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 be 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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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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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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