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Jörg Hochapfel (p), John Hughes (b), Björn Lücker (d) - Play MONK

Faktor! Hamburg. January, 2025

Sifter: Jeremy Viner (s), Kate Gentile (d), Marc Ducret (g)

KM28. Berlin. January, 2025

Sunday, February 16, 2025

Nathan Ott Quartett - Continuum

On 'Continuum', German drummer Nathan Ott leads a group with saxophonists Sebastian Gille and Christof Lauer, along with bassist Jonas Westergaard - a true continuum from the group that Ott played in with saxophonist David Liebman. The quartet's music is the result of close communication and genre transcending atmospherics ... at least in this clip! We'll all learn more when their album with the same title comes out next week.

Christof Lauer ss, ts; Sebastian Gille ts, ss, cl; Jonas Westergaard b, Nathan Ott dr
 
 
Learn more about group as well as Ott's new musical platform An:Bruch here.

Saturday, February 15, 2025

Recent Projects of Sven-Åke Johansson

By Eyal Hareuveni

Legendary Swedish, Berlin-based Sven-Åke Johansson composer, drummer-percussionist, poet, writer, and visual artist, will celebrate his 82th birthday and six decades of work this year. He belongs to the first generation of European free improvisers, known for his work with Peter Brötzmann’s earliest and some of his most important projects, including Machine Gun, but has never limited himself to any single artistic discipline. in an interview with the Berlin newspaper Taz, defined his work: “My work is not actually jazz, but rather the exploration of sounds. In that sense, my music defies some categorizations. Jazz is only a small part of what I do”.

Hautzinger / Schick / Johansson - Rotations + (Trost, 2025)

Rotations+ is a free improvised trio featuring Johansson on percussion and accordion, German turntable wizard Ignaz Schick on turntables, and Austrian trumpeter Franz Hautzinger on trumpets. Both players use electronics. The trio was recorded live at the Berlin experimental venue KM28 in September 2023. The six collective improvisations adapt the syntax of reductionist electronic music and explore a deep forest of subtle colors and timbre, with each improvisation suggesting a fresh and unpredictable perspective.

Johansson’s elegant sense of time is still remarkable, adding loose structural narratives with a kaleidoscopic, rhythmic sensibility to Hautzinger’s minimalist, extended breathing smears and cries and Schick’s delicate yet noisy and sometimes cartoonish beeps and bloops. At times, Johansson’s drumming even adds a ritualist dimension to the abstract and fragile interplay of Hautzinger and Schick, immediately disciplining exotic overtones (as on “R2”) and bringing a heightened form of spontaneous sound sculpting, something Johansson has been doing since the early 1970s. His accordion playing, on “R3” and the last “R6” improvisations, injects a subversive, romantic touch to the abstract and often nervous interplay of Hauztzinger and Schick.


Sven-Åke Johansson Quintet - Stumps (Second Version) (Trost, 2025)

Johansson first introduced the book of compositions used for his Stumps project on the album Stumps (Ni-Vu-Ni-Connu, 2022), recorded live at Au Topsi Pohl in Berlin in December 2021, with a quintet of Johansoon’s long-time collaborator, German trumpeter Axel Dörner, Swedish double bass player Joel Grip (of أحمد [Ahmed], another trusted collaborated of Johansson), and young French sax player Pierre Borel (of Die Hochstapler and Sebastian Gramss' States Of Play) and pianist Simon Sieger, and Johannson on drums.

Johansson referred to this book of six compositions as the magnum opus of his small group writing. Extended versions of “stumps 2” to “stumps 6” are included on Stumps (Second Version), recorded live one year after Stumps (which included all six compositions), at Haus der Berliner Festspiele during Jazzfest Berlin in November 2022. These compositions are based on strict, schematic instructions and offer a potential for variation with falling and rising short signals (notes). Each “stump” composition repeats the simple yet captivating theme four times and establishes its light-swinging pulse. Each “stump” alters the melodic and rhythmic shape of the basic formula and ignites a distinct kind of thoughtful deconstruction with introspective collective improvisation and solo excursions. A simple repetition of the theme at the end rounds off the composition as a kind of return. The underlying tempi of the themes are rather calm, there is no fixed tempo but more of a free positioning, according to the principle of ‘free tempo/dynamic vibration’.

Johansson leads the ensemble with commanding, modest, and always elegant authority and his trademark rolling cymbal pulse and stuttering snare drum keep the music forward. These compositions, despite their strict formula and repetitive themes, demand probing individual playing, and this ensemble brilliantly performs them.





Friday, February 14, 2025

Joëlle Léandre / Elisabeth Harnik / Zlatko Kaučič – LIVE IN ST. JOHANN (Fundacja Sluchaj, 2024)

By Fotis Nikolakopoulos

This live recording, from the ARTACTS Festival is Austria, captures this trio in fine form indeed. As the world of improvisation (and not only this field) is in a big need of women players, the presence of two of the best around on this recording is totally a blast. Leandre is, of course, on double bass, Harnik on piano and Kaucic on drums and percussion.

Playing live (and enjoying it…) is, and always will be, the core of the non-spoken shared language we call music. All three of them are very good and gifted in presenting their vision live. A vision that encompasses the idiolect of improvisation strengthened with their individual skills. But, don’t get me wrong. This is not a cd of three soloists. The three musicians have struggled, for a long time now, to play, interact and share ideas with others. Listening and interacting is the main focus. Their past proves that, this CD also. LIVE IN ST. JOHANN is a recording of collectiveness. Of camaraderie even. They play in unison, transforming their togetherness into a musical entity that is solid and enjoyable too.

Enjoyment is a key word for this live recording. Another key word is jazz. And why not. Improvisation has, for a long time, battled against the jazz tradition, but that doesn’t mean that this tradition is at fault per se. On LIVE IN ST. JOHANN, the three musicians use this tradition as a certain, non-restrictive, guideline. Their jazz based compositions follow the linear way of a jazz drums-piano-bass trio. Their playing is like storytelling. There is a beginning, a middle passage as a main theme and a, more aggressive, ending. Sometimes, to quote Godard a bit, not with this particular order, but this given does not lessen the enjoyment at all…

LIVE IN ST. JOHANN is mostly, apart from the storytelling part, about feelings. As every piece of great music should be about. Invest in those feelings generously donated by the three artists. You cannot miss.

@koultouranafigo

Thursday, February 13, 2025

Quatuor Bozzini, junctQtin keyboard collective - Rebecca Bruton + Jason Doell: a root or mirror, blossom, madder, cracks; together (Collection QB, 2024)

By Nick Ostrum

Quatuor Bozzini, a string quartet featuring Alissa Cheung, Clemens Merkel, and siblings Stéphane and Isabelle Bozzini, have been at the forefront of Canada’s new music scene for over two-and-a-half decades, now. Here, they are joined by the junctQin keyboard collective, a somewhat younger but well established and distinguished piano trio – that’s three pianos – consisting of Stephanie Chua, Joseph Ferretti, and Elaine Lau in a series of realizations of composer Rebecca Buton’s Faerie Ribbon and Jason Deoll’s to carry dust & breaks through the body. These and the album title, a root or mirror, blossom, madder, cracks; together, are evocative, but in their opacity and undefined suggestiveness. And maybe that is a fitting way to lead into the review proper. The music is suggestively enigmatic.

Rebecca Burton – 'The Fairie Ribbon' (Tracks 1-4)

Burton’s 'The Fairie Ribbon' consists of four parts of glittery, romantic music that borders on the hymnic. At the same time – and maybe linked to that religious idea of calm, sacred space – it evokes an uneven saunter through a forest pathway with strings enveloping birdsongs just well enough to add an impressionistic mystery. As with any proper forest tale, it plays with light and dark, sometimes seeming more foreboding than carefree. (Leo Orenstein comes to mind in this blend of elements.) Long pauses separate the sections within each part, of which there are four. These mark transitions and escalations, but also mimic the detours and distractions of a light hike, where one stops to view a vista here, or a strange, colorful bird in a tree there, or an odd outcropping one may or may not want to risk exploring. After a quick glance, one returns to their thoughts, meandering along with the hiker’s uncertain path. The listener’s mind and attention is set wandering in a similar fashion, until, in the final part, the piece climaxes in a majestic moment of clarity.

Jason Deoll – 'to carry dust & breaks through the body' (Track 5)

The second half, loosely speaking, of a root or mirror consists of a realization of a composition from Jason Doell. This one is somewhat darker than 'The Fairie Ribbon' and relies on long doubled tones and slow progressions to achieve a sort of grandiosity. Slow melodies waft around a couple central dramatic leitmotifs. The melodies, meticulously excavated from what could otherwise have been a morass of chords, are heavy and plodding, almost menacing in their unison. But the piece shows its real power in the persistence of the drones, the heavy key strikes, the constant loop back to the foundational melody, the anticipation those elements engender. 'To carry dust' is a strong piece, more linear than the itinerant 'Fairie Ribbon.'

In this release, we see two related but diverging faces of the many-sided dice of contemporary composition, inspired by various strands of the postwar new music, but avoiding the stark minimalist or cacophonist extremes. Composers Burton and Deoll are not alone in this pursuit, of course. However, they pursue it with a rare degree of skill and confidence. As do the Bozzini and junctiQin ensembles.

Available as on CD and vinyl and as a download from Bandcamp. The download includes four alternate versions of 'The Faerie Ribbon.'

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Joëlle Léandre remembers Barre Phillips

At the end of this past December, bassist Barre Phillips passed away. Today, fellow bassist Joëlle Léandre pays tribute to her mentor, collaborator and friend.

Barre Phillips, Kongsberg 2019
Photo by Peter Gannushkin

Barre, dear Barre,

I met and heard you when I was so young, 15 years old, in Aix-en-Provence, my hometown, you gave a solo bass concert there, in 1963 or 65!

Pierre Delescluse, a great, passionate and stern double bass teacher took the whole class to listen to you, to see you. It was extraordinary, a solo on a forgotten, low register instrument... there in front of us! 

A U.F.O., something else... A light.

You played a movement of a Bach suite for cello, transcribed of course, and music you had written spread across 6 or 7 music stands on the stage! Like an accordion you moved from stand to stand, it was magical.

One sound, then one phrase… You played as much pizz as arco , as we say in our string family vernacular. Music bursting everywhere. It was yours. You were a protagonist and a pioneer.

Later, we played a lot together, as a duo of course, in a bass quartet in tribute to Peter Kowald, but also did a show called "The grammar of grandmothers" [grandmother = surname for the double bass]: three bassists on stage at the American Center, Boulevard Raspail in Paris, where everything creative was happening – this was also the place where I went to listen to the free jazz greats and thank them all! We shared the stage with Robert Black, another explorer of the double bass.

On the stage, there were only basses laid flat, sideways… small, huge, broken, hung here and there, like a workshop, pieces of wood, bass strings in a bucket, music stands everywhere, a bass suspended like a swing... magnificent! All three of us had written a lot of music.

It came from you, Barre, the spirit of adventure, permissiveness, all these meetings and projects.

The living music, the ringing of this big cabinet that scares dogs and the taxis that reject us!

Your smile, your joy, your wisdom and mischievous eyes, many memories I keep…

With a childlike and curious mind, you were always enthusiastic and eager to share information with me about new microphones, amps, and slipcovers! We bass players are paranoid about sound, since it’s so hard to hear us. Bass players always talk shop, and you were overjoyed to show me your new carbon bass, taking it out of the hotel room into the corridor to kick it and jump on it and show me it was unbreakable, I was in tears from laughter – you always had a passion for new means of projecting a better sound. You were a complete musician, regardless of genre.

We often spoke on the phone, on the road, at hotels and during festivals. You were always the one I looked to, Barre, an example to follow. Your sound, the sound of your bass is recognizable among thousands. The sound is our identity as musicians, it's the energy we put in, the choices we make, we keep selecting, deciding, taking risks, we have to!

With an implacably accurate left hand, you made the bass a solo instrument in its own right… Others have taken over, haven’t they? We are not many...

Classical, free, jazz, who cares, I can hear your thing clearly! You remained a unique musician, ever creative and funny, talking to the audience or hiding behind the bass sometimes!

And always your kindness, reaching out to others, listening, sharing... While everything in society is based on hierarchies and domination – black and white, man and woman, serious and oral music, this style over this one – you were basically becoming the other, without hierarchy.

Making music together is loving.

Thank you Barre for everything you gave us.

We will miss you!!
JL
(translation by David Cristol)

Joëlle Léandre
Photo by Christian Pouget
 

Joëlle Léandre and Barre Phillips can be heard together on the following recordings:

  • Joëlle Léandre – Les douze sons (Nato, 1984)
  • Phillips, Léandre, Parker, Saitoh – After You Gone (Victo, 2004)
  • Barre Phillips & Joëlle Léandre – A l'improviste(Kadima, 2008)
  • 13 Miniatures for Albert Ayler (Rogue Art, 2012)
  • Sebastian Gramss – Thinking of... Stefano Scodanibbio (Wergo, 2014)






Video, live in France, 2013 (excerpt):


Upcoming Joëlle Léandre releases:

  • Duo with Andrejz Karalow – Flint on Fundacja Ensemblage (March 2025)
  • Duo with Evan Parker on Rogue Art
  • Duo with Rémy Bélanger de Beauport on Tour de Bras (LP)


Tuesday, February 11, 2025

Dan Blacksberg - The Psychic Body/Sound System (Relative Pitch, 2024)

By Nick Metzger

I remember a long while back reading a review for a blistering solo free jazz album on Keith Fullerton Whitman’s now defunct Mimaroglu Web Store (thanks for everything Keith!) and he noted that solo albums like that really hit him between the eyes during the freezing winter months and I’ve thought of that every winter since. I also tend to listen to a lot of solo music during the post-holiday cold as I’m generally not as distracted with outdoor life and am able to listen a little more closely. That said, this year I've been loving this new solo trombone release from Philadelphia's Dan Blacksberg who’s trio has been covered a couple of times here on the blog. He was in the Hasidic doom metal band Deveykus with fellow Philadelphian, guitarist Nick Millevoi , releasing their only album Pillar Without Mercy on Tzadik back in 2013. Blacksberg is described on his website as “a living master of klezmer trombone” and in addition to being a dedicated proponent, teacher, and organizer of the music he also released the first album of klezmer to feature the trombone as the lead instrument on Radiant Others, also with Millevoi. The album currently under consideration here is not a klezmer album in the slightest. The Psychic Body/Sound System is a powerful improvised statement that blends wild soundscapes and drone with gnarled extended technique and commanding free trombone flights. The poetic fictionalizations of the titles are the perfect signage along the path, one that is craggy and steep but also imbued with some remarkable vistas.

The album starts off with “We Walk Through the Petrified Gates” - a brief, low drone that feels like an initiation - setting the tone. Next is “Tale of a Survival” a heady dialogue of solo free trombone where the staccato phrasing starts to slur and is interrupted by mumbled exclamations across the track, occasionally breaking down into violent and wet blasts of sound. On “Crags of Resounding Whispers” the thwacking churn of the horn is reminiscent of the chug of a huge pumping machine. The album's arguable centerpiece (for me) is “Observing the endless screamer” , this time on a prepared trombone. No idea what the preparations are but it would seem that Blacksberg opened some sort of portal. Endearing in much the same way that Merzbow is, it might require a bit of effort for some. Blacksberg does a considerable job of bending and directing these noises to make the track a standout on the album, it’s not just pure intensity but also arrangement, variety, and nuance. “Feeding the great babbler” is a brief segue in low frequencies - a lot lower than the previous track - it’s fast-paced and bulbous and pretty easy on the ears (mindful sequencing) with a lot to offer the careful listener. “Softgrid Lament” is built of growling, multiphonic passages recorded really dryly, so much so that the gurgling inner world of his trombone is central to the piece. It seats gnarly, aggressive exclamations at the same table with slow glissandos that sound like cartoon airplanes falling out of the sky.

The direct effect of being submerged is discernible on “Liquified tides of thought”, which conversely has the reverb cranked to 11. The stuttering passages ripple like water over rocks, closing in breathy resolution. On “Infinitely shattering crystal wishes” Blacksberg plays his horn into a prepared piano. Heavy tongue thwacks and high pitched whistles disturb the pressure field, causing the strings to answer, the track becoming more intense and violent as it progresses. “Gliding over the dimensional glacier” is another brief but continuous drone piece that puts the gauze back in our ears, again the sequencing is right on as this lull resolves into the brightness of the next track “Tale of refusing futility”. On this one Blacksberg plays with a raspy, cutting tone that blasts through in a haze of atomized spittle. Then Blacksberg puts down the magic wand momentarily and delivers a passage that’s aggressive and direct. The album closes with the “We exhale the gate closed”, another brief and murky drone that works as a bookend with the opening track. This is a good one, there’s a lot of variety in both technique and style and it’s a lot of fun to listen to. It's got a quality of its own and doesn’t sound like a solo trombone album in the sense you might expect. The detail and density keep the listening active and as a result it’s 40 minutes pass all too quickly.

https://www.danblacksberg.com

Monday, February 10, 2025

Kahil El’Zabar and the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble @ Space Gallery

Kahil El’Zabar @Ueberjazz 2024
Photo by
Wanja Wiese_Art

By Gary Chapin

Question: Why would it be that an artist or art that has been widely recognized as wonderful, groove-tastic, ecstatic, and cool for fifty years “suddenly” becomes transcendent, “suddenly” becomes preternaturally compelling, “suddenly” becomes the best music you’ve heard live in years?

Is it the persistence of the vision that transports you? Has the music been gaining gravity over the past 50 years? Is it improvement? Has the artist upped their game year after year and now, in the present moment, they transcend? Or is it the quality of the audience? Has the time, space, context, trauma, and treasure of “us today” rendered the present moment into the right time? Or is it a mystical alignment of the river and the foot stepping into it? Never the same twice, but perfect for this exact moment?

These were my thoughts in the days after attending Kahil El’Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble performance at the Space Gallery in Portland, ME, on February 4, 2025.

The trio came into a sold out room and began with the “little instruments” percussion wash that the AACM has turned into a sacred ritual. The Ethnic Heritage Ensemble has celebrated its 50th year as one of the only extant ensembles from the collective’s early days (possibly one can say the Art Ensemble is still around). The audience—packed in—was ready to be embraced.

Corey Wilkes, trumpet, and Kevin Nabors, tenor, traveled the spectrum. The head of the first tune was quirky, post-boppish, and soulful with space and tricky syncopations, but the solos were barnburners, the sorts of things where outlandish blowing is occasionally accomplished by pistoning the keys/plungers using your forearm and the elbow as a fulcrum. This first tune, apparently a mission statement for the evening, ended with Zabar’s own solo which had enough kinetic energy to raise a house. Rarely has destructive energy (hitting) been used to create so extravagantly.

That said, Zabar did not spending that much time behind the kit, often coming out front to sit on the most thoroughly, skillfully, and soulfully whacked cajon I’ve ever heard, or playing a “thumb piano” (of all things) in a way that defied all expectations of what most people think of as a gift shop tchotchke. Through it all, Zabar threaded his songs and vocalizations, bringing together the blues and the choir, uniting Saturday night and Sunday morning. This was spiritual, trance-making music, joined with noise, play, and ecstasy. His wordless singing has a dreamlike quality to it, evoking joy without being required to articulate it.

The evening had half a dozen pieces. Zabar’s own “A Time for Healing” was the center of the set. The trio’s rendition of “All Blues” was the most sublime moment, with Wilkes’ harmon mute (of course) bending the room to his will. McCoy Tyner’s “Passion Dance” came through like a cyclone. Zabar’s tribute to Ornette Coleman mesmerized us, with Nabors provoking a standing O in the middle of the tune. The evening ended with a solo vocal performance from Zabar, a love standard—”my mother’s favorite”—rendered in Zabar’s unique scatted/sung/dreamscaped/onomatopoetic way. It was funny, adventurous, exciting, and remarkably touching.

Was this the best performance I’ve seen in the last few years? Maybe. At the very least, when we discovered, after the concert, that the keys had been locked in our car on an evening when the temperature began at 8 degrees and only went down—my sense of joy was in no way dampened. I after-glowed the drive home, lightly buzzing as I made my way back into the dark, snow-blanketed Maine Woods.

Sunday, February 9, 2025

Howard Riley (1943 - 2025)

 

(Photo by Dmitrij Matvejev, NoBusiness Records)

By Martin Schray

I fell in love with the music of Howard Riley rather late, actually it was with Solo in Vilnius (NoBusiness, 2010). But then I really did. In the following years, I discovered his whole body of work, his early trio and most of all his solo albums, especially Constant Change 1976 - 2016 (NoBusiness, 2016), a 5-CD box set, which is one of my favourites of the decade. Howard Riley has become my favourite pianist (except Cecil Taylor, who is a league of his own), and because I had listened to his music intensively, I was really shocked when it became known that he was seriously ill. However, Riley managed to defy the illness for a long time and even managed to adapt his playing technique. But in the end, the great British pianist lost the fight and died yesterday, February 8th, shortly before his 82nd birthday.

Howard Riley studied at the University of Wales (1961–66), where he gained a BA and MA. He then he went to Indiana University (1966–67), before he enrolled at York University (1967–70) for his PhD. Alongside his studies and teaching he always played jazz professionally, with Evan Parker in 1966 and then with his aforementioned trio (1967–76), with Barry Guy on bass and Alan Jackson, Jon Hiseman and Tony Oxley alternating on drums. They released three albums for three different labels, each showing a remarkable stylistic evolution, opening up standardized structures into the worlds of an unknown, free improvisational language, while still clearly rooted in jazz. Riley played with a number of the key musicians of the British improv scene, but his idea of freedom was different. He needed a melody or rhythmic fragment to provide a center of gravity.

Apart from that, the feature which characterizes Riley’s music best is a tendency to reduction. His first solo album, Singleness, “demonstrated his mastery of historical techniques, attuned, through Monk, to the language of bebop as well as to the contemporary forms of Xenakis and Penderecki“, as Trevor Barre puts it in Beyond Jazz - Plink, Plonk & Scratch; The Golden Age of Free Music in London 1966 -1972. Especially Xenakis has been a constant influence to his music which Riley has always seen as an evolutionary process. In the liner notes to Facets (Impetus, 1981) he mentioned that he had always tried to bring both sides together: the useful ideas and intellectual aspects of the European musical environment and the intensity and spontaneity which is displayed by the American jazz tradition. Riley’s work ricocheted between drama, space, rumbling trills, rhythmic surprises and a sparing lyricism. Hardly anyone was able to develop a theme through constant modulations, harmony shifts and subtle dynamics like him, his idiosyncrasies always remaining accessible.

During a recording session, he realized that he couldn't play anymore and went to see a doctor, who diagnosed Parkinson’s disease. Riley had to stop playing for some time, and luckily he recovered with the help of medication. However, he had to revise his technique. At that age this was a tremendous and hard effort and it was surprising how well it worked, for example on the late recordings for Constant Change 1976 - 2016. As another result Riley approached his later solo performances “with or without repertoire“, playing the great standards, mainly Monk and Ellington. He was back where he started from.

Howard Riley has always been something like an unsung hero in the improvised music scene, but he released very recommendable albums. Flight (Turtle Records, 1971) and Synopsis (Incus, 1974), both with the above-mentioned trio, are landmarks of British free jazz. Duality (View Records, 1982) and For Four On Two Two (Affinity, 1984) are early masterpieces of his solo excursions. His piano duo with Keith Tippett must also be mentioned here, for example The Bern Concert (FMR, 1994). A personal favourite of mine is Improvisation Is Forever Now (Emanem, 1978/2002) with Barry Guy and Phil Wachsmann. From his late period all albums on the NoBusiness label are great, Solo in Vilnius and Constant Change 1976 - 2016 are essential. By releasing Riley’s late works regularly, the Lithuanians have helped this wonderful music to see the light of day.

It was also NoBusiness’s Danas Mikailionis who informed us that Howard Riley passed away at his care home in Beckenham, South London. Unfortunately, Parkinson’s Disease had really taken its toll severely with him over the last few years. The musical universe has lost a bright star, a kind man and a great personality. It is not only me who will miss Howard Riley a lot.

Watch Howard Riley play solo here:

 

FIRE! Work Song For a Scattered Past

Appearing on Friday this past week, a video by Samot Nosslin/Underhypnos was released for the song "Work Song For a Scattered Past" by FIRE! Watch as the trio of Mats Gustafsson (sax), Johan Berthling (bass) and Andreas Werlin (drums) apply their lugubrious magic to devastating effect.

FIRE! and it's bigger sibling FIRE! Orchestra and their influences have graced the pages of the Free Jazz Blog quite a few times over the years:

- Paul Acquaro

Saturday, February 8, 2025

Butterfly Mushrooms and a Hungry Ghost

By Ken Blanchard 

Peter Brötzmann/Paal Nilssen-Love- Butterfly Mushroom (Trost Records 2024)  

Somehow I missed the earlier review of Butterfly Mushroom by Eyal Hareuveni at this venue. Having written it, I went ahead and sent it in. Apologies to Eyal.

There are no surprises here for anyone who has listened to more than the first few minutes of almost any Brötzmann recording. Well, maybe one, especially if you enjoy his trios and duets as much as I do. I find the synergetic pacing of those recordings to be woven together as seamlessly as if a four or six handed demigod were playing it all at once. Butterfly Mushroom gives me the feeling that the two musicians are playing independently, isolated in space and time; and yet somehow the result is perfect, dynamic, joinery, something like body and soul in Cartesian theory. As I hear most free jazz, it is the role of percussion to create the aural space within which the other instruments flicker in and out of being. On this recording I often seemed to hear this reversed. The horns make a space within which a range of collisions occur.

That out of my system, most of the pieces present the signature Brötzmann high-frequency fields of sound. On the first cut, “Boot licking, Boots kickin,” Brötzmann’s guttural buzz is produced as he drills into one vein of ore after another. I was reminded near the end of this cut of two cruise ships passing out of port and playing signature tunes with their Godzilla-sized horns. On “Ride the Bar,” the horn lines get smeary, as a pen pressed too hard into parchment, and then gives way to streams of humming punctuated on both ends by high squeals. Nilssen-Love squeezes out a wide and dense ribbon with sparkle and humor. “Frozen nose, Melting Toes” opens with jungle drums at an imaginary distance. The horn sings a sad, breathy lament and the drums, for once, go quiet. When they come back in, the percussive vibe has shifted to East Asia. The romance does survive the next two cuts. However, as the horn goes feral, we still get traces of Zen temple strikers.

Butterfly Mushroom was recorded in Wuppertal, Germany, in 2015. Around that same time, I missed a chance to hear Brötzmann live in Chicago. What a mistake. If you want to hear two extraordinary artists who can evoke pretty much any human experience out of ear and memory, check this one out. 


Hungry Ghosts - Segaki (Nakama Records, 2024)

Hungry Ghosts is described on the Bandcamp page as “Norwegian-Malaysian trio.” Try finding that restaurant in Boise. The trio consists of Yong Yandsen on tenor sax, Christian Meaas Svendsen on double bass, voice, and shakuhachi, and, tying these two recordings together, Paal Nilssen-Love on percussion. You can find a review of their first album by our own Taylor McDowell here.

The term hungry ghost comes directly from Buddhist mythology. The idea is that the ravenous, unsatiated appetites of human beings live on after death. It is less clear whether the ghost is the person herself or just a particularly toxic fragment from that bundle of passions we call a person. I believe this idea appears also in Navaho mythology. A large bit of funerary ritual is designed to detoxify these spirits. The album title refers to such rituals. The title and cover (I learn from the Bandcamp page) are from The Scroll of Hungry Ghosts.

The titles of the four cuts suggest that hungry ghosts have bizarre cravings. “In search of filth like vomit and feces to eat” begins with a thunderous, chaotic dialogue between the saxophone and drums. If Svendsen is there, it was hard for me to tell. A little over three minutes in this intense volume of sound collapses into a moment of silence, into which Yandsen pours his solo. He replicates the dialogue by alternating between higher and lower whimpering, descending to a barely audible crackle. About a third of the way through we get a more explicitly Buddhist vibe. Bells ring and echo. The drums come in and weave a marvelously textured carpet of clicks and plunging knocks. The last section of the piece brings back the jungle drum/soundtrack passion similar to that noted on the previous recording. All the energy rushes back in and we return to the intensity of the opening.

If your ghost is hungry for a marriage of bowed base and sax, you get it on the second cut “Small bits of pus and blood.” The small bits make enough room for one another here that we can appreciate all three virtuosos, but it is the bass that steals the show. Svendsen maintains the dominate role at the beginning of the longest and best cut on the album. “Mountain valley bowls full of grime” reminds me of a sputtering engine more than mountains or bowls. There is more narrative here, but it never leaves the passion for texture that marks free jazz. This one was so good that I had to carry my JBL speaker into my stairwell, which has the best acoustics in my home.

Both of these recordings are brilliant. If you had to choose one, go for Segaki. It’s only Jan 24 as I write this, but if this isn’t the best thing I hear all year… it’s going to be a wonderful 12 months for free jazz.