Irène Schweizer and Hamid Drake – Celebration (Intakt, 2021) ****

By Nick Ostrum

If you have heard Irène Schweizer’s duos with drummers (including many of the free jazz luminaries of the last forty years, Han Bennink, Andrew Cyrille, Günter Sommer, Pierre Favre, Louis Moholo-Moholo and, more recently, Joey Baron), you likely know what you are in for, even if the percussion is always a world in itself.

Schweizer, of course, is a singular pianist. Her love of melody (apparently, many borrowed from South Africa, in this case) is matched only by her ability to detour into a free territory that combines the discipline of the classically trained with the roots, rhythms, and chops of the keenest practitioners of jazz in its myriad forms. Just listen to the grooving 'Good Life', the Vince Guaraldi-styled 'Blues for Crelier', and the infectious 'Song for Johnny – In Memory of Johnny Dyani' for examples of her rootedness. Then, there is also the potentially more obvious free improv influence, evidenced in most of the pieces included on Celebration, that stretches back a half-century to Schweizer’s days at the forefront of free playing in Europe. Indeed, her performance on Celebration, capturing her and Hamid Drake live at the 40th Festival for Free and Improvised Music in Nickelsdorf, Austria in 2019, that Schweizer, approaching 80 years of age, has still got it, and in abundance, at that.

Drake, a decade-and-a-half younger, requires about as much introduction as Schweizer. And Drake does his thing as well as Schweizer does. Both musicians play impeccably, ride the improvisational waves convincingly and zig-zag beyond the usual script, but rarely into spaces beyond the wide zones they have trodden before. That invites, of course, one of the big questions with improvised music. To what extent are improvisors expected to continually push stylistic boundaries and to what extent should they dedicate themselves to perfect their own style at the expense of such free-wheeling exploration? Schweizer and Drake strike a balance that leans toward the latter, here, with notable exceptions such as 'Stringfever'. At the risk of sounding trite, Schweizer and Drake communicate immaculately and, in the process, sound as much like themselves as I have heard them. And that is part of what makes this album so delicious. This is two master musicians from different scenes and generations, who clearly appreciate each other’s journeys and strengths, playing some damn fine music.

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Ingrid Schmoliner & Hamid Drake – Awon Ona (Klanggalerie, 2021) ****½

By Stef Gijssels

Throughout this album, the listener is taken from one suprise to the next. The music is an unreal mix of structural and compositional cleverness, improvisational inventiveness and stylistic collision and harmony. 

You cannot possibly find two more different musicians finding a common voice. Austrian pianist and composer Ingrid Schmoliner comes from a classical avant-garde background, with experience in free improvisation. Chicagoan Hamid Drake is one of the most versatile jazz drummers around, the king of polyrhythms and with an encyclopedic knowledge of rhythmic patterns from around the world. 

The combination is extraordinary in both the literal and metaphorical sense of the word. This is not world music, because the genres do not blend into some in-between-state, but keep their strength and character while being in full harmony. Schmoliner and Drake find themselves on various levels: the rhythmic complexities, the shamanistic singing, even if the styles are again totally different, their openness to new forms and the universal language of music, the solemn freshness and the natural organic flow of their sounds. 

Schmoliner's style on her prepared piano is all her own: rich, intense, harmonic, with lots of repetitive and rhythmic elements, dramatic at times, cinematic at others, and she has the incredible power to be controlled and full of musical abanon at the same time. Harmonically, her playing remains deeply rooted in the classical idiom, not in jazz. She is also a trained singer, specialised also in overtone singing and yodeling.

The album tracks and the title all come from the Yoruba language from Nigeria, at least from what I could deduct from some internet searches (Keke (wheel), Igbi (wave), Eeru (ash), Afefe (air), San (stream), Ina (fire), Joidi (?), Emi (me), Aago (time), E Dupe (thank you), Gbogbo Ibi (everywhere). The album's title could mean "ways", an apt description of the different roads in music can all lead to the same place. 

"Emi" is an amazing 13-minute mesmerising piece built around repetitive phrases and with a steady rhythm, that first flows like rapids, relentlessly, wild and powerful, allowing Drake to show is artistic mastery of adding even more complex rhythms to the endless stream of notes and harmonies that gush from the piano, and even later in the piece, when the speed diminishes, she produces a superfast repetitive playful phrase with her right hand, and Drake is with her, despite the change, despite the sudden shift in mood. 

On "Joidi", Schmolinger's singing brings an update from "Kumts" on "Watussi" from 2013, an incantation that demonstrates her vocal skills and spiritual force. 

"Aago" is built around sustained deep tones, possibly the result of strings being stroked inside the piano, with Schmoliner singing. Drake emphasises the eery feeling and sense of anticipation. The darkness of the percussion and the single repeated piano note contrast with her bright singing and beautiful melancholy tone. 

"E Dupe" starts with some incredibly rich drumming by Drake, inviting Schmoliner in with her own percussive repetitive fireworks, and evolving into Drake's Arabic spiritual chanting, without any of the intensity of the piano or drums losing any of its power. 

I will not review all improvisations, but the combination of contrasts and alignment, its bifurcation and convergence is omnipresent, of the modern with the ancient, the particular with the universal, the boundary-breaking with the traditional, all blending into this wonderful co-creation of relatively unique and often spectacular music. 

The first CD was recorded in "Live At Artacts" festival in Austria on March 6, 2020, the second CD at the Jazz Cerkno Festival in Slovenia on September 19, 2020. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

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John Blum and Jackson Krall - Duplexity (Relative Pitch, 2020) ****

By Paul Acquaro

When I first put on the drum and piano duo of John Blum and Jackson Krall, I felt a familiar sensation. It was that same, immediate and visceral reaction that I felt the day I stuck Cecil Taylor's Conquistador into my car's CD player, driving away from Jack's Music Shoppe in Red Bank, NJ, where I had just bought a used copy of it, oh so many years ago. It was a shot of adrenalin mixed with the warm satisfaction of developing an (instantly) acquired taste. Weird, but not unattractive, unusual and pulsating music delivered with force and a sixth sense of what fits where.

Blum's bona fides are bountiful: he's played with a international roster of the avant-garde elite and studied with the likes of Taylor, Borah Bergman, Milford Graves, and Bill Dixon, so making this comparison actually does not seem so outlandish. His partner here, Jackson Krall, also has a connection with Taylor, as he played with him in the pianist's later career, and brings sensitivity and intensity to this duo date.

The two tracks that make up Duplexity are plentiful in intuitive choices and decisiveness. One never feels like there is a lull in ideas or a browse through aisles of inspiration, 'Blood and Bone' starts things off fast with a crash of chords and high-energy snare roll. After this, the speed and certainty at which the duo goes at it is certainly the result of the thirty of years of experience they have playing live together. Krall plays with the density of his drum work, sometimes busier than others, but always adding something. The second track 'Wind and Wing' may even be more intense than the first. Here, after a crisp explosion of arpeggios from Blum, Krall ups the intensity with a shower of percussive sparks. The ensuing track then actually seems to feel a bit lighter, but it never looses its drive. 

The two's approach, a duality of interlocking complexity, converges effortlessly in the uniquely captivating Duplexity. 

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Raymond Strid & Sten Sandell - Winter Then Spring (Found You, 2018) ****

By Stef

Swedish pianist Sten Sandell and drummer Raymond Strid are what we could call the free improv backbone of Swedish music. If many of the other Swedish musicians - Gustafsson, Küchen, Broo, Ljunkvist, Wiik, Berthling - lean more towards jazz, Strid and Sandell are easier to place in the British 'tradition' developed by Evan Parker and John Butcher, two musicians with whom they performed in various line-ups.

Despite their frequent collaborations (seven albums with Mats Gustaffson in the trio "Gush"), they produced only one album together in 1983, as yet unreleased. That by itself makes this album memorable.

As you can expect from both artists' track record, the result is great: fourty minutes of freedom results in the unexpected, carefully built up, with finesse and subtlety, creating a tapestry of a variety of sounds that gently meet and flee again. They explore the sounds of their instruments, letting them resonate and echo and fade. There is no hurry, no extravert excitedness, apart from the intense concentration of listening and creating. They take you into realms of deep meditation over inventive novelty to playful moments (especially in the title piece), but whatever the mood, the music has an authenticity and freshness that is riveting, possibly the result of an attitude of innocence and free-mindedness which relinquishes all possible concepts and preconceptions.

The result is a gentle, creative and strongly resonating album.

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Cecil Taylor: Corona / Conversations with Tony Oxley

Cecil Taylor & Sunny Murray – Corona (FMP/Destination Out), 2018) ****

By Martin Schray

When Cecil Taylor shifted his musical focus to Europe in the late 1980s, one reason was to look for new drummers. For his month-long stay in Berlin in 1988, Taylor played duos with Han Bennink, Günter “Baby“ Sommer, Louis Moholo, Paul Lovens and Tony Oxley, a varied collection of percussionists, and with the exception of Moholo, very different to Taylor’s former drummers, Sunny Murray and Andrew Cyrille. Prior to this concert at the Total Music Meeting in Berlin in November 1996, Taylor had only played with Murray on a handful of occasions since 1964, most recently as part of Taylor’s trio in May that year, and this was to be their last performance together.

Taylor and Murray first met in a West Village coffee-house in the early 1960s. Both had the reputation of being musical mavericks. Taylor had already freed himself from harmonic restraints and Murray had been developing an open-ended drumming concept, a revolutionary approach to rhythm at that time. With him the drum kit started to be a collection of instruments, each having a different sound function. Murray’s aim was to free the soloist completely from the restriction of time and to this end he set up an unending hailstorm of percussion relying heavily on continuous ringing stick work on the edge of the cymbals, an irregular staccato barrage on the snare, spasmodic bass drum punctuations and constant, but not metronomic, use of the hi-hat, as Val Wilmer has noted in As Serious As Your Life. Murray was shifting pulses rather than specific rhythms. The effect was that he created a netting behind Taylor’s piano, enabling him to move wherever he wanted. Murray stated that his rhythmical role with Taylor accelerated the increasing comprehensibility of the pianist’s music, and he played with him in the years during which it reached maturity.

On Corona you can feel this connection again. The album is divided into three sectors, in the center there’s an almost 50-minute piece by Taylor on piano and voice and Murray on drums. “Sector 1“ and “Sector 3“ serve as initiation and coda (something Taylor was especially fond of at that time) with the help of the voices of Dominic Duval, Tristan Honsinger, Jeff Hoyer, Chris Jonas, Jackson Krall, Elliott Levin, Chris Matthay, and Harri Sjöström, based on Taylor’s enigmatic poetry. The whole performance is thus given a sort of ritualistic character. As to the central piece, the European influence on Taylor‘s playing is obvious. In general, the piece gets its charm from the clash of this “new“ Taylor with Murray’s traditional free jazz drumming. Taylor isn’t interested in finding some sort of synthesis here, but rather in sifting out conceptual and structural parallels. At the beginning he concentrates on staccato runs in the lower registers, like a predator circling his prey. Murray throws in a lot of his characteristic cymbal and snare work, the bass drum is restricted to abrupt interjections, leaving a lot of open space for the piano. Yet this is just a prelude for the second part, in which Taylor pulls out all the stops: lickety-split runs, highly energetic playing, the acceleration and retardation compressing and stretching time. Murray responds with a much greater focus on toms, bass drum and snare, with a more compelling drive. Both musicians create strong tension and motion, by giving the individual lines a certain independence and direction. The last part of the piece is like a trial of strength between the drums and the piano, with Murray increasing volume and stamina (which can be heard between the 28- and 33-minute-mark). Both combine, in the words of Ekkehard Jost: “…. the parameters of time, intensity and pitch, thereby creating a new musical quality, energy” (an aspect Colin also mentioned in yesterday’s review). Here energy is created by a constant change of the pulse, explosive outbursts, the shifting of accents, alternation between crescendos and decrescendos, and the intensification of tempos and volume. All in all, it’s a fascinating performance referencing Taylor’s and Murray’s roots but seeing them from a new perspective.

Listen to Corona on Bandcamp:

Cecil Taylor – Conversations with Tony Oxley (Jazzwerkstatt, 2018) ****½

Still, the more convincing of these two new releases is the concert with Tony Oxley. Taylor said that Oxley‘s playing excited him like no drummer since Sunny Murray, perhaps even more so. His shift to a more European sound first became evident in his choice of Oxley as his drummer for the Feel Trio. In the late 80s and early 90s he became Taylor’s preferred drummer and - after a break - this continued until his death. They performed in Taylor’s last official recording Ailanthus / Altissima: Bilateral Dimensions Of 2 Root Songs , and when he toured Europe, it was often with Oxley as a duo (I saw them twice, in Moers in 2008 and in Neuburg/Donau in 2011). This album was recorded at the Chamber Music Hall of the Berlin Philharmonic in February, 2008.

Taylor was attracted to Oxley’s playing because of his unique sound, centered on a selection of different cymbals. His more fine-grained approach combined with Taylor’s supersonic technique resembles a musical shower of shooting stars. Oxley uses a highly original drum set consisting of regular (but higher pitched) drums and cymbals to create “intricate soundscapes” giving the music more of a vertical than horizontal sound. Taylor’s choice of Oxley also tells us much about Taylor’s musical philosophy since 1988. Oxley’s aesthetic is based more on modernist classical timbres than Sunny Murray’s, whose style is - in spite of his free approach - still rooted in a jazz tradition. Oxley’s background puts him closer to the percussive works of Edgar Varèse, particularly with his complex and imaginative micro-divisions. Taylor’s playing has almost always had a strict on-the-spot, definite, forward-looking phrasing, and by choosing Oxley he became the connection between modern jazz/blues and European classical traditions.

All this can be heard on Conversations with Tony Oxley. Again, Taylor uses small riffs which he reconstructs and expands, processed in his runs and shifting them to different registers. In the second part of the piece there are many staccato chords, again the basis for the development of certain riffs, but now more aggressive, and as they escalate the typical clusters come into play. Taylor needs some time before he reaches full intensity but as soon as he’s there he’s able to keep the improvisation at an incredible level. Yet there’s also a softness, a more romantic side to his playing that became more pronounced since playing with Oxley, especially towards the end of his life. On this album Oxley foils Taylor’s runs and staccato chords with short drum rolls, but when it comes to dynamics he follows the pianist’s guidelines. Oxley dances around Taylor’s clusters tenderly and puts them even more to the center, cutting through them at once. Especially in the more intense parts of the piece, Oxley uses his whole lower array of plastic, woodblocks, mutant cowbells, little bongos, the snare drum and the hi-pitched toms, creating a metallic mist and symphony of crispy clicking, a poetic and subtle means of communication. As to volume, Oxley is a more subdued drummer when he plays with Taylor (unlike Murray), but his timing is excellent, knowing when to set priorities without pushing himself to the fore. In this performance as elsewhere they are complimentary, which is why their cooperation worked over so many years. Their music is about the exchange of cultural experiences and the sensitivity of sound – different musical languages, but mutually inspiring. Oxley often anticipates what Taylor plans (particularly as to dynamics) and is able to react immediately. Kaja Draksler has noted that Taylor’s “sensibility in terms of dynamics is an important aspect of his playing. By using its extremes within a split second, he is creating rhythmic illusions and simultaneously unfolding a vast color palette”. No other drummer except Tony Oxley was able to match that range in such a sympathetic way.

The album is available through Instantjazz.com.

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Irène Schweizer & Joey Baron - Live! (Intakt Records, 2017) ****

By Eric McDowell

Most musicians hope for applause at the end of a performance; far fewer expect it before the concert begins. But when Irène Schweizer and Joey Baron took the stage for their set at the 2015 Unerhört-Festival in Zürich, the audience began to clap—an expression of well-deserved anticipation for the accomplished duo. Whether buoyed by the warm reception or already raring to go (I suspect the latter), Schweizer and Barron don’t fail to make the most of the audience’s excitement, offering up a 50-minute show so energetic, dynamic, and fun that Live!—exclamation point included—seems the only appropriate title. 

The set opens with “Free for All,” Schweizer clearing the air with a single percussive report before the duo begins corralling fragmentary ideas toward a cohesive if off-kilter swing. Immediately in evidence in these first few minutes is Schweizer’s special blend of almost impishly playful musicality and breathtaking free improvisation. In several places across the set, try to catch her wheeling from one idea to another, each compelling enough to be fleshed out vertically into a full tune but kept instead as highly reduced units to be arranged horizontally next to others. Not to say her ideas don’t develop satisfyingly or that they rely on pure juxtaposition: see how the toy-light swing that opens “Up the Ladder” builds into the grand swells in the middle of the piece—and from there into the funky groove near the end. Part of Schweizer’s ability to bridge these fragments and styles may have to do with her superior instrumental powers, particularly the ease with which she can pump out irresistible ostinatos with her left hand—as she does on “Jungle Beat II” and “Blues for Crelier”—while spinning unpredictable lines with her right.

It’s also Schweizer’s knack for holding down the whole keyboard that makes the presence of a bassist virtually unnecessary. And in fact she does have a history of duets with drummers, her discography reading like a who’s who of free jazz drumming: Louis Moholo-Moholo, Günter “Baby” Sommer, Andrew Cyrille, Pierre Favre. It’s tempting to doubt that Joey Baron will stand up to Schweizer’s 2015 percussive partner, Han Bennink—whose bold and tricksterish playing so well matches the pianist’s—but of course he does just fine, adding his own unique filter to Schweizer’s sensibility. Quite the veteran himself, Baron has a well-honed intuition for when to follow his partner and when to chart his own course. And Live! provides him ample opportunity to demonstrate his range, from the firm swing of “Free for All” and “Blues for Crelier” to the subtle mallet-work of extended technique–vehicle “String Fever.” He even gets a few solo spots to show off his chops. But it’s when they’re improvising together that Schweizer and Baron are at their best here—where the push-pull of their interplay strikes its vital balance.

The set picks up in pace toward the end, finishing with back-to-back-to-back four-minute tunes. “Saturdays” features some of the album’s most cerebral and moody playing, while as already hinted, “Blues for Crelier” is a foot-tapper. Closer “The Open Window” begins with erratic improvisation, dropping from there into a fleet waltz. In the piece’s penultimate seconds, Schweizer’s playing becomes thinner and thinner until it suddenly vanishes in thin air, leaving Baron to ride out the last bit of the concert alone. Even when she stops playing, Schweizer draws cheers—such is her magic talent.

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Fred Van Hove & Roger Turner - The Corner (Relative Pitch, 2017) *****

By Paul Acquaro

Projected on the wall of the gallery at the Haus Der Kunst in Munich for the FMP exhibition was an electric 1974 performance of a brawny young Peter Brotzmann on sax, a mischievous Hans Bennink on drums, and an intense Fred Van Hove on piano. This for some reason came to mind as I was listening to this incredible duo recording from a concert at London's venerable Cafe Oto in late 2015. Though missing the powerful winds, there is the same intensity and focus from Van Hove and a similarly sympathetic collaboration by percussionist Roger Turner.

Turner has long been a main stay in the British improvised music scene, for example, working closely with folks like Lol Coxhill, Phil Minton and John Russell. Van Hove made his mark early on in the first generation of European avant-garde musicians and is renowned for both his playing and teaching. Turner and Van Hove first played together in 1983 and their long association can be discerned easily on The Corner. Turner's supportive playing is well matched with Van Hove's probing and voluminous drive, and is perfectly in tune during the introspective moments. Both of which occur amply during the 26 minute opener 'Life Dealers'.

The duo's repartee is in fine order from the get-go. For example, about ten minutes in, moments of light pianistic whimsy meets Turner's crisp percussion and the two instruments begin pushing each other to extremes. 'Shopped', the second track, is a concise seven minutes and begins on a more tenuous and mysterious ground than the exuberant opener. Van Hove's chords are bright and welcoming, but unusual. Their intrigue emanates from their lush and unique voicing.

The duo's dramatic dynamics are certainly present on the twenty minute 'The Hat'. Van Hove has all the pedals pressed as he builds a wall of sound that we would all happily pay for. This track ends with Van Hove suddenly dropping out, giving Turner a few moments of skittering solo percussion alone time. Van Hove eventually rejoins to bring the epic to a close. The last track, 'More Light' is another terse follow up. Where the previous tune was a dense construction, this one is structurally light and open, like a sweet digestif after the heavy aural meal.

The night of music at Cafe Otto must have been a real treat for those who had a chance to attend. Fortunately Relative Pitch has given the rest of us the opportunity to experience it as well. Who knows, perhaps some 40 odd years in the future, at some exhibition of 21st Century Avant-Garde, a visitor will be treated to the visage of the august Van Hove and feel the music still reverberating from that long ago concert too.

Regardless, it's pure exhilarating - get it, enjoy it!

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Paul G. Smyth & Chris Corsano - Psychic Armour (Weekertoft, 2016) ****

By Lee Rice Epstein

There are a few different ways of getting into Paul G. Smyth and Chris Corsano’s new duet album, Psychic Armour. One is taking Smyth’s tri-partite, fractured-sphere cover design as some Venn diagram of the pianist, drummer, and listener each having their own personal heads cracked open. Another is cranking up the volume so the duo’s rumbling, staccato attack floods the space around you like a suit of armour. And one is just setting all these possible meta-references aside and taking in the wide-ranging duo in all its glory.

Recorded in April 2015 at the National Concert Hall in Dublin, Ireland, Psychic Armour is the duo’s debut recording. I’m familiar with Corsano from his many albums, including duets with Joe McPhee, Paul Flaherty, and Mette Rasmussen, but Smyth was new to me. Nevertheless, his playing is dynamite.

The album is a deep conversation in three parts: Corsano’s cymbal tap signals the beginning of “Taming In the Power Cut,” a sequence of spiraling riffs, from both players, that neatly dovetail for a full five minutes before the duo switches gears. Letting in space and silence, Smyth crafts a soft-edged melody of sorts that evoked, yes, Cecil Taylor and also Myra Melford. As with the two giants, there’s a painterly quality to Smyth’s playing, whether a series of quick pointillist runs or textured washes of sound. This second layer comes to the fore on “The Through Line,” during which the pair creates a tense fog of long metallic tones and ringing chords. And then comes the massive title track, “Psychic Armour.” In sustained improvisation, the duo builds, recedes, chases tangents and digressions, and drifts to both the upper and lower registers. Then, about 10 minutes into the 30-minute track, Corsano drops out for an extended solo from Smyth. During the next several minutes, Smyth slows the pace considerably, tracing an abstract line. It’s a beautiful, sensitive solo, which, after a few minutes, Corsano lifts up with a percussive backdrop. There’s a bright, celestial quality to this section, almost as if they’re slyly tipping hats in the direction of psychic. It sets the stage nicely for both Corsano’s solo turn and the all-out, full-speed run that finds the duo chasing each other to the finish. The echoey silence that follows sounds like the room catching its collective breath, before whooping applause rushes in.

Video from 30 April 2015, Kevin Barry Room, National Concert Hall, Dublin, Ireland:

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Tim Daisy & Marc Riordan – Joyride (Relay, 2016) ****

By Eric McDowell

We’ve heard Tim Daisy and Marc Riordan play together before—we’ve even heard them in duet, on Daisy’s excellent October Music Vol. 1 (2014). On Joyride, the duo picks up where it left off with seven improvisations that bring together each musician’s complementary approaches to their instruments. Skilled on tuned percussion, Daisy is a musical drummer who can draw a rich array of sounds from his kit; meanwhile, Riordan’s piano playing, often dense and percussive, hints at his experience as a drummer. No surprise that this combination makes the two Chicagoans compatible improvisers, but it also leaves them flexible enough in their roles to guard against predictability.

Joyride opens with “Pay to Play,” full of fluttering brushwork from Daisy and crowded, sinewy lines from Riordan. Wasting no time in ascending to a pitch of intensity, the duo is forced to find escalation in unexpected ways. While Daisy makes the effective but inevitable transition from brushes to sticks, Riordan climbs the keyboard very gradually over the track’s five minutes, traversing the distance from the subterranean murmurs of first few seconds to the airy tinkling of the last almost without us noticing. The duo demonstrates a knack for this kind of high-energy improvisation throughout the album—for example “Pray to Play,” into which Riordan smuggles some Monk, or “Rules of the Roll (For Conlon Nancarrow),” where Daisy’s kinetic drumming proves a perfect match for Riordan’s indefatigable Taylor-esque volleys.

Elsewhere the playing is more meditative. “Stay Wakeful,” at eight minutes the longest track on the album, provides a particularly nice contrast to the rowdy opener. In the first half, Riordan earns an extended spotlight, atmospheric and searching; in the second half, he provides rhythmic accompaniment for Daisy, who gives us the opportunity to appreciate his command over the drums, which sing with gorgeous resonance when he wants them to. “Train Quill Writings,” as the title suggests, is another contemplative tune and a lovely way to bring the album to rest. Here Riordan’s sensitive playing evokes the image of ripples fading across the surface of gently disturbed water. Daisy provides rhythmic clicking, some strange buzzing, and finally more of that rich depth of sound—booming malleted toms, washy malleted cymbals. Both musicians come together beautifully just before the final silence falls.

Another reviewer has suggested that each of the duets on October Music Vol. 1 deserves its own full-length album. With Joyride, Daisy has set the bar high.

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Sebastian Lexer & Steve Noble - Muddy Ditch

By Antonio Poscic

There’s an insatiable curiosity burrowing in the mind while listening to the freely improvised, deviously abstract outing of German pianist Sebastian Lexer and English drummer Steve Noble, Muddy Ditch. Robbed of the tangible, explanatory presence of a live performance, with all the small gestures and physical synergy lost to the medium, one needs to entertain what-ifs and conceive new contexts and narratives around this sparsely layered, idiosyncratic playing and interactions. In return, their music will bring enlightenment by means of sensory deprivation and by asking the listener to become an active participant in the unfolding soundscape.

Muddy Ditch documents two concerts that Lexer and Noble performed at London’s Cafe OTO in 2011 and 2014. From end to end of the two tracks, “Pool” and “Loess,” the duo’s basic language remains unchanged. Resorting to a dialect nourished by sequential superimposition and counteraction of alien, nigh impossible noises, they spawn incongruous yet mesmerizing musical patterns. To achieve this, Lexer closely amplifies his piano and feeds it through live processing and effects, creating feedbacks and mutating sounds beyond what should be acoustically possible. Contrary to appearances, it’s a reductionary process with the help of which Lexer tries to understand the instrument’s pieces while he subverts them, dissolves them into mere tones, and then builds new structures, augmented with electronic processing and abrasive resonances.

At other times and especially during the second tune “Loess,” he dives into rumbling, heady sections, as if punctuating thoughts and introducing creative conflict. But the rumbles are as abstract and diffuse as the improvisational conversations with Noble, quickly retreating and receding, avoiding any semblance of conventionality. Noble responds with measure, bouncing ideas and teasing his partner through dialogues. He approaches the drumset and various percussion instruments as a child might approach a glass bottle. As he explores, in amazement, the sounds that he’s able to produce, he tintinnabulates and crashes on the cymbals and rolls his sticks against the drum heads, mouthing tumultuous roars.

There’s not much difference in mastery between the two pieces presented here, with “Pool” being the more relaxed cut, anchored to lulling segments, while “Loess” is, conversely, nervous and spirited, with reduced space for the digitally enhanced phrases and with a preference towards analog verses. Throughout, both players seem concerned and intrigued by quaint textures and shapes of individual sounds, rather than burdened by trying to fit them into compositions. Thus Noble’s rubbing, sawing, and grating will come into contrast and clash stochastically with Lexer’s prolonged piano tones, drones, and ominously deep key blows to generate a sort of a faux electronic, deranged ambient scenery. On the rare occasions when the duo does subside into unpredictable call-and-response patterns—a snare scratch might or might not be answered with a hard stomp on the piano keys—it’s only to feel each other’s pulses, preparing for the next lunge into the esoteric and abstruse.

There’s communication and there are lone amplitudes, textures expanding and contracting, but there’s always and foremost flow—from piercing fortes to soft, gentle individual noises and silences—that makes Muddy Ditch a dynamic, engaging listen that doesn’t seem to stop to contemplate for too long even when diminished to whispers. No climaxes. No themes or motifs. Only raw artistry.

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Sten Sandell & Paal Nilssen-Love – Jacana (Rune Grammofon, 2014) ***½

By Julian Eidenberger

Combining piano and drums in a duo setting is hardly a daring proposition, as the two instruments go together quite well. On the one hand, they seem to complement each other almost perfectly, with the piano’s potential for near-orchestral fullness counter-balancing the drums’ “skeletal” properties. On the other hand, there’s also some overlap between them, due to the fact that both generate sounds percussively. It’s a constellation that can yield great results when appropriately exploited, making, in such cases, for a tightly knit yet wide-ranging sonic union. That being established, it’s all the more surprising that the duo of Swedish pianist Sten Sandell and Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love doesn’t quite succeed in producing that kind of instrumental union. Indeed, considering the duo’s unimpeachable musical pedigree, which includes incendiary outfits such as The Thing, Scorch Trio and Lean Left in Nilssen-Love’s case, and a history of performing works by New Music luminaries like Xenakis and Cage in Sandell’s, you’d expect nothing but a flawless success of them.

To be clear: Jacana is by no means a bad record. Its three improvised tracks, which were recorded live at the Kongsberg Jazz Festival in 2013, offer a fair share of good and even great moments. Sandell, in particular, provides some very fine pianistic moments, from seamlessly woven tapestries of notes to thundering chords that could shake the gates of heaven, and further on to the alien abstractions of extended technique (although that last element isn’t as prominent here as might be expected of a frequent performer of New Music). Moreover, he engages in some very deep and low vocalizing on the second track Kauri, which, in combination with his sinister chords and runs on the piano, resembles Varèse’s Nocturnal, and perhaps some Schönbergian ballads. But occasionally – and this is where we get to the downsides – the music fails to attract the listener’s attention, running on for minutes without producing anything substantial. Nilssen-Love’s contributions here might be part of the problem; he’s a drummer I hold in very high regard, but here, he’s often content to inhabit the supporting role, rarely stepping up with attention-grabbing ideas of his own. Besides, he doesn’t always respond in the ideal way to Sandell’s pianistic propositions, sometimes employing drum-kit-devouring rolls where a sparser, more disjointed approach might’ve been a more appropriate answer.

But then again, this is far from bad, and if this might appear to be a bit of a letdown, it’s only because of the very high standards these excellent musicians have set for themselves on previous records.


Listen:

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Agustí Fernández & Zlatko Kaučič – Sonic Party (Not Two, 2014) ***½

By Dan Sorrells

Sonic Party continues Not Two’s recent documentation of Slovenian percussionist Zlatko Kaučič, this time in a duo with the formidable Agustí Fernández. Kaučič has been an established presence throughout Europe since the 70s, though his recorded output has really only picked up in the last decade or so. This is a happy development: Kaučič is a wildly creative player with an nearly endless array of clicks and dings and patters. On Sonic Party his rapid articulation—at times not unlike drummers such as Paul Lytton or Raymond Strid—is well-matched against Fernández’s frantic stream of ideas.

The album opens with two pieces of traditional (for lack of a better word) free improvisation: blistering runs on the piano and flying hands and drumsticks. “Sonic Party” steadily accelerates until it’s difficult to believe Fernández’s fingers will stay attached to his body. At its boiling peak, it levels off into a expanse of ringing notes, which eventually dwindle to silence. What’s never lost on Sonic Party is a gleaming clarity, no matter how much steam it picks up.

But for all the clattering, roiling pieces of improvisation, the duo forms the strongest bond when the pace is slowed down and Fernández enters the interior of the piano. On “Lonci” and “Mondze,” his preparations and experimentation with dampening and stretching the piano strings bring him much closer to Kaučič’s sonic wheelhouse, and the two blend into a single sound source, one that eventually builds into a thundering, frightening ambience that threatens to overwhelm the senses.

“Sirob” begins with a long Fernández solo that swoops and circles around an insistent dance of two notes. He’s soon focused on a cluster of high notes, which sound wistful and serene after the preceding tumult. But when Kaučič finally enters, the tone changes dramatically: suddenly what’s conveyed isn’t tranquility, but great tension. It’s a remarkable lesson in context and the ways small musical decisions can powerfully redirect a performance. “Free Nest” is yet another reminder of the force Fernández can generate with his piano: like a crushing vacuum, he can suck all the air out of the room. The piece ends abruptly in full crescendo, and a few people chuckle nervously in the audience, breathless and overwhelmed.

“The Hug” closes the album with an intense workout in the lower octaves of the piano, like arms wrapped around you that are slowly squeezing tighter and tighter. Eventually the grip loosens—it was all in good fun!—and the performance ends with faint cymbals and the soft clicking of keys, the piano strings no longer making a sound. It’s a nice encapsulation of what Sonic Party represents as a whole: a virtuoso stroll through the halls of improvisational history, from the most raucous free jazz to the lightest of reductionist touches.

Available from Instantjazz.

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Rodger Coleman and Sam Byrd - Indeterminate (Improvisations for Piano and Drums) (Nuvoid, 2013) ***½

By Paul Acquaro

Pianist Rodger Coleman and drummer Sam Byrd's collaboration is an energetic and succinct recording. Clocking in at a mere 35 minutes, there is not a scrap of waste on Indeterminate (Improvizations for Piano and Drums).

Captured live at the Zeitgeist Gallery in Nashville, near where pianist Coleman is based, Indeterminate is a vibrant document of the collaboration between Coleman and Byrd, who have worked together in other combinations in Boston and New York. This concert recording is captured nicely, you can hear the attack of the percussion balanced with with the fury of the piano, it's dense music, but not without space.

Coleman's playing has elements of Cecil Taylor's approach, like in the percussive tonal clusters and strong rhythmic drive, all connected by tight melodic runs. Byrd, who seems to have integrated a rubber duck into his kit and is not shy about squeezing it, gives Coleman more than enough support to build on. Or, maybe it's the other way around, where Coleman's intensity provides Byrd with space to explore and rhythmic ideas to push around.

Towards the end of the short recording, Coleman works over and over a small melodic invention, and suddenly, sprinkles in some musical quotes. It's a wonderment how a quick refrain from St. Thomas sticks out, like a shiny object in the musical maelstrom. Overall, the music is exciting and the relative brevity of the recording is a strong point too, not letting the music run out of steam. An enjoyable listen.

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