Ernest Dawkins - Mean Ameen (Delmark, 2004) *****

Despite saxophonist Ernest Dawkins' long experience as a jazz musician, he has not released that many albums under his own name. He is former president of Chicago's AACM and member of several bands including Kahil El'Zabar's Ethnic Heritage Ensemble. Yet most of his records are of interest, and this one, "Mean Ameen" is one I keep putting back in my CD-player very regularly. It's more free bop than free jazz, all pieces have a clear compositional structure and fixed themes. But all that's irrelevant. What is relevant is the music itself. And it's awesome. Blues-drenched, heart-rending, swinging highly rhythmic music with fantastic improvizations by the whole band, which consists of Maurice Brown on trumpet, Steve Berry on trombone, Darius Savage on bass and Isaiah Spencer on drums. The album is a tribute to former "New Horizons Ensemble" trumpeter Ameen Muhammad, also known as "King Ameen", who died in 2003. Now, the great thing about this album is it's hard to equal heart-energy-music continuum. The raw emotions and the unbridled energy resulting in this great rhytmic and musical feast, sad and joyful at the same time, have rarely been equalled. Every track on the album is great, but the absolute highlight is the last one, "Buster And The Search For The Human Genome", which is a 16-minute long rhythmic monster of a song, starting slowly and bluesy but gradually the tempo is speeding up to some break-neck velocity, with staccato unisono blowing by the horns, fiere soloing, with abrupt and sudden breaks, nothing more than a pause for breathing, when the whole monster gets back on top-speed, dragging the listener along to musical areas where everything is possible. This is not a record which will change the history of jazz, but it is the result of it : authentic, creative, rooted in tradition yet free as a bird. As the liner notes say : "King Ameen is smiling from up high".

The clip below is from their recent Delmark DVD (real great and fun, and the trailer does not really give credit to the music itself), which starts with "The Messenger", also to be found on this CD, a tribute to Art Blakey, on which trumpeter Maurice Brown really shines.

Read More

Carla Bley & Paul Haines - Escalator Over The Hill (JCOA, 1971) *****

Few albums have such a unique profile as Escalator Over The Hill by Carla Bley, and I'm still not sure how to describe the music more than 30 years after its original release : a free jazz fusion world music avant-garde opera seems pretty close, because you get it all, magnificent, bombastic, waltzing, humpah-ing, screeching, rocking, haunting, enervating, crazy, merry-go-rounding, absurd, stammering, howling, menacing, invigorating, crushing, cinematic, disjointing, chaotic, ....

Take an orchestra with the (then) absolute crème-de-la-crème of modern jazz : Don Cherry, Gato Barbieri, Roswell Rudd, Karl Berger, Sam Brown, Charlie Haden, Paul Motian, Enrico Rava, Perry Robinson, Michael Mantler, Leroy Jenkins, Ron McClure, Jimmy Lyons, Carla Bley herself of course, and add a dozen or so additional horns to form one of the many bands in the opera. Add some stars from the rock-scene, with amongst others Linda Ronstadt on vocals, Jack Bruce (The Cream) on bass and vocals, Don Preston (Mothers Of Invention) on Moog synthesizer, and of course John McLaughlin on guitar, and add some more vocal power Jeanne Lee and Sheila Jordan. And believe me, they're all pretty fantastic.

Next, take a theater author who can write down the most insane and absurd lines, to be sung in in various styles : opera, rock-n-roll, musical, or just to be shouted or spoken, alone or in a choir, or just simply sung, and singing in all earnestness sentences such as the following :

"It's in the lobby
of Cecil Clark's
that people raised
for one thing
like cows
for milk
and chickens
for legs
vote for something
weak
and to the point
riding the escalator
over the hill

vote for something
weak
and to the point"

... and Carla Bley made something musically unique out of all of this.

So, in sum, treat this music without any preconceptions, let yourself be lead through a story the likes of which you have never heard, forget all musical notions and expectations, leave the safe haven of fixed patterns, .... and take this damn escalator!


(... and please don't ask me what it's all about!)

"Stop refusing to explain
Give up explaining"

Read More

Spaceways Inc. - Version Sould (Atavistic, 2002) *****

Anyone who would slide this CD in his player and NOT start dancing, must have icecold blood flowing through his veins. Spaceways Inc. is one of Ken Vandermark's many bands, this time on baritone saxophone, with Nate McBride on bass and Hamid Drake on drums. This band is inspired by the music of Sun Ra and Funkadelic at the same time and combines their relatively remote musical visions, but they bring it with incredible enthusiasm and respect. If you like rhythms, then listen to this album. If you love great interplay, then buy this album. If you enjoy free improv on fixed themes, then look no further. Do you like music with real soul? Then put his album in your set. Do you like emotional expressive power? This is your thing. Do you like pure esthetic beauty? I could go on and on about this album. I do not know many musical pieces where rythmic joy and interplay have been tilted to such a high qualitative level. And the power of it, also from the funk and reggae you will find here, is the music that isn't played, it's the drum beat that it isn't hit, it's about the tension in the fraction of a second when the music stops and then starts again full blast. Drake, McBride and Vandermark seem to have found their natural habitat on this album. Already from the first track "Back Of A Cab", you hear that special things are about to happen : the pumping electric bass of McBride, the economical and precise drumming of Drake, and then the deep soft tones of the baritone that suddenly starts, delving into the depths of the instrument to extract the most bluesy sounds possible. And it all sounds so magnificently simple, while it is definitely not. Few are those who can handle this level of complexity, but you just don't notice it. You just hear great music. Less is more, and how much more. And you've got it all here : quieter pieces, ("Reasonable Hour"), greasy funkers ("Size Large"), subdued free jazz ("Rothko Sideways"), some hard-blowing free jaz ("Force At A Distance"). Less is more, and how much more!

Read More

Charlie Haden - The Liberation Music Orchestra (Impulse, 1969) and The Ballad Of The Fallen (ECM, 1982) *****

These are the first two albums of Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra, a band with which he has recorded with various line-ups with a frequency of one album per decade (1969 "Liberation Music Orchestra", 1982 "The Ballad Of The Fallen", 1990 "Dream Keeper", 1999 "The Montreal Tapes", 2005 "Not In Our Name"). The music in this series brings a combination of traditional Central American (march) music, big band and free jazz. The overall tone is descriptive and liberating at the same time : the music tries to capture the suffering and the struggle of the oppressed masses, yet at the same time it tries to liberate by breaking the boundaries and rules (and the revolution is also a musical one). You can hear the armies marching, the mothers crying, the leaders perorating, the wounded moaning on the battlefield, praise being sung to the heroes. To hear a band consisting of jazz icons such as Haden himself, Don Cherry, Carla Bley, Jim Pepper, Mick Goodrick, Dewey Redman, Paul Motian, Michael Mantler play a triumphalistic revolution song with the title "The People United Will Never Be Defeated", sounding like your local brass marching band, is something unique, and even more so once it collapses into Haden's beautiful, serene "Silence", with a slow big band unisono sound, and Cherry's trumpet soaring above the melody like only he can do it, just to evolve again into a contemplative piano and bass duo in "Too Late". Sentimental? You bet, and for the full 100%, yet it never becomes too mellow or shallow. Therefore the antidote of the improvizations works too well. This is a clash of two musical styles, which have nothing in common, and even are each other's opposite. This contrast is the strongest on the first album, emphasizing the chaos and the despair. Both albums have a "suite" structure, the themes flowing into one another, with varying line-ups in the same piece, seamlessly moving on from screeching free jazz blowing over Spanish guitar to a bass solo and marching band music. Memorable compositions are Haden's gorgeous "Song For Ché" and Ornette Coleman's "War Orphans". On "The Ballad Of The Fallen" the music is more controlled, the compositions more outspoken, and the difference with the later CDs is that it does not decline into the programmatic political sentimentalism of "Not In Our Name". And on both albums Haden takes the space to demonstrate his improvisational genius on bass, a combination of technique, esthetic beauty and emotional expression. Not to be missed.

Read More

Keith Jarrett - The Survivors' Suite (ECM 1977) *****

This music is a piece of genius. Even after having listened to it for a hundred times, The Survivors' Suite is still extremely exciting and moving. It starts out very slowly with a worldmusic sounding bass recorder and the lightly plucked bass of Charlie Haden, which move on into a hypnotic repetitive rhythm, the recorder like an incantation moving to the background, and then both saxes (Dewey Redman and Jarrett himself) play the core theme. It is almost magical how, with so very few notes, they can conjure up images of space, open skies, extensive plains, and it is only after approx. nine minutes that Jarrett takes place at his keyboard, repeating the theme in full force, while bass and drums intensify. This is not jazz in the traditional sense, this is music, full stop. Constructed with movements like in a classical symphony, but with room for improvisation. Jarrett's piano solo follows seamlessly, sometimes hesitant, then light and dancing. Paul Motian shows his extraordinary skills in giving accents to the music without playing a fixed rhythm, or rather giving the rhythm implicitly. Charlie Haden gets also some solo space, lightly supported by vibraphone (or glockenspiel?). Haden is a very lyrical improvisor, and he builds great tension into his solo by repeating the same sequence of notes and then gliding to the lowest sounds on his bass. Redman joins and soars as a bird over the melody, and when Jarrett plays his piano piece, Redman keeps blowing, softly, very softly in the background. Jarrett plays one of his most beautiful tunes, with all the romanticism and sensitivity for which he is known. "Conclusion", the second piece (the B-side of the original album) starts with an intense, chaotic, free-for-all, with Redman screeching, Motian hard-hitting, Jarrett thundering, then suddenly moving on to an uptempo melody with an almost latin feel, with Haden on arco. The intensity remains for a long piece of improvisation, shifting back to the beginning melody, with the high tones of the bass recorder, the singing, howling sax, the plucking bass. The solo sax evolves toward the menacing chaos tones from the beginning, joined by the rest of the band and then suddenly the whole thing bursts open like a flower into a liberating open melody, with long and sustained tones of the sax and a playful piano. Everything quiets down then, with flute and bass, ebbing away... absolutely sublime!

"And those that create out of the holocaust of their own inheritance anything more than a convenient self-made tomb shall be known as "Survivors".

Read More

John Surman & Jack DeJohnette - Invisible Nature (ECM, 2002) *****

John Surman and Jack DeJohnette no longer need any introduction. The English sax player has carved out his own sound and melodic signature over the years, easy to recognize yet hard to emulate. The drummer is also a unique specimen, a rhythmic giant and a perfectionist of the sound quality of his instrument. What these two virtuosi bring together on "Invisible Nature" is unique indeed : recorded at live performances in Tampere (Finland) and Berlin (Germany), this album is a joy from beginning to end, with no weak moments in it. The most amazing thing is that the whole album - with the exception of one piece - is pure improvisation. The music integrates many styles, electronics, the blues, Indian music, classical music, ... and jazz of course. The use of electronics adds to the variation of sounds on the album, yet the spontaneous compositions are by themselves strong enough to stand on their own and to bring a broad scale of variety. Highly recommended.

Read More

Wadada Leo Smith - Compassion *****

This is a unique CD, just trumpet and percussion. Wadada Leo Smith and Adam Rudolph both belong to the free jazz avant-garde, masters with great technical skill, unafraid to search for entirely new forms of expression, but always with a strong spiritual element into it. This kind of initiative often fails because the music itself suffers from this search for new form. Smith and Rudolph have both made albums for which you really need open ears in order to be able to endure the music till the end of the album at one stretch. On the other hand both have also already issued beautiful CDs with relative accessibility (Smith : Kulture Jazz, Rudolph & Pharoah Sanders : Spirits).
Compassion is again a spiritual journey, starting with lonely and voiceless stuttering by the trumpet, soon joined by slight percussion, like the sounds of the night. The second piece brings us dawn, and as the sun breaks through we get the long notes of Smith's trumpet, supported by Tibetan bells and gongs of Rudolph. This is a quite intimistic kind of improvisation without any preconceived structure, but with an authentic joint search to subdued beauty and emotional expression. On Fragrance of Light, Rudolph a changing rhythm on the framedrums, with great improvisation by Wadada. The pièce-de-resistance is the long "Love Rhythms, Heart Songs", on which Rudolph also sings, sometimes in overtone. On the last piece, The Caller and The Called, Rudolph digs up his dousn' gouni and we get sounds that remind us of Codona with Nana Vasconcelos and Don Cherry. This is music which will not directly appeal to those who expect clear melodies, structure and harmonic changes. It is in any case no mellow new-age emptiness, because despite the minimalistic line-up, the music is exciting from beginning to end, and the focus of both musicians is clearly kept on the creation of a coherent musical journey. Highly recommended.

Read More

Roy Campbell - Communion

Trumpet trios, consisting of trumpet, bass and percussion, are relatively rare.

Tomasz Stanko has one (Bluish), Don Cherry has two (Blue Lake and on Charlie Haden's The Montreal Tapes), the Chicago Underground Trio has one (Slon), but that's about it, I think. There are of course variations, with guitar (Chet Baker), marimba (Schaphorst), electronics(Arve Henriksen), but then always with a harmonic instrument. If you know more trumpet trios, please let me know. Otherwise, there are dozens and dozens of sax trios. Why is that? I don't know. Are there more sax players than trumpet players? Is the range of a sax broader so that it's easier to entertain for a whole album? Whatever it is, Roy Campbell has issued three albums as a trumpet trio : Ancestral Homeland, Ethnic Stew & Brew and Communion. William Parker plays the bass on all three, the drummers are respectively Zen Matsuura, Hamid Drake and Reggie Nicholson. All three are highly recommended. Communion offers a little more variation than the other two. Campbell is a technically very strong trumpet player, but the musical space he creates is even more impressive. Strongly based in the blues, with openness for music of other continents. Real free jazz, with open ears. Despite - or thanks to - the limited line-up, the other musicians get plenty of space for soloing and to offer their musical contribution. Everything is possible in this music : the openness and breathing space created, is perfectly taken advantage of by the band : sensitive, meditative, entertaining, involving, suprising, ...

For more info check his website.

To order : Silkheart website

Read More

Julius Hemphill - Dogon A.D.

From the very first notes of this album, you know that something special is taking place. The cello of Abdul Wadud brings a repetitive theme, supported by some energetic drumming by Philip Wilson, with Hemphill and Baikida Carroll on sax and trumpet playing the main theme. After a minute or so Carroll drops away and Hemphill starts with a magical sax solo. Wadud and Wilson relentlessly continue with their hypnotic basis, sometimes only playing parts of it, yet keeping it implicitly present at all times. After about 13 minutes the piece changes and the contrapuntal interplay between the cello on the one hand and the sax and trumpet on the other hand leads to a climactic finale. "Dogon A.D." is phenomenal in the simplicity of its form and the power and creativity of its performance. "Rites", the second number, starts with strong interplay of the four band members, who quickly pursue their own lines without loosing focus of the whole. "Painter" brings Hemphill on flute. This CD is an absolute must for all jazz fans. It is unfortunately impossible to get in stores anymore, and it is very hard to understand that it was never brought out on CD. Tim Berne put the album on his website some months ago (thank you, Tim), but it has disappeared in the meantime. Luckily a colleague blogger put the link on his site, which I offer to you here : http://quandros.com/blog/dogon_ad.zip

Read More

Bengt Berger - Bitter Funeral Beer

This album is already 25 year old, but really worth mentioning. Berger, a Swedish percussionist, uses music recordings from Ghanese tribes, and especially mourning chants, as a backdrop for one of the saddest free jazz albums imagineable. This mini big band with vocals, saxes, violin, trumpet, xylophone, electric guitar, cello, bass and percussion, and with no one less than Don Cherry on the pocket trumpet, brings a musical experience beyond anything you've heard before. This is not afro-jazz, not world music, but a bizar cocktail of African rhythms and an unusual jazz line-up : very rhythmic, haunting, trance-inducing, repetitive and full of variation. The expressive power of this album is extremely rare. The band is totally unknown to me (all Swedes), but it does what it has to do, and how! Cherry is absolutely stellar. The last piece of the album, Darafo, is a 22 minute musical fest, by itself already worth the purchase.

PS - I heard some other CDs by Bengt Berger after I bought this one, but they are pretty boring.

Read More

The Gift - Live At Sangha

I've always been a great fan of Roy Campbell (trumpet, flute), whom I consider to be the true musical heir of Don Cherry. I have all his great albums with William Parker and Hamid Drake, but this one I bought without knowing what to expect. The trio also consists of William Hooker (drums) and Jason Kao Hwan (violin). By itself, this is already an unusual line-up, but the CD is one long piece of free improvisation, with slow, hectic, intense, sad moments. I have listened to this album dozens of times as if hypnotised. The music is at the same time open and free beyond belief, yet very accessible and emotionally powerful. This is free jazz at its best. Campbell and Hwan circle around each other, complete each other through the warm acoustic sound of Campbell's trumpet and the electronically deformed sound of Hwan's violin. Hooker is a very dominant drummer and changes the whole piece from time to time by some astute interventions. This CD opened a new way of listening to music to me. It is as if a door opened which made all other free jazz which I found very inaccessible, suddenly something to be cherished (starting with Joe McPhee and Vinny Golia). Really great stuff. An emotional experience

Read More

William Parker - it's Raining On The Moon

There aren't many CD's I enjoy more than this one. It is not entirely free jazz, despite Parker's reputation as a free jazz bass-player with his other bands, The Little Huey Orchestra and In Order To Survive. This album swings from beginning to end with lots of free improv and strongly rooted in the blues. Leena Conquest sings on five of the eight songs, with lyrics which are at times absurd and at times offer criticism on society. Rob Brown on sax and Louis Barnes on trumpet are a pleasure to listen to, but the real treat is the interplay between Parker and Hamid Drake. They've probably played hundreds of times together and that's very clear to hear on this album. This is music to laugh by, to cry by. A must-have!

Read More

Top 20 free jazz albums of all times

Sure, it's incomplete, and I may change my mind as well, but here it is, without a specific order.

Ahmed Abdullah - Song Of The Times
Fred Anderson - The Milwaukee Tapes, Vol. 1
Bengt Berger - Bitter Funeral Beer
Carla Bley - Escalator Over The Hill
Roy Campbell - Communion
Don Cherry - Complete Communion
Don Cherry - Nu - BBC Sessions
Ernest Dawkins - Mean Ameen
East New York Ensemble De Music - At The Helm
Eight Bold Souls - Sideshow
Kahil El'Zabar - The Ritual
Ethnic Heritage Ensemble - Freedom Jazz Dance
The Gift - Live At Sangha
Dennis Gonzalez - Nile River Suite
Charlie Haden - The Ballad Of The Fallen
Julius Hemphill - Dogon A.D.
Keith Jarrett - The Survivors' Suite
Charles Lloyd - Sangam
William Parker - Raining On The Moon
Matthew Shipp - Pastoral Composure
Wadada Leo Smith - Compassion
Spaceways Inc. - Version Soul
John Surman/Jack DeJohnette - Invisible Nature

Read More