Three with Daniel Thompson

By Stuart Broomer

British Guitarist Daniel Thompson works in a direct line from Derek Bailey and John Russell, somehow mediating the spikiness of the former and the warmth of the latter in a richly distinctive personal art, simultaneously touching traditions that stretch from historical acoustic archtop artistry (e.g., Eddie Lang, George Van Eps, et al.) to engaging an instrument of multiple voices from strummed and picked and plucked to massaged and scraped strings, tapped-upon bodies and traditional chordal vocabularies surrendering to dense clusters, sometimes rich in dissonant harmonics. In his work, Thompson embraces both the tradition and the instrument as invitation to random material speculation, the body as drum, the string as longitudinal invitation to scratch, tuning keys as material assists, and all the other things about the instrument that arise upon material inspection beyond any initial impression. His label Empty Birdcage Records is rich in varied materials, though here he turns up on other labels as well.

Daniel Thompson - Violet (Empty Birdcage Records, 2025)

To enter the solo CD Violet is to immediately find oneself in a transcendent state, one in which time is simultaneously suspended and insistent, a musical language of startling intimacy, attenuated gestures and under-voiced reflections. Tracks are simply numbered from “Improvisation One” to “Improvisation Five”; their lengths vary from relative brevity, 4’31” for “Three”, to the near epic “Four” at 13’ 26”. “One” begins as a series of evenly strummed dissonant clusters eventually following a series of distinct evolutions. “No. 2” shadows a ground between intimacy and invisibility, sparse gestures on a sea of silence, each new shape as immediate as thought, each minute gesture a kind of micro-composition, bright, isolated harmonics poised against strummed dissonances, sometimes slowing, micro-gestures laid further apart amid a presence that suggests the guitar might be breathing. There’s an exalted level of attention paid to series of micro-gestures – a buzz, a harmonic, paired notes, a 10-minute reverie stretching toward its own disappearance. It’s followed by “No. 3”’s (relatively) loud, fast, chaotic and insistent pace, characterized by sudden shifts in density. “Four” is a master class in diverse approaches shaped into a single work, including an extended passage of high-speed scratched tones. “Five” begins as perfect reverie, with a couple of expansive high-speed bursts, before it returns to a delicate placidity and an ultimate embrace of silence. Like every work here, its evolution feels as natural as breathing. The numbering system is abandoned for the final title track: “Violet” is an eight second burst of insistence that suggests a looped electric guitar.

John Edwards/Daniel Thompson - Where the Butterflies Go (Earshots Recordings, 2025)

This string duo recording chooses the most traditional of string compositions as its model, a Four Seasons with its tracks named from “Summer” to “Autumn” to “Winter” to end speculatively and positively with a brief “Spring” of thrumming to suggest new and future life. Like the other life here, it’s the sense of the closely shared space that gives it its special character.

That opening “Summer” is a genuine hive of sound, brooking scant distinction for its opening minutes, densely plucked acoustic guitar and plucked or bowed bass presenting as a single instrument, the bass replicating the pitches of the lower four strings of the guitar and dropping them an octave, even picking, plucking and spiccato bowing acting as a singular continuum. When the notion of individuation asserts itself, what had been singular simply asserts itself as dialogue, retaining a strong sense of cooperation.

At nearly 21 minutes playing time, “Autumn” represents roughly half the year. It’s a dense dialogue consisting of arco bass and scraped/ wiped high-pitched guitar (they can still overlap in frequency and density), the delicate maelstrom reducing to silence only to gradually rise again with a developing hive of potential. Instruments can usually be distinguished, but that almost seems beside the point of this exalted, telepathic improvising. In the concluding moments, the instruments grow increasingly distinct, the bass insistently bowed, the guitar chorded tunefully, suggesting another evolution is imminent.

“Winter” is a whimper and a scrape, a jangle of disconnected elements slipping toward meaning, a haunted echo of a prepared instrument suddenly given to dizzying chording and lightening-fast picking, some body drumming and the storm is unleashed with the liveliest and least comforting season demanding and overwhelming attention before breaking into an almost pointillist duo of eliding bass tones and rapid guitar strumming, then slipping into a zone of microscopically detailed, evanescent figures, all together grinding toward life’s refresher course called “Spring”.

Tom Jackson/ Daniel Thompson - Dark Kitchen (Confront Recordings 2025)

Dedicated to Derek Bailey and Tony Coe, this is another series of duo free improvisations, a format in which Thompson excels and in which his fitting partners, here the clarinetist Tom Jackson whose recordings encompass work with a range of improvisers, are similarly versed in cooperative creation, in an intensive attention to detail, to finding mystery, to unravelling it and to refolding it into another mystery. The longest work here is the functionally titled “Improvisation One”, a 20-minute piece in which Jackson presents as polyvocal, virtuosic and injured songbird, rapid-fire runs sometimes stretching toward dissolution, before some pastoral re-launch of bell-toned and dissonant guitar harmonics gradually restores the clarinet.

Three shorter tracks are more concentrated, less free ranging. “Improvisation Two” begins with a densely expressionistic clarinet solo, eventually matched by a subtly complex guitar accompaniment that becomes an increasingly significant subtext to Jackson’s compounding bird calls. “Three”, highlighting the duo’s interactive facility, is a high-speed, up and down, back and forth dialogue; “Four” foregrounds Jackson’s lyricism while Thompson creates a quietly unpredictable and abstract soundscape, each gradually becoming more actively conversational.

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Ivo Perelman with Marc Ribot, Elliot Sharp and Joe Morris - Trifecta (Mahakala, 2026)

By Sammy Stein

Ivo Perelman has teamed up not with one, or two, but three guitarists on Trifecta. Guitarists Marc Ribot (Disc One), Elliott Sharp (Disc Two), and Joe Morris (Disc Three) pair with Perelman in a release that showcases the guitar as an instrument and the individual playing styles of each musician.

Ivo says of the recordings, “I was a guitar player ever since I was a young boy. I studied for many years, but the reason I quit was that I couldn't find a personal, differentiated, unique voice. The guitar is a difficult instrument for that purpose. It doesn't lend itself, like the saxophone, for instance, to a different way of responding to each player. With woodwind instruments, factors like embouchure, mouthpiece, lung size, and height immediately affect the sound; they are flexible and responsive to sound imagination. Whatever you think comes out, you make the sound.

The guitar, with its geometric fingerboard, can lead musicians to merely recreate patterns. Therefore, I deeply admire the musicians featured in Trifecta because I know how individual their voices are on an instrument that is otherwise often oblivious to individuality.

Because they are all so different from each other, our interaction was very different. Although it is the same instrument, each project sounds unique. It made sense to me to group them in a CD box format to offer the listener a panoramic view of contemporary guitar as played by three of its major voices.”

While one might argue with Ivo (and who does?) about the guitar being oblivious to individuality (think Sonny Sharrock, as an example), it is definitely true that each of the three guitarists featured plays in a distinctive style.

Disc One – Marc Ribot and Ivo Perelman. Track one is a gentle preamble with both players offering subtle, contrasting phrases, passing discussive musical musings back and forth. There is a sense of familiarity in the pre-emptive chord inserts of Ribot and the declarations of intent in the sax lines. Perelman is restrained and, at times, takes the tenor sax on a journey of screeches and wails, but Ribot grounds the track, maintaining the gentle pace and delicate chord placements. The track is over twelve minutes in length, during which Ribot introduces rhythm changes and punchy percussive elements, to which Perelman intuitively responds. In turn, Perelman takes the music into realms of contrapuntal changes, and Ribot reacts. Track two sees Perelman taking wild walks with airs and melodies, which Ribot echoes at times and develops at others. The final part of the track is a beautiful exchange of delicacies between the two musicians, which they, in turn, try out, and either discard or savour and develop. Track three is intense, lively, with fiery salvos passing between the musicians like hot cakes. Perelman introduces some gorgeous lower register lines in the second half, over which Ribot’s strings writhe like a cobra, creating dense, colourful phrases. Somehow, by the time the track ends, it is softer, the lines malleable, and flowing. Track four opens with a Celtic-sounding harmony which both players introduce before each diverges on a line of their own, Perelman’s tenor taking a more melodic tone, while Ribot inserts delicate chords and lines. Perelman rises into the top register, soaring and dipping back to pipping lower notes. Track five is bonkers – wholesale improvisation, with Ribot and Perelman vying for who can outwit whom. Yet there are still the intuitive reactions and challenges that make the track a standout example of communicative playing. Ribot’s mastery of styles is apparent, as he weaves seamlessly between free improvisation and snippets of different playing styles. Between them, Perelman and Ribot even go briefly into swing mode, though not for more than a few bars. Perelman’s delectation for taking a style and introducing free playing into it comes to the fore, and Ribot seems to delight in taking him up on his offer and following.

Disc Two – Elliott Sharp and Ivo Perelman. Track one is explorative, tentative almost, with Perlman initially taking the long melodic line and Sharp inserting quick, sharp chords, alongside some gentler extended ones, until the track unravels itself with both musicians diverging and coming together in a series of intricate phrases. Track two finds Perlman meandering along melodic inventions, into which eventually Sharp inserts delicate, then increasingly noisesome lines. There is a beautiful section where the melody is reversed with Sharp playing deep, resonant lines, over which Perelman flies, finding nuanced tones in the gaps of the music as only he can. Track three is delicate, each musician introducing lines of sound like threads, which weave themselves around each other to create a sonic tapestry of colourful sound waves. Track four is busy, buzzy, electronically enhanced, and atmospheric, while track five is just as atmospheric but with more guitar ‘twangs’ and warps, with Perelman retreating a little to allow the guitar to come to the fore in all its weirdness in the hands of Sharp. Sharp finds tones and nuances in the guitar with detuned strings and tightened chords that showcase the range of his instrument. Track six starts as if it is going to go into a blues number, but the two musicians quickly put a stop to that notion with a glorious development of rhythm changes and improvised lines. Sharp makes impressive use of the percussive elements of the guitar and its dexterity as an instrument. On track seven, this is demonstrated, alongside chords and singular lines that mesh and meld with the sax of Perelman intuitively.

Disc Three - Joe Morris and Ivo Perelman. On track one, the difference in the style of Morris compared to Sharp and Ribot is apparent; his guitar’s melodic voice is heard from the start. Track two is a conversation between guitar and saxophone with both musicians playing without pause, yet they intuitively diminish and crescendo in their dialogue, as each listen and responds. On track three, Morris’s guitar is busy, the notes intricately placed, and he finds ways to fill any gaps, however small, that Perelman leaves. Perelman, meanwhile, rises and falls, riffs, and meanders along musical pathways his brain creates, and his fingers bring into reality. On this track, the intuition of both musicians is palpable. Track four is a delightful back and forth between the instruments, and Morris’s responses to Perelman’s pips and riffles create the texture of this track.

Across the CDs, Perelman remains intuitive and perceptive as ever, but also adaptive, as his instincts and reactions to the guitarists vary. He is the constant in these recordings, yet there remains the steadfast dedication to musical improvisation and response to fellow musicians that Perelman has developed so well. Each guitarist brings their style and interpretation of Perelman’s unique musicality and playing characteristics.

Three individualist guitar players, paired with one of the most individual saxophone players, is, in theory, something to cherish and enjoy. In reality, it does not disappoint.

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Sunday Video - Earscratcher

We've been on a bit of a Dave Rempis roll lately ... Brian reviewed Dial Up from Rempis, Jason Adasiewicz and Chris Corsano in January, Charlie just reviewed Orbital, featuring the saxophonist with Frank Rosaly, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten plus Marta Warelis, and reader Klaus Kitzinger shared a recent picture, which is currently in our homepage rotation, of Earscracther's show at in Munich. So why not a video too? Special thanks to Jazz Explorer, we don't know who you are but your videos from the Artacts Festival in Tirol are much appreciated, thank you!

    

EARSCRATCHER - Artacts 2026, Alte Gerberei, St. Johann in Tyrol, Austria, 2026-03-08 

Dave Rempis - saxophones 

Elisabeth Harnik - piano 

Fred Lonberg-Holm - cello 

Tim Daisy - drums


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6KlJT1fkc8

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Mark Turner - Patternmaster (ECM, 2026)

By Charlie Watkins

Reviewing Patternmaster for the Free Jazz Collective is an interesting task. Although Mark Turner’s quartet follows the free jazz tradition of having no instrument playing chords, Joe Martin’s bass playing and the horn players’ improvisations provide more than enough harmonic information to keep us firmly grounded in ‘mainstream’ jazz. The compositions too, though inventive, are hardly avant-garde. But at the same time, this album has a strong sense of freedom that makes it very appropriate to review here.

Turner describes the connection between his bandmates as ‘psycho-spiritual’, a sense of shared, mystical intuition that allows them to think as one mind. On a handful of occasions I’ve experienced this connection in my performances, and can attest that there is no feeling more liberating: freedom from the weight of decision-making into the realm of pure intuition. This is the sense in which Turner’s band should be considered ‘free’ jazz. It’s also where the title comes from: the Patternmaster is the master telepath in Octavia Butler’s novel of the same name. Surely this title indicates Turner’s desire for that Holy Grail of music: pure intuition, pure telepathy.

Not that Turner sets himself an easy task. The knotty compositions, irregular time signatures and lack of chordal accompaniment would drive a lesser musician to insanity simply trying to follow the changes. Not for these musicians: they don’t miss a beat, somehow seeming to float straight through the hurdles, and in the process their individual voices shine through. Never once does it feel like they are simply going through the motions or playing the changes, they are opening up new dimensions of the music even as they remain perfectly within the complex structures.

Like most of Turner’s output, the album remains within a relatively modest space: they are not interested in the extremes, they are interested in purity. So on this record you won’t find ‘explosive’ solos, but rather the absolute precision that can only come through years of honing a craft. Admittedly, this will not be to everyone’s tastes; and I’m not sure how wide the appeal of this album will be for audiences of this site.

The compositions themselves are wonderful. I especially enjoyed the playfulness of It Very Well May Be, which bounces with energy whilst it drags the metre forward and backwards, and for me was easily the standout track of the album. It reminded me of the music of Dewey Redman’s quartet Old and New Dreams, which of course is the same instrumentation (and who also released two of their albums on ECM). Some of the other tracks really swing – Turner’s bounces in with a great energy on Trece Ocho – and there certainly is a lot of variety in the tunes offered, although perhaps some shorter compositions might have helped the album to move with a little more momentum.

As with much of Turner’s oeuvre, I expect the reception to this album will be mixed. There were points I enjoyed, and the ensemble’s tight connection is certainly to be praised. But I found it a little lacking in soul for my tastes, a little too formulaic and tightly controlled. Other reviews online seem to be more positive, so I expect this will be an opinion splitter and I can only suggest you try it for yourselves!

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

By Gary Chapin

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

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

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

Best of 2026 so far.

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

By Sammy Stein

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

By Brian Earley

Disc Two

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

Read part 1.

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

By Brian Earley

Disc One

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Read part two.

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Peter Evans Being & Becoming - Live At Bimhuis

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

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


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

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

By Ferruccio Martinotti

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

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

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

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

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