Karoline Wallace - Eon (Sauajazz, 2026)

By Brian Earley

 

Alene. Voldsomt Alene.

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Karoline Wallace’s Eon can be found on Bandcamp:

 

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At Jazzwerkstatt Peitz

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

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

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

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

By Fotis Nikolakopoulos

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

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

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

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

Listen here:

@fot.isn 

 

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

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Joel Futterman Solo and Duo

By Paul Acquaro

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

 

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

Joel Futterman - Reflective (Squidnote, 2025) 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Joel Futterman - Absorb (Squidnote, 2025) 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

By Nick Ostrum

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

bloodcog - planete sauvage (whi 2026)

By Gary Chapin 

bloodcog is Phil Hargreaves on woodwinds/EWI, Richard Harding on Chapman Stick and ambiences, Richard Harrison on drums and objects, Fran Bass on electric bass, and Pete Smyth, analog electronics. On these recordings they engage in a venerable tradition of improvising a soundtrack over the film, Planete Sauvage (Fantastic Planet), a 1973 science fiction masterpiece of animation and disquiet.

There’s ample precedent for this. James P. Johnson, Fats Waller, and Count Basie played for the original — venerable — silent pics. Miles Davis recorded his improv for the film Ascenseur pour l'échafaud. Bill Frisell played over (or behind?) Buster Keaton films. Marc Ribot took a spin.

The bloodcog quintet provides a mixture of non-idiomatic free music, electronica, musique concrete, found sound, and noise that could be industrially deafening or could be a close recording of a bug chewing loudly on a leaf. Hargreaves’s winds sketch a story — or character or scene — but still the whole thing seems wonderfully, drivingly abstractly expressionist, a musical experience that references nothing, that makes allusions to nothing.

Or so it seems.

The two albums take the music from the recording sessions and present it to us in two different ways. Planete Sauvage (Improvised Soundtrack) is the OST recording. Seventy minutes of music improvised directly to the film. Savage Planet takes the material from the two takes and curates chunks of it into 13 distinct, self-contained tracks. There is some music on Savage Planet that is not on Planete Sauvage, and vice versa, and I was surprised that this mildest of curation and editing created a genuinely different listening experience for each. Maybe it was just the pauses between tracks for breath. But no, the two are related, of course. The Venn Diagram has a good amount of overlap, but also a good amount of distinction.

A third way to listen to the soundtrack is to watch the film with the soundtrack. It’s a genuinely transformational experience — both because the music and film are each so good, and together even better, and because the exercise of hearing this music in three ways provides hypnotically fascinating insight into how music and images can so profoundly change each other. Sadly, you cannot watch the film because there’s a copyright dispute going on. This is what is known in the industry as A DRAG!

Each album is great, and the entire project is something you can really immerse yourself into. Five stars!

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

By Brian Earley

 

"When you hear music, after it's over, it's gone, in the air. You can never capture it again." These, as many readers of the Free Jazz Blog will know, are the famous final words of Eric Dolphy’s mythical work, Last Date . While other recordings have come to light over the years, in many ways these also serve as the final words of Dolphy’s life, as he died a mere 27 days after Last Date’s recording. 

 

I evoke Dolphy’s words here because of the grabbing and somewhat cryptic title of the first album recorded together by saxophonist Camila Nebbia and drummer Chris Corsano. Last Date was a functional title; it provided listeners with useful information about the record they were to hear, and it held weight. It most certainly was intentional.

 

As I listened to Six or Seven Ways Towards Becoming Undone I found myself returning again and again to this title. What the hell does it mean? Was I chasing specters, pumping meaning into a mere throw away phrase by Corsano or Nebbia? But I also kept returning to Dolphy’s words.

 

Music, afterall, can become undone, and as it turns out, Nebbia and Corsano do a masterful job of achieving this in each piece. The duo make a tacit pact with their listeners as each song opens, only to wipe away expectations completely by midsong. For example, the album opens with a burner: “Shattered Things.” Nebbia slides around her instrument’s keys like an oiled snake as Corsano works urgently on cymbals and snare. By the one minute mark, the piece feels like it wants to reach through the ceiling as Nebbia holds long notes with multiphonics and screeches in death-ray like effects, roiling up and up and up as Corsano opens ringing crashes on the ride cymbals and drops explosions on the toms. It is as though Rashied Ali were playing with John Coltrane AND Pharoah Sanders at the same time on Interstellar Space.

 

The kinetic maelstrom continues, but somewhere around the seven minute mark, I realized that the music had furtively gone quiet. Nebbia leaves tons of space and silence and Corsano softly swipes the high hats or bows other cymbals. And, by 7:50 the piece has entered total silence. It must be over, I thought. But the two musicians continue extemporaneously creating overtones and whistles and shimmering effects for over three more minutes. The piece becomes undone, but the two recreate new expectations well before the work finishes.

 

This coming undone happens again and again on this album. Well, seven times, since there are seven total songs. Although the final track, “Unadorned/Never Better,” only sort of follows this approach, remaining largely atmospheric and meditative, with Corsano playing what sounds like a gong or a sheet of metal and Nebbia whispering overtones. At times it becomes almost impossible to tell if I was hearing a saxophone or a drum kit, as the sounds whistle and ring out. This work serves as an entirely new direction for the album as a whole, and in that sense, serves another method of becoming undone. So, let’s call it six or seven times, or ways, of becoming undone.

 

I want to be clear, however, that Nebbia and Corsano do not repeat one pattern the entire way through the first six tracks. While, “Shattered Things,” and the following pieces “Cast-A-Spell,” and “Sunken House” all possess Interstellar Spaceintensity and searching at times, the songs move surprisingly into sonic territory I did not anticipate. My favorite work is a piece titled “Dead of Night.” The fourth of the seven works on the album subverts expectations by opening with the saxophonist playing her horn whispery, airy, and breathy. Corsano adds accents with sticks and rolls with what sound like his fingers. This song retains its quiet openness, and, in this way, the undoneness isthis song. The piece is seductive, however, and plays with expectations as the two appear to build intensity, only to continue searching through the silence. But, by the 5:40 mark Nebbia’s horn is screaming with more volume than at any other time on the record.

 

“A Paper Cut in Smoke” sees Nebbia both whispering and honking her instrument. Corsano even nearly plays a groove a quarter of the way in. “Nothing is Fixed” remains a highlight of the album, and works mysteriously and lyrically. I swear at times I hear Ben Webster blowing breathy ballads on this tune.

Six or Seven Ways Towards Becoming Undone is a masterpiece that leaves me, at least, asking questions about impermanence. All things, as the opening work states, may be shattered, and nothing may be fixed, but we strut and fret our way through paper cuts in smoke not to signify nothing, but to be “Never Better.” All songs must become undone as they fade and end, but the next adventure is waiting to bloom sonically somewhere from the silence. 

 

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Summer Bummer in Focus

At the end of this summer, the Free Jazz Blog will be heading to Antwerp to check out the Summer Bummer festival. Held over the last weekend of August, it's been on our 'bucket list' of festivals over the past few years as its reputation has leaked across the ethers. Today, we present an interview with programmer Koen Vandenhoudt, about the festival's origin and concept ... but first a short impression of event from the festival itself:

Paul Acquaro: How did the very first edition of the festival come into being?

Koen Vandenhoudt: The first edition of Summer Bummer came into being as the celebration of 25 years of Freakscene, my radio show at Antwerp’s Radio Centraal, so originally it was Freakscene’s Summer Bummer. But even then it was a combined effort of music enthusiasts, supportive artists and a lot of volunteers that made and still make it happen.

PA: What do you think distinguishes your festival from others in Europe?

KV: We work purely by content, and though we pioneer many artists and give chances to lesser known and emerging artists, we go less by trends or commercial choices. At Summer Bummer we often present artists in constellations that have never happened before or that are brand new. That’s super exciting but hard to promote. People want the hear and see things before hand. So to see people coming from all over the world to witness this musical adventure, gives us a good feeling. It’s a trust kind of thing built over the years.

Another important thing is that we never do overlaps. We use multiple stages but always make sure that people can see all the shows -- and very important, it’s a community thing, where people can hang out, meet the artists, participate in an installation, enjoy some nice homemade food or score some excellent records.

PA: What guides your programming choices from year to year?

KV: We would like to say the artists and the ever changing amazing music they make. The international network and knowledge we built from within our Sound in Motion organization - volunteers, professionals, artists and like minded organizations - over all the years is pretty vast. This means that from all over the world we are continuously fed with the ins and outs of the music world.

On top of that, we support musicians over the long term, from the early stages, where the artist is new and unknown, to the moment where the international stage starts noticing.

PA: How do you decide when a project is “right” for the festival?

KV: That’s a very subjective process and impossible to pin-point exactly. We sometimes set out a kind of wish list or some minor themes but this very often gets overruled by the sheer quality of surprising offers or by the fact that every day is a day of potential musical discovery. Being able to keep this flexibility, this room to manoeuvre is crucial...

PA: How do you balance presenting established artists with discovering new voices?

KV: Since the first Summer Bummer edition and also in our nomadic concert series, our Dropa House residencies and our Dropa Disc label, we always balanced the older generation with established artists and the up and coming generation. In an age where pioneers of improvised, adventurous and experimental music are rapidly forgotten and disappearing, it’s super important to stage these different generations together. Sometimes we can combine them, like Peter Brötzmann with Farida Amadou and Thurston Moore, or Cel Overberghe with Adia Vanheerentals and Ornella Noulet (60 years of age difference), and Joe McPhee with Mette Rasmussen and Dennis Tyfus is also a good intergenerational and genre defying example. 

And sometimes it’s exemplary of how the past is still more than relevant and moves into the future, like the trio of Barry Guy, Evan Parker, Paul Lytton or the historic duo of Fred Van Hove and Brötzmann. As said earlier we support musicians over the long term. Therefore some artists who are considered established these days still have a strong bond with Summer Bummer and Sound in Motion as an organization. Being able to show how these artists evolve is something very beautiful and exciting to witness. 

This year we have some beautiful examples of this with the world premiere of Rodrigo Amado, one of the hardest working reed players around, in a trio with the legendary bass player/icon Joëlle Léandre and the genre hopping genius drummer and electronics manipulator Gerald Cleaver, not a trio we requested but a proposal by the artists themselves. 

And what to say about one of the all time greats, Alexander von Schlippenbach, who will play this years Summer Bummer in a duo with phenomenal drummer and one of the most prominent representatives of the scene Paal Nilssen-Love, another request by the artists themselves and super exemplary of everything we stand for. And maybe the ultimate example of mixing up generations, gender, established and new artists is the passage at Summer Bummer in 2024 of Fire! Orchestra CBA and Fire! Orchestra CBA Youth. Mindblowing and very inspirational indeed.

PA: Are there artistic boundaries you intentionally avoid—or intentionally cross?

KV: Crossing artistic boundaries is inherent to the invited artists. Creating the platform to cross potential boundaries is the essence of Summer Bummer as a festival and to Sound in Motion as an organization. Just look at this years program and you know what we mean.

PA: What do you hope musicians experience here that they might not elsewhere?

KV: We once published a book with the title Food For Thought asking the artists how they experienced playing for Sound in Motion. One of the answers was: 'Feeling at home away from home.’

We like to think and hope that we are part of a handful of organizations and festivals that actually make this happen. That we can create the perfect environment for artists so they can focus 100% on their craft and artistry.

PA: What do you hope audiences experience here that they might not elsewhere?

KV: That there’s more than just mainstream music, forced upon everyone by mainstream media. And that, unlike mainstream channels will make you believe, it is not by definition difficult music. Even alternative channels struggle with this, shying away or being apologetic when music is abstract or noisy or not following known paths, as if there’s something wrong with it. No, embracing the unknown and enjoying it full on is the way to go.

PA: How do you see the festival’s role within the local music community?

KV: By showing the international dynamic of adventurous, improvised and experimental music and putting local musicians in the spotlights, introducing them first hand to international mainstays the Summer Bummer Festival tries to open international doors and opportunities.

PA: What is one thing that we didn't ask you that you think we should have?

KV: Sound in Motion is a nomadic organization, how does that relate to the concert series and the festival, and what's the importance of this within the field of improvised and experimental music and free jazz?

Sound in Motion uses a "nomadic" model that fundamentally shapes both its ongoing concert series and its annual festival. In fields like free jazz, improvised, and experimental music, this structural fluidity is not just a logistical choice—it is an aesthetic and philosophical necessity. Experimental and improvised music has historically suffered from being ghettoized either as purely academic or overly elitist. By refusing to stay inside a traditional, high-art institution, Sound in Motion actively de-academizes the genre. Bringing free jazz into a rock club one week, a community art space the next, or a cultural center the week after meets diverse audiences where they already are, embedding avant-garde sound into the community fabric.

Free jazz and free improvisation are built on the rejection of rigid frameworks, fixed charts, and predictable patterns. As a nomadic organization, Sound in Motion mirrors this artistically. When an organization is not connected to a physical building, it avoids the institutional inertia that forces venues to book "safe," commercially viable acts to cover high overhead costs.The organizational structure is as improvisational, adaptive, and high-risk as the music itself.

Because we must constantly collaborate with different physical venues and artistic spaces, Sound in Motion inherently builds an inter-connected infrastructure. We do not guard our audience; instead, we aim to cross-pollinate with the crowds of the partner venues. This creates a robust safety net for touring experimental musicians, making Belgium a vital European hub for artists who rely on agile, grassroots bookers to sustain their careers.

 Find out more about Summer Bummer here.

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Reza Askari Roar Quintet - xAYb v8v dYAx (Boomslang, 2026)

By Eyal Hareuveni

Reza Askari is a German (son of an Iranian-born father and a German mother), Cologne-based double bass player, composer, and educator (he is a professor of jazz bass at the University of Music Wuerzburg). His main band is the Roar trio - with clarinet and tenor sax player Stefan Karl Schmid and drummer Fabian Arend, augmented by vibes player Christopher Dell (who is also an educator who teaches architecture, urban design, and planning) in its last two albums - the self-titled album (QFTF, 2022) and Zen World Cables (Boomslang, 2024). The fifth album of Roar has a cryptic title, xAYb v8v dYAx, and the trio hosts Dell and Canadian trumpeter Lina Allemano (who splits her time between Toronto and Berlin). The album was recorded at Deutschlandfunk Kammermusiksaal in Cologne in April 2026.

Askari was mentored by German double bass players Dieter Manderscheid and Sebastian Gramss, but has played with other innovative double bass players like Barre Philips and Mark Dresser, and is well-versed in the free jazz legacy. But Askari sees the acoustic, unamplified Roar quintet as an improvising modern jazz band that adapts the logic of extreme metal bands with their asymmetrical or symmetrical cycles, collapsing forms, obsessive repetition, abrupt ruptures, and overwhelming physical force. He mentions metal bands like Meshuggah, Car Bomb, the Melvins, and the Dillinger Escape Plan that have a distinct architectural and emotional language that he wanted to transform into a detailed improvisational context.

xAYb v8v dYAx distills the powerful, physical, and constantly shapeshifting rhythmic patterns of metal bands into layered, more nuanced, and spacious yet still restless patterns. Askari, Dell, and Arend sketch complex, polyrhythmic architectures of a modern jazz trio or a chamber music ensemble, while they keep trading leading roles, often reaching surprising reductionist or atonal territories. Schmid and especially Allemano act as free agents who can add disruptive, sometimes even abrasive touches, and they always do so, but thoughtfully and poetically. Allemano’s economic interventions always charge the music with intense, emotional impact. This tension stimulates and enriches the unpredictable, often fragmented rhythmic dynamics of this quintet.

The Roar quintet does not seek to replicate the massive polyrhythmic patterns of Meshuggah or other metal bands, but captures the nervous, punkish rhythmic spirit of such bands. This quintet refuses to subscribe to the common, familiar order and instead challenges itself with shifting contrasts and structural chaos, always questioning, negotiating, negating, and reassembling Askari’s compositions. The code-like, palindromic titles of most pieces intensify that feeling. The outcome is thought-provoking, epic, and makes you return to the album again and again, not to decipher the cryptic titles, but to enjoy its free spirit.

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Flo Stoffner - Bijou (Relative Pitch, 2026)

By Martin Schray

Bijou is a French noun meaning “gem”, “treasure”, or “jewel”. It’s often used in a formal or figurative sense to describe something particularly beautiful, precious, or valuable, similar to the term “gem” when referring to a beautiful house or object. And it’s the title of Flo Stoffner’s new solo album - his first since Norman (Veto Records, 2014). However, it differs significantly from his earlier recordings.

Stoffner has been an integral part of the European free jazz scene for many years. As a guitarist, he ranks among the best in his field alongside Fred Frith, Olaf Rupp, and Noël Akchoté. No wonder - when John Butcher and Paul Lovens choose you as a collaborator it certainly counts as a mark of distinction.

After many duo and trio releases, Bijou highlights Stoffner’s unique style as if he were freed from the constraints of having to communicate with others. “This time, I made short recordings here and there over the course of several months. I deliberately wanted to immerse myself in this process over a longer period of time. For me, it was really all about the process itself, since I learned and discovered so much through this engagement with myself and the instrument. I also wanted to make the very quiet playing styles audible - the ones that are hard to hear when other musicians are playing along”, Stoffner emphasizes. Therefore, Bijou is more purist than the solo albums before, on which he used effects more frequently. On the one hand, it becomes clear that his technique is shaped by the British school, especially Derek Bailey and John Russell; on the other hand, his sound has clearly emancipated itself from his role models. Flageolets are at the center of his style, he contrasts them with hard, individually struck notes. The result is a very open sound, as if a wild ECM album was being played in a DIY style by a post-punk guitarist (e.g., Durutti Column’s Vini Reilly). You won’t find any ethereal lightness here, it’s more like being Nero in the first Matrix movie, dodging the ricochets, which come flying at you not in slow motion, but in real time. The whole thing sounds like a hailstorm descending on an abandoned Tibetan monastery where the chimes have been left behind. This becomes particularly clear in the album’s final track, “Bijou 6.” Amid all the roughness and harshness, a stark beauty flashes through consistently, so that despite its jarring contrasts in high and low flageolets, the piece is reminiscent of ambient music. But even though Stoffner seems to play with a greater sense of freedom, he still feels that it was a major challenge to play without a partner because it was sometimes difficult to get to the point. But don’t worry - on this wonderful gem, he has succeeded without exception.

Bijou is available on CD and as a download.

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Toc + Jean-Luc Guionnet - Quelques idées d’un vert incolore dorment furieusement (Tour de Bras, 2026) *****

By Richard Blute

“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”

-A sentence proposed by Noam Chomsky that he claimed was grammatically correct, but meaningless.

In 2015, I attended a concert of the band Kaze in a downtown Ottawa nightclub. Between sets, the musicians were selling CDs, surrounded by a crowd of fans. I picked out a few CDs and was still hunting around when I saw one I didn’t recognize. The print on the back was tiny, the room was dark and I didn’t have my reading glasses. But I figured I’d try my luck and purchased it without even knowing who was on the CD. It was TOC’s album Haircut and it became one of my favorite albums of 2015, and I’ve been an enormous fan of TOC ever since.

TOC consists of Peter Orins on drums, Ivann Cruz on guitar, and Jérémie Ternoy on keyboards. (Peter is also the drummer for Kaze.). On Haircut, TOC creates complex rhythms that are a delight to listen to, with Cruz in particular treating his guitar like a percussion instrument. The rhythms have an almost hypnotic effect which I found fascinating.

I very much liked the idea of adding a saxophone to TOC. They had previously collaborated with Dave Rempis on Closed For Safety Reasons, and that was a terrific album. On this album, Jean-Luc Guionnet proved to be an excellent choice for collaboration. FJC readers will recognize Guionnet from multiple reviews, including a 5 star review for his duo with Will Guthrie, his more recent album with Diatribes, as well as his work with the band The Ames Room.

This album consists of a single 33 minute track, and the band is more than capable of sustaining the listener’s attention throughout the piece. It begins subtly with TOC playing some textural percussive sounds inviting Guionnet to join them. As the rhythms build in complexity, Guionnet’s playing builds in urgency. He plays beautiful serpentine lines, but occasionally sounds like he’s calling out to the others as he plays a single screeching note. As the piece proceeds, Guionnet’s overblowing ratchets up the tension and TOC responds with their own intensity. The last 8 or 9 minutes of this album are pure, thundering bliss.

This is my album of the year so far.

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Fie Schouten, Vincent Courtois, Sofia Borges, Pierre Baux - Open Space (Relative Pitch, 2026)

By Hrayr Attarian

French writer and filmmaker Georges Perec was known for using wordplay to explore identity, loss, and grief. His 1974 book Espèces d'espaces is equal parts essay and prose poetry, exploring the concept of space from an individual bed to the universe. It also serves as an inspiration for one of the most intriguing albums of 2026, Open Space.

On it, veteran French actor Pierre Baux eloquently recites Perec’s writing, and a trio spontaneously creates music inspired by it.

The album opens with “SPACE”. French cellist Vincent Courtois plays muscular refrains, off of which Dutch clarinetist Fie Schouten bounces her plaintive lines. Portuguese drummer Sofia Borges provides the percolating cadence that drives the haunting melody, which not only echoes the essay's words but also goes beyond them. Thus it forms a lyrical fusion of two forms of expression

A cinematic ambiance permeates the entire recording. For instance, on “The Bed and The Room” Courtois and Schouten engage in a tense duet that shows influences of Western classical music. Borges’ crashing cymbals, chiming bells, and rustling brushes add to the mysticism.

The three musicians demonstrate sublime camaraderie, with the focus primarily on the collective performance rather than individual solos. On the poignant absurdist “The Country-Borders”, in response to Baux’s emotive monologue, Schouten lets loose fiery, urgent wails while Courtois bows out crystalline and angular phrases with passion. Borges’ thunderous polyrhythms underscore her bandmates' improvisation and the anti-war message of Perec’s poem. Meanwhile, on “The Letter” the serene ensemble sound is laced with melancholy. Borges contributes soft, jingling percussion that dramatically punctuates Schouten’s languid, undulating clarinet and Courtois’ darkly smoldering cello.

This collaborative record perfectly marries provocative poetry with equally stimulating musical extemporizations. Its singularity, though, goes beyond its structure. Each of the performers brings their idiosyncratic styles and seamlessly overlaps them for a multilayered work that is moving and memorable. Open Space makes for a rewarding listening experience even for those who may not know French.

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The Black Nothing & Anders Filipsen - Midt i en Fremtid (Ilk Music, 2026)

By Eyal Hareuveni

Anyone who has experienced someone close, and especially a young one, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, would be familiar with the existential and emotional rollercoaster that awaits all around those ill ones, along with the grief-filled, compassionate yet helpless years to come.

Danish keyboard player and composer Anders Filipsen, the leader of the local experimental, electroacoustic ensemble The Black Nothing, experienced Alzheimer’s disease when his father was diagnosed four years ago. He composed a ten-part suite, Midt i en Fremtid (In the Middle of a Future), about the time he spent with his father, which composed passages, free improvisation, and graphic scores. He says: “This album is the sound of a time when what once was ceased to be, and something new emerged. It is a loving song to the moments we share now – in the midst of all that has disappeared”.

The different parts of the suite function as tableaux of moments marked by gradual decline, filled with silence, relating to the inevitable time when the ill ones can not share their thoughts anymore, repetition, and intensity- a landscape where presence and memory meet in sound. The ten musicians - vocalist Qarin Wikström (who sings in Danish, but the lyrics were translated to English), trumpeter Emil Jensen, clarinetists Carolyn Goodwyn and Jeppe Højgaard (who also plays the flute), cellist Soma Allpas, double bass player and cellist Nils Bo Davidsen, electronics player Mads Emil Nielsen, percussionist Victor Dybbroe, drummer Bjørn Heebøl, and Filipsen on synths - use their idiosyncratic voices to create a unified expression in which individual playing and collective sound merge.

The introspective, reflective, and chamber spirit of this suite emphasizes the vulnerability and the often helpless feelings of attending to those suffering from Alzheimer's when “everything that’s known is gone”, as Wikström sings in the opening piece, “Synker og Stirrerr (Sinking and Staring). “Nelly” captures Filipsen’s father's last memory and gently addresses the realization that when time, with its many memories and experiences, loses its meaning, and all that is left is the present.

The power of this thoughtful, insightful suite lies in its emotional restraint, best expressed by Wikström’s fragile voice, and its kaleidoscopic individual colors, suggesting a nuanced yet abruptly shifting, unstable, and not always comprehensible new reality, faithfully representing life with Alzheimer’s disease. But Filipsen orchestrates this suite not as an expression of melancholy and loss, but as a statement of compassion and love to the most closed ones, and the opportunity to let them go, embraced by their dear ones. Or as he wrote in “I stilhed findes ord (In Silence There Are Words): “...Room for honesty, peculiarity, and unbearable sorrow / Come take my hand”.

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Take a ride with Helicopter ... live at the Loft

Today's Sunday Video is from the power trio Helicopter, which looks to be 2/3 of Free Jazz Blog favorite Gorilla Mask with Simon Camatta in the drum seat. "Brighton" from Camatta is a taut, fist-pumping number that should help get your day started right!

Recorded live at Loft, Cologne Germany, February 23rd 2026 Peter Van Huffel - alto saxophone Roland Fidezius - e-bass Simon Camatta

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Ensembles with electronics: rewiring the imagination

By Stuart Broomer

These are recent and distinguished bands united by the extent to which they’re refined, defined and expanded by electronics, harbingers not of the future but of the immediate present, multiplying and expanding through degrees of transformation, each a legitimate heir to the kinds of informed complexity pioneered by musical outsiders like John Benson Brooks and Sun Ra and literary outsiders like Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs.

Alexander Hawkins -- No Nation but Imagination (Intakt, 2026) 

 

Pianist/composer Alexander Hawkins has already covered a broad musical spectrum in his career, from Togetherness Music for Sixteen Musicians featuring Evan Parker to Carnival Celestial, his brilliant reinvention of the piano trio with bassist Neil Charles and drummer Stephen Davis. No Nation but Imagination may be his most striking work yet, with a trans-Atlantic quintet that links Chicago-resident flutist Nicole Mitchell and drummer Hamid Drake with British musicians Rhodri Davies, here playing harp and electronics, and turntablist/sound artist Matthew Wright. That’s not a predictable combination, and it immediately lives up to that promise of the unlikely: it’s music that can find a groove, but it’s a groove that hasn’t exactly happened before, suggestive in some ways of the unpredictable musical culture of Intakt label-mates Elias Stemeseder and Christian Lillinger and their Umbra series of recordings.

Liner note author Peter Margasak has traced the project’s complex lineage and associations, beginning with Hawkins’ enthusiasm for the Mandingo Griot Society, a band that Drake played in in the 1970s with Gambian kora master Foday Musa Suso. Mitchell has played with a kora master more recently, the Malian Ballaké Sissoko. Those associations with the harp-like kora triggered the inclusion of harpist Rhodri Davies, who has also worked extensively with electronics, also the arena of Matthew Wright. The resultant ensemble bears a certain resemblance to Wright and Evan Parker’s Trance Map in its integration of acoustic and electronic instruments and processing, the result here a mix of live and studio recordings with further processing.

It’s music that has covered tremendous ground just coming into being, and it’s fascinating how the most exotic of technological procedures admit of a certain alien prettiness, a provocative banality, evident here from the opening “Solo Way Far Gone”: mysterious electronic piano tinkling, at once bearer and judge of the merely pretty, is here elevated by degrees of mystery and alien artifice. The first real group track, “Resolution Each and Every,” suggests that some 1950s exotica by Martin Denny (e.g., “Quiet Village”) has been recovered by some distant and unknown civilization (perhaps Kurt Vonnegut’s refined Tralfamadorians), then altered, expanded and broadcast back to earth, with Mitchell’s flute assuming multiple identities amidst the complex percussion and a certain general wobbling of harp and synthesizer, with the music stretching far beyond the merely exotic. So too does “Mirror No Border”, which bristles with Hawkins’ percussive piano flurries and Mitchell’s alternately piping and soaring lines.

The more extended pieces create increasingly complex spaces. “Lullaby Much Further” combines near silence with a dauntingly mysterious collection of sounds and a complex web of connections, while “Hocket Fierce Peaceful” achieves the contradictory character of its title by setting a flute of almost unearthly tranquility amidst a maze of abstract and decorative electronic keyboards. 

 

Sofia Borges - Rieko Okuda - Peter Van Huffel -- Lagrangian Points (4daRecord, 2026) 

Equally mixed in its combinations of the acoustic and the electronic, Lagrangian Points differs significantly in being a documentary recording of a live performance from Berlin’s Morphine Raum, all the electronic processing going on simultaneously with the acoustic. Sofia Borges plays drums. percussion and electronics; Rieko Okuda, piano, keyboards and electronics; Peter Van Huffel alto and baritone saxophones and electronics.

According to the liner note “ Lagrangian Points are zones of delicate balance where forces align and bodies can remain suspended. In that sense, the trio forms a system of its own: each voice holds and is held by the others, maintaining a moving equilibrium, with enough space left open for the imagination to drift beyond its edges.” That particularly double identity is linked to the presence of electronics employed by each trio member, to the extent that instrumental identities can blur into one another.

The opening “Ghost Currents” initially seems to emphasize Okuda’s electronic keyboards and Borges’ percussion, but within moments the music’s distinctive complexity is apparent, many of the sounds traceable to their acoustic origins, but nonetheless operating in a transformative state, the three elaborating waves of sound that might suggest a wholly electronic extension of an improvising ensemble akin to Cecil Taylor’s trio with Andrew Cyrille and Jimmy Lyons.

“Parallax” introduces a subtle world of discreet electronic distortions, near-invocations of piano strings and metallic percussion all of these combining to suggest alien transmissions from space as well as a distinctly human music. Just as Alexander Hawkins’ electronic webs on No Nation But Imagination can make Nicole Mitchell’s flute seem alien, Van Huffel’s alto here might be purely acoustic at times, yet his aptitude for abstraction is such that his alto suggests something quite different, almost a harmonica, its voice swimming in an electronic maze, until electronic alterations to the saxophone draw it wholly into an intermediate zone floating between the acoustic and the electronic.

With the final track, “Hypnopompia”, Van Huffel’s saxophone initially provides an acoustic line in an alien soundscape, but as the surrounding sound grows increasingly menacing (there is a suggestion of hybrid alien predators), his sound gradually mutates, becoming closer and closer to the world that surrounds him, achieved with a brilliant combination of acoustic and electronic techniques. As Van Huffel moves further towards the electronic, Borges briefly inhabits the acoustic role, but the ultimate group movement will be almost wholly electronic.

These two remarkable recordings together articulate a new terrain, reflective of an increasingly mediated world, one in which the likelihood of deception conditions interpretation, one in which art and its appreciation might increasingly stretch both creative and interpretive acts toward surveillance.

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

By Fotis Nikolakopoulos 

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

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

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

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

Listen here:
 

@fot.isn

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[AHMED] - Play Monk (Otoroku, 2026)

By Ferruccio Martinotti

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

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

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

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

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

By Martin Schray

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

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

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

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

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

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