is this slightly offset beat that pervades the single, creating a slightly off-kilter dynamic that works well at engaging the mind.

The title , Lemonade Tycoon, is a nod to the classic business simulation game of the same name, where players run a lemonade stand and try to make profits, but really, the sound has nothing to do with a game. It is intense and unique, enhanced by a live drum improvisation in the final sequence, captured via a saxophone clip-on mic and routed through saxophonist Jamie Stockbridge’s intricate effects pedal chain, creating a spectral echo. It is here where the lemonade reference makes sense, as it is sparkling and chaotic like shaken lemonade, simultaneously precise and unruly.

If ever a track screamed skronk, it is this one. Beautifully balanced, Taupe work together to create music that encompasses free jazz with punchy, repeated phrasing that works it way into the mind, like a relentless drill. The switches from precise, intricate phrases to turbulent, chaotic lines are seamless.

They describe their music as having ‘wonky charm‘ and that is perfect to describe this joyfully noisesome, beautiful music that gets into your psyche. There is a crazy section where sax and guitar cross swords in rhythmic interpretation that makes for a bonkers conversation, including pulled back timings that add to the sense of controlled chaos of the track. It is a track that starts as one thing and by the end is something different but equally, turbulently glorious.

This single is fun, free, dynamic, and completely beautiful.

Lemonade Tycoon is the single release ahead of Taupe’s third album, waxing | waning, which will be released in March 2026 by the Czech label Minority Records.

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Ivo Perelman and John Butcher - Duologues 4 (IBEJI, 2025)

By Sammy Stein

In 2024, I interviewed saxophonist Ivo Perelman for Free Jazz Collective. He told me he was coming to the UK in October 2025 to record with John Butcher. Perelman described Butcher as ‘a multi-faceted musician with an original, elegant, yet powerful sax voice.’ Butcher has played with John Edwards, the late, great John Russell, Phil Minton, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders, and a host of other musicians. He has great versatility and in-the-moment skills that can turn the atmosphere of a performance. When Perelman commented on collaborating with Butcher, I mused at the time that this would make for an interesting recording, and it has materialised in ‘Duologues 4’. Perelman is on tenor sax, and Butcher on soprano and tenor.

Duologues 4 proves yet again that Perelman makes some inspired choices in collaborators. Teamed with butcher, Perelman is more conversational on this recording – and no wonder. Butcher is one of the most creative saxophone players the UK scene has produced in a long time, and perhaps one who deserves more acclaim. The album is infused with Butcher’s intuitive responses and quiet, solid playing. The opening track is akin to a respectful argument, with both players alternating phrase development and interpreting the other’s take with harmonic dialogue. Perelman and Butcher are one of those combinations that you might hope would happen, and when it did, there was no disappointment. Perelman’s register-flitting and rapidity are exemplary on this track, but Butcher has that ability to slot just the right tone and note into any gaps left by Perelman’s multiple register coverage.

Track two is busy, the speed frenetic, and both players create breathy, singular melodies and develop intricate harmonies as the track evolves, weaving melodies in and out, across and over each other, while making full use of stops and gaps. Butcher shows he is gifted in spontaneity and placement of phrases.

The entire album is a continuum of this conversation that carries on between Butcher and Perelman. It is an album of equality where Perelman often suggests the theme, or introduces an idea, but Butcher responds with creative development or apposite music thoughts that Perelman instinctively follows. At times, Butcher is like a stalking wolf, picking up the trails Perelman sets and ng them before diverging off onto tracks of his own invention. The changes are interesting throughout because they happen with subtlety, almost before you realise it and the thinking of the two masters is also intriguing, such as on track 3 where there is individual melodic phrasing, but by the time four minutes and around twenty second have elapsed, the pair are in delightful, elevated harmony with an intense energy that flows from the music.

There is a calmness to some of the music also, such as the gentler start of track 4, where the musicians are clearly listening to each other, the intensity palpable in the responses, and both, led by Perelman, visit the upper reaches of altissimo.

There is diversity too, such as on track 5, where Perelman introduces a subtle long take on a swung beat, and the slap tongue sections on track 6, coupled with exploration of as many forms as it is possible to fit in a track less than four minutes long. The longest track is track 7, and here both players get the chance – and take it- to be melodic, harmonious and, naturally, introduce some spontaneity (a lot). Butcher is at his best here in the lower register of the tenor and in this track lurks a bit of swing, a touch of classical and a good dose of free playing – wrapped in a colourful coat of intensity. The final track is a glorious, popping escapade, enjoyable for the listener and probably for the players too.

Perelman is familiar to many people as one of the great, inspirational players of our time and he describes Butcher as ‘amazing and responsive’. This is true.

Perelman and Butcher, Butcher and Perelman. Either way, it is a terrific combination.

https://music.amazon.com/artists/B000QJT49I/ivo-perelman 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Douglas R. Ewart, Kyle Hutchins, Seth Andrew Davis, Kevin Cheli – See You in the Past (Mother Brain Records, 2025)

By Nick Ostrum

See You in the Pastis a meeting of generations. On the one side are Kyle Hutchins on saxophones, Seth Andrew Davis on guitar and electronics, and Kevin Cheli on percussion and vibraphone, all three young(er) and associated with various Midwestern scenes. On the other side is Douglas R. Ewart, here on saxophones, flutes, and George Floyd Bunt Staff . Ewart, of course, was an early AACM member and has since become multi-reedist+ legend even after departing Chicago for Minneapolis. This grouping succeeds not only in blending scenes and rough cohorts, but in layering the old (or ancestral or atavistic) and the new (or electronic futurism) convincingly. One need not take such a polarity too literally, of course. Electronics is hardly new to Ewart’s circles. However, here it sounds not like Sun Ra’s Moog or even George Lewis’ experiments, but like a more contemporary – astral prog crossed with ambient and particularist noise making – iteration.

Together, Ewart, Hutchins, Davis, and Cheli harness a large sound, which, even in the quiet moments, occupies considerable space. Ewart’s spirituality and earthiness is a clear thread, but it sounds different in the context of the electronics and long stretches of wall-of-sound production. Most often, Ewart or Hutchins fight through the downpour that Davis and Cheli (and I think Hutchins and Ewart, when on his George Floyd Bunt Staff) conjure. Actually, it is tough to decipher when Ewart or Hutchins steps up and the others scape and scrape the sound from behind. Many passages veer even further from the free jazz stylings one might expect into noise rock and the most abstract moments of the Grateful Dead’s Space/Drums jams. Indeed, See You in the Past is more interested in suspended and extended moments, rather than progressive development. There are exceptions. Future Ghosts, at 7:43 the shortest of the three tracks, is a scorcher. It is a free for all from the beginning and the energy does not ebb until the final moments. Still, the other selections, Echoes of Tomorrow and Sound Seekers, subdue the quartet’s most eruptive impulses. It is in these longer stretches that this group shows what they can really achieve, as they not only find their sound, but probe it, stretch it, and turn it inside out to utterly mesmerizing effect.

See You in the Past is available on Bandcamp as a CD and download: 

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Steve Tintweiss And The Purple Why - Live In Tompkins Square Park 1967 (Inky Dot Media, 2025)

By Nick Ostrum

The first time I heard Steve Tintweiss was in college. I got my first album by Albert Ayler, Nuits de la Fondation Maeght, which captured one of his last performances, and was floored. Then I began flipping through the booklet and found the bassist. I did some quick Google searching and did not find much on him at the time. (This was a couple decades ago, after all.) So, apart from that recording, he would remain just a mysterious part of Ayler’s late band for me until quite recently. As it turns out, Tintweiss performed with everyone from Marzette Watts and Frank Writght to Burton Greene and Byard Lancaster. He just released sparingly.

Live in Tompkins Square Park 1967 captures Tintweiss and one iteration of his Purple Why (Jacques Coursi on trumpet, James DuBoise on trumpet, Perry Robinson on clarinet, Joel Peskin on saxophone, Randy Kaye on drums and piano, and Lawrence Cook on drums) performing the bassist’s compositions in the fabled (but also very real) Tompkins Square Park in 1967.

Live in Tompkins Square Park is very much of its time and in that late Ayler vein, though without the insistent melodicism. Rather, Tintweiss and company are exploring abstraction and dynamic range. Listen to the music box string duo five minutes into News Up/Down for one of softer moments. Then follow the piece through to the full-blast realization of the leitmotif. Or check out the modal lyricism of Space Rocks, a piece that starts with a slow folk march before opening into a collective but mostly contained funerary wail. Or the smokey jazz club romance of To Angel With Love, which is absolutely beautiful. As was common for the 1960s downtown scene, most of these pieces are bookended by short grooves and ditties that decompose into freer interactions that embrace the moment of creation and the probing quest to find the right rhythm or combination of looping horns or textures. Through all the sparring that reeds and winds do, the propulsion comes from the relentless drive of Kaye and Cook paired on percussion, and Tintweiss, himself.

Now to the recording. It is somewhat raw but it works. It works because the tapes are a half-century old and capture the band live and outdoors. For that it sounds great. It also works because the background hums, the imperfections in balance and other infidelities catch the live experience better than a crisp studio production would have. And this music is about that in-person excitement, which one hears in the chatter and genuine participation (singing, cheering, impromptu percussion, applause) of the audience.

Tintweiss will likely always be best known for his brief stint with Ayler. But recordings like this show he had sensibilities and vision that stand on their own.

Live in Tompkins Square Park is a limited release and can be purchased through Tintweiss’s own Inky Dot Media.

 

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Tim Berne (Four Releases)

By Gary Chapin

Gregg Belisle-Chi - Slow Crawl: Performing the Music of Tim Berne  (Intakt, 2025)*****

Gregg Belisle-Chi has been at this long enough that I should stop being surprised. His first album of Tim-Berne-on-Acoustic (2021’sKoi) was an unexpected gift that provided a late in the game expansion of the contexts within which Berne’s compositions could be expressed. If you accept that the strength of a composer reflects how well their compositions can be adapted to different contexts (and maybe you don’t), then Koi served as a proof-of-concept. Four years later a recording such as this doesn’t depend on the novelty of the concept—we’ve got it! this works!—but Slow Crawl nevertheless lands as a revelation.

The question this recording answers is, “What can Tim Berne’s compositions do if you don’t lean into the spectacle? The loud? The electric? The skronk?” Belisle-Chi brings forward the beautiful and (dare I say it) exquisite nature of the melodies and harmonies. It’s a different, aromantic expression of Berne. Belisle-Chi isn’t whipping us into a frenzy (as he did on Yikes Too) but inviting us into the baroque-ish—fascinating, thinky, knotty, satisfying—tunes. Performances of Berne’s music generally have so much more than pitch going on, but what if, for a little while, the pitch was the thing? Thus, we’re presented with very complex, introverted, emergent experiences. Of necessity, this is quiet stuff, but quiet can be amazing, and that’s what it is, here. 5 stars.

Snakeoil- In Lieu Of (Screwgun 2025) & Snakeoil - Snakeoil OK (Screwgun 2025) 

There have been a bunch of from-the-vault style releases from Screwgun since 2020—if there can be said to be a bright side to the plague, that was it—and 2025 saw the release of these two gems. Snakeoil was (is?) an extraordinarily strong group featuring Berne, Oscar Noriega, Ches Smith, and Matt Mitchell. Of Berne’s groups I find Snakeoil to be the most intriguing, complex, knotty, and, almost, esoteric. It’s as thinky as a grad student and as primal as a rockfall, but bigger than either. These two releases come from what Tim calls “the early period” but which seems more like “mid-season form.” So often the music makes you stop and awe. Noriega, Berne’s only clarinet playing partner (afaik), weaves with spikes, jumps, and gaps—scrapes, squeals, and deep blue. Smith never stops—what a wealth of outre drummers there are!—and Tim leads from the front, a never faltering well of improvisation. The chthonic force on these discs (and it’s true of all Snakeoil recordings) is Matt Mitchell, shifting the Earth on the piano. What a joy this is!

Masayo Koketsu, Nava Dunkelman, Tim Berne - Poiēsis (Relative Pitch, 2025)

In this improvised set of pieces, Tim Berne and Masayo Koketsu bring their altos together, sprawling on the jagged carpet of Nava Dunkelman ‘s percussion. The seven pieces are innocuously titled (“page 1,” “page 2” …) as if they don’t want to give any secrets away or draw untoward associations. Dunkelman’s percussion is cinematic hereon, as in the opening piece, presenting us with a driving free rhythm, whipping us all into a frenzy, but just as often inserting “little instrument” characters that add color to a landscape that the altos can’t avoid interacting with. Honestly, I’m not even sure what she’s playing. Is the deep thooma tympani? What is it that sounds like the lowest of arco bass lines? The notes tell us that Berne acts as the melodic foundation with Koketsu hanging out more with the extended registers, and I can see that. Berne is so strong in the mid-range, but there are plenty of moments where both of these altos are playing stratispherically, and some, even, when the two are genuinely delicate.

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Simply having a wonderful guitar trio time

By Paul Acquaro

Elia Aregger trio - Live (Unit Records, 2025)

Elia Aregger is a Swiss guitarist whose album Live came out in the opening hours of 2025. Like some other European guitartists, like Kali kalima and Jakob Bro, Aregger seems to have ingested and integrated a particularly American guitar vernacular created by, among many other, Bill Frisell, John Abercrombie, and even Pat Metheny, and transformed it into something expressive and new. When I first heard Aregger, I thought maybe I stumbled on a forgotten Power Tools-era Frisell album. By no means, however, is the recording bound to the past, rather it feels both reassuringly familiar and yet infused with discovery at its heart.

 

Live opens in a suspenseful mood and then opens wide with a hopeful flowing melody line. The keyword is flowing. The rhythm sways gently between Marius Sommer's light touch on the bass and the forward leaning pulse of Alessandro Alarcon's drums. The flow increases and the rhythm tightens as the guitar transforms, now distorted and dangerous, the whole mood shifts.

 

The next song, 'B or D' begins more aggressively than the opener: a gently distorted guitar plays a dripping melodic line decorated with chordal fragments, and the bass and drums are still light but insistent, helping give the spartan guitar parts motion and fullness. Like the previous track, this one also builds to a rocking section, but which only lasts long enough to make an impression, then the tension is pulled back. The follow up track is a ballad entitled 'Martha,' which as one may imagine, again flows, but now gently, laced with traces of dissonance and hopeful intervals.

 

This is much more to be heard, but the basic components are already in place: patient, spacious melodic lines, precisely layered tensions, dabs of colorful distortion and sympathetic interplay between the three players. 

Trio of Bloom - s/t (Pyroclastic, 2025)

So, this one is not really a "guitar trio" in the sense that the guitar is the leader, rather it's a full on collaboration, which critic Nate Chinen has called a "new-groove supergroup" -- which is both kind of fun and kind of true. This first time meeting of guitarist Nels Cline, keyboardist Craig Taborn and drummer Marcus Gilmore certainly has groove at its heart.

The album kicks off with a cover of Ronald Shannon-Jackson’s ‘Nightwhistlers’ that shimmers and shutters with an antsy pulse and electronic twists, and is bookended by a cover of Terje Rypdal’s ‘Bend It,’ which offers a much different kind of straight‑ahead driving beat, along with allusions to Rypdal’s signature soaring lines. The tracks in between all seem to flower in their own way. Especially the second track, Taborn's 'Unreal Light,' which unfolds slowly, first in stretching, legato glistening tones, then transmogrifying into a lithe rhythmic piece with Cline improvising a melodic dance. Then, there is the 10-minute freely improvised ‘Bloomers,' in which where Cline and Taborn’s edgy sonic textures intertwine with Gilmore’s fluid, morphing pulses, propelling the music into a exploration of dark electrified grooves. 

 

Trio of Bloom, with a name that recalls the short-lived collaboration between John McLaughlin, Jaco Pastorius and Tony Williams, but with an actual connection to the power-trio Power Tools via their shared producer David Breskin, is a true aural treat. Take your time with it, let it take root and blossom. 

 

Marcelo dos Reis' Flora - Our Time (JACC, 2025)

 

Portuguese guitarist Marcelo dos Reis' Flora is a bona fide guitar led trio. Sure, it is a collaboration of excellent musicians, but the concept and compositions are from the guitarist's creative musings. I first encountered the group on their debut recording from 2023, which you can check out here and thoroughly enjoy this follow-up release. I feel it would be a slight conflict of interest for me to properly review the album as I contributed the liner-notes, which  you can find on Bandcamp. I will, however, quote myself to save you a click:

So, here we have the trio's sophomore recording, Our Time, and it more than picks up where the last one ended. There is more cohesion to the compositions, but they are also more complex and with a bit more nuance and contrast. It likely reflects the confidence they have gained after the fifty some-odd gigs that they've played since the first release, as well as something new in dos Reis' compositions. "I think this one is more open and adventurous in some way," explains the guitarist. "The repertoire from the first record grew up so much live after the recording, and when I started composing for this second one, I decided to open the music up more than on the first record." 

Let us investigate, starting with the perfectly appointed opening track "Irreversible Light." The track loses no time announcing its intentions on seering its energy into your ears. Each step of the song, from the double stop theme over the urgent bass and drums to the sudden melodic twist introducing the solos, it is an exciting piece of hard rocking jazz that fits perfectly together.  

Do yourself a favor, click on the play button below and enjoy:

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Two Trios with Abdul Moimême

By Stuart Broomer

These two recent recordings are linked by the presence of Portuguese guitarist Abdul Moimême, but more than that, each is a masterful work of inspired collective improvisation, each a work of hive mind, achieving a collective synergy so close-knit, one in which initiating impulses and successive responses are so closely interwoven -- perhaps impossible to assign -- that they might be the work of a multi-armed and multi-mouthed deity, a figure playing numerous instruments at an initiation into the mysteries.

Dissection Room (Albert Cirera/ Abdul Moimême/ Álvaro Rosso) - Live at Penhasco (discordian records, 2025) 

Dissection Room first formed in Lisbon in 2017, combining Moimême, Spanish saxophonist Albert Cirera and Uruguayan bassist Alvaro Rosso. This is their second CD, following the eponymous release of a 2017 concert, Creative Sources 549CD. At the root of the trio’s mystery there is Rosso. His instrument will suggest foundation, stability and form, even those players in the virtuosic lineage, but Rosso is also an agent of chaos – his contribution a chain of disruptions: claw-like plucking of multiple strings, quivering bowed harmonics, his sound amplified or closely miked, bass grit ground out at the frog of the bow, tones seemingly echoing backward as well as forward. Cirera’s soprano and tenor saxophones provide strong central voices, whether or not they are altered with various objects and insertions; at one point there is a continuous line suspended between saxophone timbre and a violin. Moimême’s instrument is the soul of unpredictability, frustrating even identification: two horizontal guitars, one a radically evolved baritone of his own design, with extensive electronics and preparations and striking devices. Distinctive individual events from any of the three occur amidst a dense field of quivering sound, the act of distinguishing events and individual contributions only clouding the listener’s essential immersion in the collective work’s unfolding, the miracle of collaboration that take place here. 

Wade Matthews, Abdul Moimême, Luz Prado- Trust from Intimacy (scatter archive. 2025) 

The trio of sound artist Matthews, Moimême and violinist Luz Prado is a merger of two pre-existing duos, Matthews and Moimême, Matthews and Prado. If anything, it takes the elements of synthesis and mystery even further than Dissection Room’s Live at Penasco, for Matthews represents the same scale of sonic variety and invention (timbral, contrapuntal, environmental) as Moimême. My early descriptions of Moimême’s work included metaphors of train stations in outer space. The same qualities of mystery. energy and inclusive terrain are even more evident here, with all the partners contributing to the mystery, whether it’s Matthews’ wandering sound samples (at one point documentation of a recorded voice will appear, then move from natural timbre to Disney Duck range) or Prado’s exacting imaginings of alien insect voices. This is not a trio but an orchestra, operating both in the internal world of dream in collision and in imaginings of outer space, the nervous system and the overlapping voices of distant radio frequencies. At every turn, every dance of drama, mystery and eerie, speculative glissando or rattle, this work moves both further in, to the echoing songs of the subconscious, and further out, where elastic string harmonics fade into twilight. The work’s complexity, its invocation of both lived in spaces and/or psychic realms, both evades description or synthesis, demanding listening.

Note: In an “Ezz-thetics” column from 2017 I recounted a 2016 Lisbon lunch meeting with Moimême and Matthews when they were making field recordings for Lisbon: 10 Sound Portraits (Creative Sources 421 CD): https://www.pointofdeparture.org/archives/PoD-60/PoD60Ezz-thetics.html

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Two sax-bass duets

Joëlle Léandre & Evan Parker - Long Bright Summer (RogueArt, 2025)

When two of free improvisation's leading musicians meet, the outcome is guaranteed to be outstanding, as it is on this album. The performance took place at the exceptional venue of a French vineyard Le Chai at the Domaine "Les Davids" in Viens, France, as part of a festival. The venue and the audience play a role here. That quality of the sound is excellent. It's as if you're part of the audience.

Even if both musicians have performed a lot before in various trios and quartets, I think this is their first duo album. And we can only hope they do this more often. 

Léandre’s bowed bass and Parker’s extended, circular-breathing lines are central to the music’s character. Their sounds meet and intertwine—merging, co-creating, and coalescing, or at times clashing, challenging, and competing—driving both players into uncharted sonic territories that surprise, perplex, and ultimately move us as listeners. A second factor is the unwavering self-assurance and near-complete absence of self-consciousness that defines their music. Each musician respects—and even admires—the other, yet this is matched by full confidence in their own instrumental voice. 

As a result, every option remains open, and almost any improvisational path they choose naturally becomes part of the other’s comfort zone—because operating without a safety net is the environment in which they thrive. It is at moments not only spectacular, but also extremely beautiful. 

The liner notes contain a quote from each musician that basically says it all. Joëlle Léandre: "No writing, no conductor, no leader, man or woman, style or age… Improvisation is about the risk that we take and what we have to say, here and now." and Evan Parker: "Certain kinds of speed, flow, intensity, density of attacks, density of interaction... Music that concentrates on those qualities is, I think, easier achieved by free improvisation between people sharing a common attitude, a common language." 

Absolute freedom anchored in a common attitude. 

Brilliant!

John Butcher & John Edwards - This Is Not Speculation (Fundacja Słuchaj, 2025)

John Butcher & John Edwards have been performing together for decades, in more than sixteen documented ensembles, yet this is only their third duo album, after "Optic" (2003) and "Scene and Recalled" (2020). The performance is intimate, close to the listener too, for four tracks with a lot of variety and sonic creativity, ranging from sensitive interaction to wild timbral explorations, birdsong, frivolous excursions and playful moments. 

Both Johns are so attuned to each other’s playing that almost anything becomes possible—even welcomed. Muted, percussive bass plucks or stuttering, breathy saxophone sounds all find their place within an ever-shifting, kaleidoscopic soundscape, as do high-pitched whistles or even the occasional steady bass pulse. And sometimes you wish you could have seen the performance just to understand how they physically generated very contrasting sounds. In a way the whole concert is art reduced to its pure and concrete nature: to create something ethereal, fragile and touching out of sheer physical activity. 

The music demands close attention. Anything can happen at any moment, and both musicians seem to be constantly inventing and reinventing themselves—introducing new ideas, new challenges, and weaving their thoughts together with an effortless sense of mutual understanding. Whatever direction the music turns, they navigate it together. It’s fun, and it’s fascinating to hear. They clearly relish their own abilities and their deep appreciation of each other’s strengths.

I asked John Butcher to explain the title: "Speculation means when you make a decision on something without there being any real evidence for the decision. The title was meant to suggest that - yes, this is improvised, and we move freely as the music is made, but we do know what we are doing (after all these years) ..."

And trust me ... they know what they are doing. Enjoy!

The performance was recorded live at the Einstein Kultur in Munich on October 8, 2023. 

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