John Butcher - 5 LPs from Berlin (and Leipzig) on NI VU NI CONNU

John Butcher at Ausland, November 2019. (c) Cristina Marx

By Paul Acquaro

British saxophonist John Butcher is no stranger to Berlin. Linked to the Echtzeit scene that emerged during the heady days of post re-unification Germany in the abundant derelict spaces that served as breeding grounds for creativity, Butcher, on the occasion of this 65th birthday, held a short residency in November 2019 at one of the original and still existent Echtzeit venues, the experimental music hub Ausland, located in the now tamed and expensive Prenzlauer Berg. Presented as a set of 5 LPs, the music captures both new and old music acquaintances, the music and information within showcases Butcher's continuing ability to push listeners and musicians alike in new directions. On the albums, he collaborates in combinations with Sophie Agnel, Gino Robair, Thomas Lehn, Marta Zapparoli, Liz Allbee, Ignaz Schick, Magda Mayas, Tony Buck, Werner Dafeldecker and Burkhard Beins. The LPs in the the collection contain liner notes from Stuart Broomer, photos by Cristina Marx, and gatefold sleeves design by Yaqin Si.

Sophie Agnel & John Butcher - la pierre tachée

Stuart Broomer's generous and excellent liner notes are essential in placing the music on these albums into meaningful historical context, and the quote that he chooses to begin with is key to framing the whole event. According to Butcher:

"Ausland was unique in my own experience. I was working with four different groups in two nights and had chosen the musicians to form specific units with unique identities and possibilities. I didn’t want it to be a Company-type event (which, by the way, I also love) where the grouping is more ad-hoc and the accumulative results more evolutionary. I was interested in the potential distinctiveness of each set, given that I was the constant factor, but without major aesthetic leaps and without me having to pretend to be a chameleon.”

So the set of changing constellations begins with Butcher and French pianist Sophie Agnel.  It begins with Agnel approaching the piano in a percussive manner, a scraping and striking of the piano's strings, while Butcher plays legato tones, before he interrupts with a splutter of sounds. The track, 'chemin creux' then evolves into series of woodwind multiphonics over austere, prepared tones from the piano. The music builds at a measured pace: a quickening of textured tones from Agnel, a thickening of tonal textures from Butcher. The sounds connect, they resist as much as they exist co-exist in the shared musical space, introducing tension and drama as the music continues. It sounds like a dance, a fight, resolution, and finally agreement. A highlight of the set is in the opening minutes of 'shrieks in cups of gold,' in which both Agnel and Butcher reach a fevered pitch and then wander for a tense span of time exploring small sounds, before launching into a second intense passage. The ending track 'sillonner' wraps up the recording on a high note with a rich summary of the intensity and space throughout the album.

John Butcher / Thomas Lehn / Gino Robair - shaped & chased

The next recording seems to following Butcher's stated plans "to form specific units with unique identities". The sounds from saxophone undoubtable belongs to Butcher - the tones waver, flutter with the air, chirp with confidence, and at times explode into strong melodic statements. However, the setting has greatly changed with the work of Butcher's long time associates analog synthesizer player Thomas Lehn and percussionist Gino Robair.

The opening track, 'dorrying,' finds the trio quickly diving deep into a collective soundscape. Butcher sets the energy bar high in the opening minutes, which the other two respond to in kind, leading to an avalanche of sounds that quickly collapse into a long, tension filled exchange. The next track, 'tempren,' takes a different approach, with episodic build-ups of electronic tones, buzzing saxophone, and cascading percussion.  On the last track, Lehn's analog synthesizer (or is it Robair's Blippo box? - a fascinating custom machine that Broomer tantalizingly describes as being constructed based on chaos theory) shadows Butcher. When the plops of liquid sound appear, the synthesizer is much more likely the culprit. As the three come together, the atmosphere becomes spacey and rich with possibility. The track 'halouen' is almost straight-ahead jazz, sort of. Butcher plays rather melodic-free and aggressively spars with Lehn's otherworldly sounds. Finally, 'swough' fills with a fluid momentum, carried by mallet heavy percussion and unrelenting drips and splatters of electronic tonic.

Liz Allbee / John Butcher / Ignaz Schick / Marta Zapparoli - lamenti dall’infinito

Here is a true Echtzeit collaboration: trumpeter Liz Allbee, electronics/turntablist Ignaz Schick, and tapes and electronics artist Marta Zapparoli, all long time contributors to the Berlin scene. They are also the largest of the groups in this set, a quartet, or a double duo of acoustic horns and assorted electronic. The opening track 'Sea of Distortions' begins slowly, a drone of sorts, as the group begins filling the room with a stream of sound. At first, one may be wondering where Butcher is, between the whoosh and chatter of electronics and Allbee's unusual tones, but then you hear him, rapid blips leading to overblown legato notes. The momentum of the track builds, carried by Bucher at times, and the static nervousness of the electronics at other times. The opening track is a full album side, but by the half-way mark, you will likely be drawn into the unseeming sound world, losing track of time and place. Side B is split into a short 'Dialogues in a Shell', a piece just shy of four minutes, starting with a bricolage of samples that eventual yield to narrow drone. 'Molecular Memories,' at 17 minutes, begins with what may suggest a dentist's drill sounding out over a thumb piano. Electronics? Acoustic horns? They're in there, mixing together into unexpected combinations. Possibly the most in-accessible of the albums, but like most challenging things, it may be the one whose affects grow the most, the more you listen.

Vellum: Magda Mayas / John Butcher / Tony Buck - glints

Maybe this is the entry point for anyone still uninitiated in the sonic complexities of John Butcher's music. Not to suggest that the music on glints is in anyway easier to digest than on the other ones in this set, but there is something graspable in interactions of the three acoustic instruments in this long standing trio. Pianist Madga Mayas and percussionist Tony Buck, long time Berlin residents and  Butcher collaborators, surround the saxophonist with prepared piano and striking percussive textures, providing both a comfortable and stimulating environment.

Side A opens with a bang on the gong and high-end-of-perception squeaks from Butcher. There is a following clatter of percussion (maybe one of the those nets with shells attached?) and individually plucked notes from inside the piano. The flutters, the clacking, the plucking collectively lead the listener into a dense forest of sound, beautiful and strange, with possible danger lurking behind every turn. Going further, more formal sounds manifest like the truncated tinkle of prepared piano, brief smears of notes from the saxophone, and a roll from the drums. In Vellum's soundworld, it is hard not to be enrapt with the intricate and unexpected beauty in all the overlapping musical foliage. The group reaches an apex of intensity about 12 minutes into the slowly layering piece, which then mutates through a quiet percussion-led chrysalis to a cascade of notes from Mayas and Butchers, playing contours rather than scales, while Buck delivers some incisive drumming. Side B begins with the prepared piano attack that closes out Side A. The group then takes a spiritual detour, Butcher engaging in Evan Parker like circular breathing over an intense pulse from Buck. All this in 3 quick minutes, then it is over, as the group goes deeply introspective, slowly building back to a frenetic passage dominated by single note runs from the piano. The groups continues through this world, long winding passages through the forest leading to dramatic features and finally a serene clearing.

Burkhard Beins / John Butcher / Werner Dafeldecker - induction

This final set takes us out of Ausland. Side A was recorded at the experimental music room KM28 across the famous divide and into the former western neighborhood of Kreuzberg, and Side B was recorded a bit farther away at the KulTurnhalle in the city of Leipzig. The trio, percussionist Burkhard Beins, bassist Werner Dafeldecker and Butcher have worked together before for a while, most notably in the group Polwechsel. On 'induction' the music toggles between minimal to maximal, with all sorts of interactions between. Towards the end of the first track, 'circulation,' there is a tremendous amount of percussion and rumbling bass, while Bucher fires on all cylinders, playing notes far beyond the typical range of the saxophone. Prior to these final moments of the track, there is a long accumulation of intrumental ideas and approaches. Side 2 begins with 'Connection', starting with sounds drawn from the drums, then the sax, and finally the bass in succession. They then build to a ringing drone interrupted by eruptive sounds from Butcher and Dafeldecker. The music is tense, even somewhat aggressive. The following up 'conversion' is a short interlude that opens up the space a bit, leading to 'confluence', which is a denser piece that in a sense straddles the darkness of the first one with the chain interactions of the second. The piece is an impressionistic sound collage, with many colorful tones mixing into unexpected combinations.

Taken as a whole, these five albums represent a new artistic high-point for the ever productive and creative Butcher. All of the recordings offer something different, though to reference the earlier quote, Butcher's playing is consistent, and consistently excellent. While it is true that he is no 'chameleon', it is also noteworthy that he also is not a one-trick pony. The variety of the musical collaborations and the variability in each performance - each piece - is rich. The live experience, in the small subterranean Ausland, must have contributed significantly to the experience, but on its own, the music itself is evocative and demands close listening. Luckily, we can do just that.

All albums are available on the NI VU NI CONNU Bandcamp site, in both digital and LP format.

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Judy Stuart - The Apostolic Session (Inky Dot Media, 2020) ****

By Stuart Broomer

On June 5, 1969, an unrecorded singer named Judy Stuart went into Apostolic Studio in New York to record two demo tracks to present to Vanguard Records. Steve Tintweiss arranged, conducted and produced. At the time Vanguard was pioneering quadraphonic surround sound, so special care was taken to create a 12-channel tape in the hope it could be released in the new format. As it turned out, Vanguard wasn’t interested. By that time, Stuart (born Judith Pizzarelli) was 30 years old and had been singing publicly since childhood, following from amateur contests to singing standards, including work with the bandleaders Les and Larry Elgart. In his liner essay, distinguished historian and broadcaster Ben Young (he wrote Dixonia: a Bio-discography of Bill Dixon) remarks, mysteriously, “Stuart appeared on at least one published phonograph record.”

As popular music changed, so had she: she wrote songs and accompanied herself on guitar. In the late ‘60s she sang with rock bands, then later wrote music for plays produced by La Mama. A couple of years ago, Tintweiss decided to release the two 1969 tracks and made arrangements with Stuart. She died, around eighty, before ever hearing the test pressings. The two songs from the session have now appeared as the first release on Tintweiss’s label: it’s a 10” 45 rpm record, about as specialized a format as you could find to release 12 minutes and 14 seconds of music.

Why am I telling you all this? Because the music is startling, a direct window on the possibilities‒some real, some imaginary‒of what music might be or become 52 years ago: free, creative, previously unimagined and…popular.

You might recognize Tintweiss’s name if you’re an aficionado of the early ESP recordings and the ‘60s explosion of free jazz. He’s the bassist in the band with Burton Greene that accompanies Patty Waters on that extraordinary version of “Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair” on her ESP debut. Tintweiss is also the bassist on Albert Ayler’s final tour recordings, Nuits de La Fondation Maeght. The backing band on Silver’s Apostolic Session is composed of musicians more familiar in advanced jazz than rock circles. Greene is the pianist. Calo Scott (who worked with Gerry Mulligan, Ahmed-Abdul Malik, Gato Barbieri and Archie Shepp, and appeared on Carla Bley and Paul Haines’ Escalator over the Hill [the most ambitious genre fusion/confusion of the era]) plays cello. Marc Levin, who made a record for Savoy in 1968 with Scott and Cecil McBee, plays cornet. & valve trombone. Dave Baker, who played trombone with George Russell and later became a cellist and famed jazz educator, was the recording engineer.

What does the music sound like? Crazy. Stuart’s songs come in broken, half-talked phrases, with sudden interval leaps, shifts in timbre, pitch bends, weird shrieks and yodels. The words to “Inspiration” and “Nickel Bag of Tears” are a struggle to understand (I came away from the former with “the wet collect the faded dead”; the latter has a great title) . . . almost Dylan sings Schoenberg. If I’d heard it fifty years ago, I probably could have made out the words (or just imagined them). The accompanying music is loopy, filled with high-speed collisions, compound dissonances and twisted solo episodes, held together by sometimes commonplace riffs. Paul Nash’s guitar is either fragmentary or high speed, haunted by strange, internal tensions. Scott and Greene are momentarily brilliant and strange, while Tintweiss, conducting, somehow manages to make all the disparate and far-flung bits, pieces and sudden impulses come together, in a way that may be more spontaneous if less magical than Captain Beefheart.

It summons up a time when music could be both brief and startling.

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Abdul Moimême: Sound Sculpter / Sonic Architect

Abdul Moiméme. Photo (c) Nuno Martins

 
Introduction 

By Paul Acquaro

This past summer, late July to be more precise, I had a partial chance encounter with guitarist/sound sculpture Abdul Moimême outside of the Jazz Messengers record shop in Lisbon. I say 'partial' because we had been in touch about his latest recordings and had made loose plans to meet up during the Jazz em Agosto festival. This turned out to be one of several impromptu meet-ups we had during the week, the rest at an outdoor cafe after the evening concerts.

Going back a bit further, my first encounter with Moimême, and his music, was at Jazz em Agosto in 2019. He performed in a hall with a set up where the audience was seated over the performer, a bit like a lecture hall, a bit like a surgical theater. I remember being intrigued and a bit confused. Going back to the sentences I wrote about the performance:

It's a microscopic moment blown up into a 45-minute expose, where all the vibrations, magnetization, and charge of a strummed chord on an electric guitar is turned inside out as the audience follows the note through the wires and out the speakers. Or, rather, as a fellow I spoke with after the show described, "it's like we are ants in a universe of sound."

On the landing outside the record shop, amongst the fantastic open steel staircases and exposed gangways, on the second level of a bookshop inside an old industrial building in Lisbon's LX Factory, we spoke about the record that Moimême had just picked-up. If I recall correctly is was Joe Pass' For Django - a must hear for any guitarist, any musician, or really, anybody. I suspected the was already quite well aware of the album, but such a treasure on 180 gram vinyl cannot be easily passed up. I likely recalled a story about when a friend and I 'snuck' to a jazz bar (we weren't yet 21) in New Jersey and saw Joe Pass play shortly before he passed away, and then about a guitar I built when I was in high school, an electric that looked good but whose intonation was a bit um … crude. I called it the "More or Less Paul." The conversation shifted to Moimême's art as he described how he had also built his instruments, the guitars that he lays flat on the table and he uses to perform and record. 

Photo (c) Nuno Martins

The conversation slowly turned into a plan, but as it often goes with a plan, it was interrupted by a few things unplanned, however now, finally, in the budding moments of 2023, here it is. Over the past two days, Stuart Broomer and I reviewed two of Moimême's recent works, Ciel-Cristal and Livro das Grutas and what follows here is an account written by Moimême about his life, influences and music. He takes quite a wide view, looking at traditions of music from both historical and personal perspectives. This is followed by an annotated discography, with comments from both Moimême and me.

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Abdul on Abdul

By Abdul Moimême

Early years:

I was born in the heart of Lisbon, but at the age of 3 my family moved to New Mexico. At age 5 we moved to Dublin, where I began school, studying the English language alongside Irish. At age 9 my family moved to Madrid where I completed English secondary school, during the turbulent years that elapsed between the Portuguese ‘Carnation Revolution’ and the conclusion of Spain’s drawn-out and agitated transition into Democracy. Though we lived in Madrid, my holidays were spent in Portugal, which implied living in two totally contrasting worlds; the repressive governance of the latter-day Franco regime and, contrastingly, the euphoric and unbridled freedom of the early Portuguese revolutionary process, which culminated in our current Democratic regime.

Transition:

During the days of the ancien régime, music was both a means of resistance, as well as a way of attaining a modest degree of freedom. I believe the title of the Jazz em Agosto festival, in its 2019 edition, Resistance, somewhat echoes the spirit of that time. After all, the code that unleashed the ‘Carnation Revolution’ and the demise of the Portuguese dictatorship was basically a protest song, played on the radio; Grandola Vila Morena, to which Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra paid a beautiful tribute. This to say that, for me, very early on, music and especially improved music, became an existential and aesthetic necessity of the utmost urgency.

Movida:

Alongside both of these major political and social changes came an ample exposure to live jazz, as both countries began to frequently promote concerts and festivals. For me, some of the highlights in those years were (literally) sitting beside Bill Evan’s piano, during his stellar performance at Madrid’s Balboa Jazz Club, as well as listening to the Jazz Messengers playing totally acoustic, as the minute size of the same club so permitted. This was in the Madrid of the early Pedro Almodovar’s films and La Movida Madrileña, the counterculture movement that was to rock the very foundations of Spain’s intrinsically reactionary society.

During this period, I moved to Boston for a year, to begin college; living in Lexington, with a group of jazz musicians, which included pianist Bruce Torff. Though at the time I wasn’t actively playing music, I was exposed to the prolific scene there, topped off with the odd trip to New York’s jazz and rock clubs.

In 1983, after two decades of living abroad, I made Lisbon my permanent residence, where I concluded my degree; living for a short period in the Azores islands, where I began my career as a professional architect.

Musical background:

My itinerant life inevitably had an impact on my interest and approach to music. The necessity of adapting to regularly changing environments, as well as being exposed to different cultures, not only broadened my tastes as it also directed me toward improvisation, as if it were an inevitability of my own fate. Though many genres of music were played in my house, essentially, I discovered jazz and contemporary ‘classical’ music on my own.

I started learning the guitar at the age of 11, with a private teacher; later studying with her brother, Raul, a proficient flamenco and rock guitarist. With him I studied both genres. At the time flamenco was evolving from its traditional form, incorporating rock and other styles of music into its lexicon. Around that period, Paco de Lucia released his album Fuente y Caudal, which incorporated electric bass; the very same year Santana brought his Welcome album tour to Madrid’s Monumental Theatre. I was a young adolescent and very impressed by the latter’s band. By then, I had already worn out the grooves of Caravanserai and Axis: Bold as Love. In those formative years such LP releases as George Benson’s Body Talk, Jim Hall’s Jim Hall, Live!, Anthony Braxton Five Pieces, Pat Metheny’s Bright Size Life and Miles Davis’ Aragtha were soon to suffer the same fortune.

As far as influences are concerned I am wary of acknowledging any, merely because it implies assuming the responsibility of a legacy; something I refuse to invoke light-heartedly. Besides, one tends to idealize one’s own work beyond realistic proportions. Contrarily, I acknowledge that the musicians with whom I have played have influenced me greatly.

Essentially, I consider myself a ‘street musician’.

Approach:

The reason I became aware of the electric guitar as a very distinct instrument, as compared to the Spanish guitar, was the moment I discovered notes could be prolonged indefinitely by positioning the guitar in a certain spatial relationship to the amplifier. I’m talking about the kind of sustain Carlos Santana used to achieve simply with guitar and amp, with no added electronic effects. It took me a long time to realize how that simple physical phenomenon could open so many doors and help me sculpt my particular sound. Amplification became much more than an accessory of the guitar; it became an integral part of the instrument, modulating the vibration of the guitar’s strings in an array of possible forms.

It took me many years to really begin to fully explore these possibilities, something which has become an ongoing work in progress. It has come to the point where I have a metallic bar that attaches the guitar stand to the speaker. Laying the guitar horizontally also allowed me to use gravity as a technical resource, permitting me to constantly shift approaches and discover new techniques; though technique is only but a means to an end. For me, the most interesting musicians are those capable of subjugating their skills to the critical reflection of what makes a sound meaningful.

Only recently have I begun to incorporate electronics. Previously I only relied on straightforward amplification. Though it sounded like electronic music the only electronics involved were various stages of pre-amplification and amplification; the bulk of my sound palette relying solely on objects and the way I ‘prepare’ the guitar with them.

Although I acquired my first electric guitar when I was 16, a 1973 Fender Stratocaster which I still have, in the same year I decided to build another solid body guitar with a humbucking pickup, from scratch, starting with a raw block of mahogany. At the time, guitar parts were not on sale in Portugal, so my father had to bring them from the US. I ended up installing an early super distortion pickup and for the truss rod a solid brass bar, embedded into the neck with epoxy glue did the trick. The guitar has a beautiful tone and I use it more often than not. Recently, I designed and built a slightly more sophisticated instrument, a lap steel with a 27, 5 in. scale. Both these instruments constitute what I consider as one single instrument, as I frequently play them in tandem. 

Photo (c) Nuno Martins

Saxophone:

In the early nineties I started taking saxophone lessons with Patrick Brennan. For the greater part of the decade I focused solely on the tenor; at the time I was also playing with an indie rock band called Hipnotica, with whom I recorded 2 CDs, also doubling on flute and the clarinet.

2007 was a year of significant change for me, as I abandoned the tenor and returned to the electric guitar, beginning to explore the possibilities of playing two guitars simultaneously. That change is documented in the Variable Geometry Orchestra’s CD, Stills (cs100). My first solo CD, Nekhephthu, followed in 2008, with the two guitar combination; at which point I also began playing solo concerts.

Lisbon Scene:

Returning to Lisbon had a huge impact on my listening and playing; especially due to the music scene that started to emerge from the early 2000s onwards. Through Ernesto Rodrigues’ Variable Geometry Orchestra and his smaller format groups, in which I participated, such as Suspensão, IKB, String Theory and the isotope Ensemble, I encountered a fertile environment for experimentation. As Lisbon became a hub for jazz and free improvisation, I was also fortunate to play with many visiting artists, something that clearly impacted both my listening as well as my playing.

The advent of a new generation of extremely well equipped and creative Portuguese improvisers has been a most welcomed occurrence.

Ongoing projects:

Currently, apart from playing in the various aforementioned ensembles led by Ernesto Rodrigues, some of the ongoing projects in which I’m involved include:

• A duo with Wade Matthews (digital synthesis);
• A duo with Patrick Brennan (alto saxophone)
• A duo with Lionel Marchetti (analogue synthesizer)
• Dissection Room trio with Albert Cirera (soprano & tenor sax), Alvaro Rosso (double bass);
• A trio with Maria do Mar (violin), Sofia Borges (percussion);
• Transition Zone trio with Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello), Carlos Santos (analogue synthesis)
• MJAJA a quintet with Mariana Dionisio (vocals), João Almeida (trumpet), Alvaro Rosso (double bass), João Valinho (percussion)
• A duo with performer Lorena Izquierdo

***

Selected Discography

By Abdul Moimême and Paul Acquaro

In this section, Abdul Moimême reflects on select moments in his discography with additional commentary by Paul Acquaro. 

Complaintes De Marée Basse / with Diatribes (Insub,  2010)

Abdul Moimême: In March 2009 the Swiss duo, Diatribes, including electronics musician D'Incise and percussionist Cyril Bondi and I played our first trio performance at the Clean Feed Record store; playing at the Mapping Festival, in Geneva, the following year. In 2011 we tour in Portugal and southern Europe, culminating in a concert with the Insub Meta Orchestra, in Strasbourg. Complaintes De Marée Basse is a product of that collaboration. We later recorded a second CD, Queixas, touring in Switzerland in 2013.

Paul Acquaro: Drums, laptop, percussion large and small, prepared guitars (of course!) and as the CD notes say "metallic objects" - just the ingredients should give you a sense of the final product. From this inventory, you know that the the trio will begin building something with a lot of scraping, clattering and clanging and that the sonic structure the construct will be something never before seen heard. Each track is like a new floor, another layer of creativity, a new arrangement of tones. Track two, 'Crustaćes,' becomes beguiling as the tempo increases and the sounds merge, while track five, 'Entre Les Haut-Fonds,' is the audio commentary for a tour through the HVAC system, leading to track 6 'Pavillon Noir,' where it all comes tensely together.

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 Khettahu / with Ricardo Guerreiro (Creative Sources, 2011)

AM: At the time, as part of his approach, electronics musician Ricardo Guerreiro was especially interested in processing other people’s sound, using this as the foundation of his playing. We worked for a year, improvising together regularly, culminating in Khettahu, a live studio recording of improvised pieces.

PA: Real-time re-processing is fascinating. Taking something that in some ways is familiar and turning it into something new and unexpected can yield exciting results. Here we are invited deep into the visceral percussive and vibrating world that Moiméme builds with his two guitars and whatever he has prepared them with. By the middle of track two (#34), it feels like we are outside, blown by wind, sheets of metal clanging around us, and the middle tracks (#29.1, 29.2 and 29.3) are a trek through a barren land of blustery snow and bare tree branches.

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Fabula / with Axel Dörner, Ernesto Rodrigues, Ricardo Guerreiro (Creative Sources, 2012)

AM: As a follow-up to Khettahu, Ricardo and I invited German trumpeter and composer Axel Dörner to play and record with us. Violinist Ernesto Rodrigues joined the trio in this concert, recorded in central Portugal, on a freezing night in the winter of 2011. Stuart Broomer kindly wrote the brilliant liner notes. The piece was an improvisation and the quartet was playing together for the very first time.

PA: Adding the Dörner and Rodrigues to the collaboration between Moiméme and Guerreiro amps up the "unfamiliar" in many ways. Dörner's own foray into the sonic unknown with his trumpet and electronics can already be a riveting experience. With Rodrigues' viola, the undulating audio-landscape is filled with flashes of something identifiable, yet still out of reach. At times, certainly in the later third of the recording, the sounds become almost subconscious, leaving more of a feeling of something being there than a distinct memory of exactly what it was.

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Mekhaanu / Solo (Insub,  2013)

AM: Mekhaanu is my second solo CD and, as in all my solo works thus far, it was totally improvised, as I like to approach studio session similarly to live performances. In other words, using the solo context as a laboratory for experimentation. D’Incise, who had recently created his net label INSUB was amply impressed by the rough mix as to volunteer to concoct the final mix and master and release it on his label. It’s one of their first releases.

PA:  Moiméme's liner notes are particular interesting, as he draws contrasts between mechanisms and digitization. For the most part, Moiméme's work is "analog," in terms that he manipulates the sounds that naturally come from his prepared guitars and the waves between them and his amplifiers. In his notes, he writes"our daily lives are also permeated by mechanical sounds," and if we pay attention, we will hear "a territory where wild mechanisms live unbridled by any human restraint." So, what we hear in this solo recording is the unprocessed guitars and endless variation of sound generation - and for what it is worth, the sounds of a plucked string stands out of the drones, oscillations, overtones, and all out audio assaults. 

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Rumor / with Marco Scarassatti, Eduardo Chagas, Gloria Damijan (Creative Sources, 2015)

AM: Rumor was the result of our meeting at the MIA improvisation festival, held yearly in Atoughia da Baleia, Portugal. Marco Scrassatti is a specialist on Walter Smetak, the Swiss composer and instrument inventor, as well as being an improviser and composer himself, also teaching music at the University in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Gloria Damijan is an Austrian pianist and Eduardo Chagas a Lisbon based trombonist and improviser. Marco builds all his instruments and, at the time, Gloria frequently improviser with an assortment of small objects and the inside of a toy piano. This project was also a consequence of an invitation, the previous year, to a committee of Portuguese musicians, by the UFMG University (Minas Gerais), to play in Brazil.

PA: The opening moments of Rumor instantly have a different feel than the other recordings so far visited. There is the possibility of a melody, of some sort of musical structure, that seems to pervade 'Improvisation I,' then about half-way through, Chagas' trombone can be heard, pushing through the  layers of sound. It's a ghost though, submerging back into the restrained collective drone. Then, there is chiming tone, it too fade away, but each time noticeably suggestive. 'Improvisation II' continues with restraint and the feeling that something is lurking, about to happen. About two-thirds through there is a peak of energy that trails off to a exploratory exchange of sounds.

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Exosphere - live at the Pantheon / Solo (Creative Sources, 2017)

AM: Exosphere results from an invitation by the ‘Escuta Profunda’ festival, curated by João Silva, to play in Lisbon’s pantheon, where amongst the cenotaphs of various prestigious Portuguese historical figures is buried the seminal singer Amália Rodrigues. The building is also the culminating piece of Portuguese Baroque architecture.

The concert was totally improvised as I had no preconceived idea, at all, of what might be played.

Once again, Stuart Broomer wrote the wonderful liner notes.

PA: Broomer's notes contain all of the important points needed to navigate this 'music.' He discusses the physicality of the sounds, the metallic scrapings, the sonic spaces and the vastness of the landscapes. There is a point where he writes, "there is a sense in which Moiméme's guitar music is at once epic and abstract, physical and metaphysical, the reimagined instrument itself become projectile ... but both its launching mechanism and target are here subject to inquiry..." This incomplete quote sums up for me the haunting and emphemeral (but also so very real and tangible) sounds that Moiméme conjures from his instruments. Eyal Hareuveni also wrote about this work on the Free Jazz Blog here.

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Lisbon: 10 Sound Portraits / with Wade Matthews (Creative Sources, 2017)

AM: I believe my liner notes for this work are self-explanatory.

PA:  Again, I could hardly offer a better overview of this music than Stuart Broomer does in his article about the making of the source materials of this recording. In my articles about Jazz em Agosto over the past few years, I have indulged myself in writing about my wanderings around Lisbon, a city that really must experienced by foot - as dangerous as that can get on some of those tight, twisting streets. In addition to the sights, there are the sounds, sounds of the waterfront, the aqueduct, the scrape of a historic street trolly as it climbs the hills of the city, and much more. On this album, Moiméme has worked with Wade Matthews to record the sounds of the city - one whose sounds themselves are changing. The resulting recording is a pairing of Moiméme's sound sculptures with the field recordings, intertwining and becoming their own tone poems.

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Dissection Room / with Albert Cirera, Alvaro Rosso (Creative Sources, 2018)

AM: Dissection Room, as the trio is called (formerly AAA) was formed in 2015 and has since then played regularly. Catalan saxophonist Albert Cirera apart from his outstanding solo work and various formations, has worked regularly with pianist Agustí Fernandez. Uruguayan double bass player currently lives in Lisbon, playing with some of the most relevant Portuguese improvisation groups, including ensembles with violinist Carlos Zingaro.

PA: One long track, over 53 minutes in total, begins with some blurted notes from saxophonist Albert Cirera. Moiméme's distinct metallic clangs and warping strings are discernible. We are still waiting to hear from Alvaro Rosso's double bass ... and there it is, a low droning below the droplets of sound. A few minutes and this long standing trio's individual contributions are congealing into a cohesive, lightly abrasive blanket of tone. Around 10 minutes in the bass is hopping about a bit, while Moiméme is adding reverberating augmentation. Again around the 18 minute mark the interplay, especially between Cirera and Rosso is alight - though still firmly rooted in the atonal sound-world. The intensity ebbs and flows, but the tension is always present, until the recording's minimalist ending. Of the recordings so far in this list, Dissection Room seems to be the most musically varied. Eyal Hareuveni also reviewed Dissection Room here.

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Terraphonia / with patrick brennan* (Creative Sources, 2018)

AM: My association with Patrick dates back to the early 1990 when I was his student and played percussion in one of the piece of his landmark CD Which Way What. Which Way What was important for Patrick as it consolidated his career as composer and bandleader but also because it was, I believe, Acacio Salero’s debut as jazz drummer, an outstanding Portuguese percussionist who has since disappeared from the local scene.

In Terraphonia patrick and I establish a continuous dialogues, where the rhythmic and melodic lines of the alto are constantly interwoven with the rhythmic and textural material of the electric guitars (played in tandem). 

PA: For this one, I'm going to quote myself from my original review here on the Free Jazz Blog: "This is hard to define music, but even when the harshest tones are at play, the duo presents them with care and precision. Brennan compliments Moimême's sudden tonal attacks with quickly formed ideas, while Moimême fills the silences that the saxophonist's leave with unexpected sounds. The track 'gotabrilhar' stands out, the short track, mid-album, features a buzzing-bee sax and a darkly lit landscape painted by a droning and moaning guitar."

*spelled in lower case at the musicians request

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Aura / with Ernesto Rodrigues, Nuno Torres (Creative Sources, 2019)

AM: Aura is another trio improvised concert with two musician with whom I play regularly in Lisbon, in the various ensembles led by violist Ernesto Rodrigues.

PA: This short recording (31:28 minutes in total) is sort of an exercise in self-restraint. The three musicians, Ernesto Rodriques on viola, Nuno Torres on also saxophone, and, of course, Moiméme, blend their respective intruments seamlessly. All of the small sounds, long tones, crunchy textures, whistling tones that make up the bulk of the exploratory concert set reach a knotty crescendo in the final moment of the recording.

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Transition Zone / with Fred Lonberg-Holm, Carlos Santos(Creative Sources, 2019)

AM: Carlos Santos (analogue and digital synthesis) and I have an ongoing duo project where we invite or are invited to play with a third musician. Wade Matthews (digital synthesis), Wilfrido Terrazas (flute), Emidio Buchinho (guitar), Mariana Dionisio (voice) and José Bruno Parrinha (clarinets) have all been our partners.

Here we invited cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm to join forces with us. This improvised studio session was the very first time we played together as a trio. Since then we frequently play together when Fred is in town.

Rather than a traditional liner note, Stuart Broomer’s text functions as a conceptual extension of the music. 

PA: Quite true, the liner notes are a tone poem themselves. Playing with the sound of the words as they transition from the cardboard sleeve to the readers/listeners mind, and playing with the very words on the cardboard themselves, the notes should be read to the beat-less music with their own cadence. The music - well sound - pulsates with energy. With Fred-Lonberg-Holm providing eviserating, electroncally enhanced cello work, couple with Carlos Santos' synthesizer, Moiméme is in electric company here.  The opening 'Whirr' begins without reservation, buzzing, zapping, clattering from the count of ... whatever. Follow up 'Hush' begins with searing legato notes from the cello and vibrations from the prepared guitars. Crackles of electronic sound emanate from (likely) the synthesizer. As the track continues, sounds stretch like Silly-Putty being stretched to its breaking point. The wealth of sounds and their imaginative application abound on fascinating this recording.

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Ciel-Cristal / with Lionel Marchetti (Sonoscopi, 2022)

 

AM: When Wade Matthews and I played in duo, in the COPLEXA festival (2017), organized by the Sonoscopia Association, I was extremely impressed by Lionel’s duo with Xavier Garcia. Providentially, Sonoscopia invited Lionel and myself to do a residency at their premises, culminating in a concert at Porto’s planetarium. 

See Stuart Broomer's review of Ciel-Cristal here.

 

 

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Livro das Grutas / with Wilfrido Terrazas, Mariana Carvalho (Creative Sources, 2022)

AM: My association with Wilfrido dates back to 2016, when we played together at the Spanish Cervantes institute in Lisbon. Since then Wilfrido has returned on regular visits and consequently he proposed a studio session, to which we invited the upcoming Brazilian pianist, Mariana Carvalho, now residing in Berlin. 

See my review of Livro das Grutas here.

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Stuart Broomer

Like most people Stuart Broomer identifies with the music he heard as a child and most strongly with the music he heard in his teens. From his childhood he recalls Hank Williams, Elvis Presley, Gene Vincent, but also instrumental music: Duane Eddy, The Ventures, the flamenco for export of Carlos Montoya and the first jazz he heard, Lester Young (a 45-rpm single of “Frenesi”), Billie Holiday and Miles Davis. In 1961 he happened to read (in one of the last issues of Metronome) an essay on the jazz avant-garde by Amiri Baraka (then Leroi Jones). He probably understood little of it, but he was captured by free jazz before he had ever heard it, and the article contributed to him becoming, at 13, what an acquaintance once described as the youngest beatnik he had ever met. First hearing the LPs Ornette! and Free Jazz in early 1962, he found the world in which, with only slight adjustments, he felt most at home. Within a couple of years he had heard and greeted the musics of Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, John Cage and others of similar ilk, paths that he has continued to pursue as listener, commentator and occasional creator, following those threads into an ever expanding present.

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John Russell (1954 - 2021)

John Russell (photo by Peter Gannushkin)

By Martin Schray

It was German saxophonist Stefan Keune who told me in March 2020 that John Russell was dying of cancer and that he - depending on how well chemotherapy worked - didn’t know how long he would live. Now, the great British guitarist has passed away.

John Russell began to play in and around London from 1971 onwards. He soon connected with the emerging free improvisation scene and became a student of Derek Bailey's. Although he was obviously influenced by the legendary guitarist, Russell found his unique musical personality, he was highly abstract and unpredictable. Or, as my colleague Stuart Broomer once put it: “Where Bailey disrupted the idiomatic gesture, Russell sometimes invokes it; where Bailey practiced discontinuity, Russell can create alternative order“. Sometimes his improvisations seemed to resonate blues or swing patterns, but Russell used them extraordinarily freely, as if they had been carried by a gust of wind and moved on immediately. Another distinctive feature has to do with his instrument, a 1936 Zenith archtop acoustic guitar. It’s an unamplified but loud instrument, which was often used by swing band guitarists, who needed to compete with the brass section. This instrument allowed him to make use of harmonics in a genuinely significant way.

John Russell has played with almost everyone who’s important in the worldwide improv scene and his work can be heard on many albums. There’s a lot of his music which is really to be recommended, starting with his trio album Artless Sky (Caw Records, 1980) featuring Toshinori Kondo on trumpet and his longtime collaborator Roger Turner on drums. The album I became aware of him for the first time was News From The Shed (Acta, 1987) with John Butcher (sax), Phil Durant (violin, electronics), Radu Malfatti (trombone) and Paul Lovens (drums), a real masterpiece of improvised music, maybe the best FMP album which was never released on the seminal German label. London Air Lift (FMP, 1991) with Evan Parker (sax), John Edwards (bass) and Mark Sanders (drums) must be mentioned here, as well as his duos with Stefan Keune. Recently Stuart Broomer has reviewed Nothing Particularly Horrible (FMR, 2019) enthusiastically, another collaboration with Keune, Lovens and bassist Hans Schneider.

However, Russell was more than just a musician. In 1981, he founded Quaqua, a large bank of improvisers put together in different combinations for specific projects and in 1991 he started Mopomoso, which has become the UK’s longest running concert series featuring mainly improvised music.

A true gentleman, a master of subtlety, an excellent musician has left the stage. He will truly be missed.

Watch John Russell play solo: 

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Daunik Lazro - Recent Releases Old and New (1/3)

A little while ago, Free Jazz Blog contributor David Cristol interviewed French saxophonist Daunik Lazro (here)- shedding a bit of light on a seminal figure in the development of French free improvisation. Over the past few years, Lazro has been actively filling in the gaps of his already impressive discography with archival recordings on mainly (but not limited to) Fou Records. Over the next several days Stuart Broomer, Paul Acquaro and Stef Gijssels will explore many of these recordings.

By Stuart Broomer

Annick Nozati, Daunik Lazro - Sept Fables Sur L'Invisible (Mazeto Square, 2024) (Recorded 1994)

This duet was recorded at the 11^th edition of Festival Musique Action in May 1994. Nozati is credited with voice and texts, Lazro with alto and baritone saxophones. It is work of the rarest quality, testament of empathy, dreamscape, collaboration of great technical resource. Novati, among the most expressive of improvising vocalists, can also be among the most restrained, reducing her sound to the purest expression, whether executing wide intervals or tracing the subtlest gradations of pitch. These spontaneous songs often stretch tones beyond anything recognizable as verbal. Voice and saxophone proceed with an intimate entwining of lines. The two first tracks are the longest, each developed brilliantly. With “A’loré” we are immediately immersed in an unknown world, Nozati’s voice is a somber, slightly gravelly, invocation, Lazro’s alto possesses a lightness approaching the timbre of a flute; eventually Nozati’s voice will grow in intensity, but an intensity that is tightly controlled, while Lazro’s sound becomes wholly saxophone, sweetly abrasive, subtly multiphonic, fluttering from register to register, the whole a triumph of emotional depth. “Alterné”, the following track, continues the profundity in very different ways, beginning with a solo baritone saxophone that Nozati eventually joins in a duo of breathtaking exactitude of pitch, the two “voices” mirroring and complementing one another. Those qualities are developed throughout. 

Daunik Lazro/ Carlos Alves "Zingaro"/ Joëlle Léandre/ Paul Lovens - Madly You (Fou, 2024) (Recorded 2001)

Madly You, initially released on Potlatch in 2002, was recorded at the Banlieues Bleues Festival in 2001 and places Lazro squarely and fittingly in a quartet of master improvisers and contemporaries – bassist (and vocalist) Joëlle Léandre, violinist Carlos “Zingaro”, drummerPaul Lovens – all marked by an ability, and willingness, to find a unique collective vision, exercising rare, collective genius. Within the first minute of the opening “Madly You”, the four have begun to construct an original space in an interweave of bowed string harmonics from Léandre and “Zingaro”, distinguishable primarily by register and resonance, a duet that continues for an extended period with Lovens’ tidily minimalist, Asiatic abstraction and punctuation of taut drum and shimmering metal, eventually leading to a triumphal veil too translucent to be called a drum solo. Lazro’s entry on baritone straddles a large mammal’s eerie pain and a bank of oscillators, soon calling up a sympathetic whistling of arco strings. Everything is in flux, including the baritone’s high-speed flight in barely accented lines, then the shifting dialogue is sustained without longueurs to slightly over forty minutes, including whispering baritone saxophone (remarkably, Lazaro can play violently and dizzyingly quietly), pizzicato bass, violin and drums, the whole sometimes devoted to a collective skittering in which delineations of identity are under scrutiny. There’s also a march. The following “Lyou Mad”, at about half the length, sustains the quality, with Lazro’s baritone foregrounded and Léandre and “Zingaro” creating squall as well as chamber textures. 

Sophie Agnel/ “Kristoff K. Roll”/ Daunik Lazro - Quartet un peu Tendre (Fou Records, 2024) (Recorded 2020/21) 

Collective genius is invariably social. Here that dimension is insistent.

Quartet un peu tendre (the title is ironic) matches Lazro’s baritone with Sophie Agnel’s piano and the electronic devices of “Kristoff K. Roll”, the duo

Of J-Kristoff Camps and Carole Rieussec. There are two extended pieces: “au départ c’est une photo” (“At the Beginning It's a Photo”) and “l’hiver sera chaud” (“winter will be warm), 31 and 41 minutes respectively. It’s collective improvisation, but the collection of sound sources employed by the Kristoff K. Roll duo take it to other dimensions, from found sound and musique concrète, extended sound samples of a speech, a pitch-distorted children’s choir and various synthesized elements. The cumulative effect may some feel opposite to the intense “live” improvisation of Sept Fables or Madly You. That immediate sense of place and time is here displaced by a compound experience, the instrumental resources of Lazro and Agnel drawn into a kind of compound nowhere, a theatre without walls in which the lost, found and immediate mingle together, elsewhere and nowhere with now, then and maybe in a compound experience of never and somewhere.

There’s a beautiful moment of temporality, almost a lullaby amidst “au départ c’est…” (that time frame might be ironic, the warm winter, too) in which Lazro plays the sweetest of reveries accompanied by only Agnel’s lightly articulated, damped intervals. When other elements enter, quiet and abstracted, they do not disrupt the effect but nonetheless strangely compound the time, eventually situating the duo in a kind of unidentifiable field, industrial, intimate, unknowable.

“L’hiver sera chaud” will take this even further, beginning with an animated crowd scene that includes both a central orator and shouting children, suggesting a post-colonial third world –a documentary that partners with the passionate or profoundly considered improvisations to create a compound time of inter-related realities and responsibilities. Dogmatic? Hardly. Subtleties abound: a piano plays in a dry acoustic; simultaneous random percussion is alive with resonant overtones. Lazar’s baritone wanders through an industrial forcefield and a windfarm. I want my best of ’24 lists back for revision. This “tender quartet”, this multiverse of living tissue, insists. 

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The musical adventures of Gonçalo Almeida

 By Stef Gijssels

Every year, Sergio Piccirilli of the Argentinian jazz website "El Intruso" asks 60 jazz critics from around the world to make their lists of top musicians and top albums. We are very privileged to be represented by several of our "Free Jazz Collective" reviewers: Sammy Stein, Paul Acquaro, Eyal Hareuveni, Stuart Broomer and myself. This was the 17th iteration of the international list, and I can agree with many of the final artists reaching the rankings. 

This task of selecting the best of each is of course almost impossible for any reviewer, and I think we all share the sentiment that we cannot do justice to the great musicians and ensembles that do not make the list. The assessment is very subjective of course, possibly influenced too by the mood of the moment. 

In my list, Portuguese double bass player Gonçalo Almeida, is ranked on the first spot as the 'musician of the year'. I will tell you why here. 

I'll start with the music that we already reviewed in the past year. 

First, there is The Attic's latest album "La Grande Crue" (No Business, 2024), with Rodrigo Amado, Onno Govaert and Eve Risser, and with Almeida on bass. The album received excellent reviews and made many end-of-year lists. The album was reviewed by Stuart Broomer and can be found here. 

From my side, I reviewed "Tabula Sonorum Organum - Sub Aere" (Cylinder, 2024), a highly unusual duet between Bart van Dongen on organ, and Gonçalo Almeida on double bass. You can find the review here. 

My favourite album of the year was "States of Restraint" (Clean Feed, 2024), a strange, adventurous, genre-bending and avant-gardish sound exploration with Susana Santos Silva and Gustavo Costa. You can find my review here. 

Almeida is also a member of the Luis Vicente Trio which delivered their excellent sophomore album "Come Down Here" (Clean Feed, 2024). You can find my review here. 

So here are the not yet reviewed albums. 

Gonçalo Almeida & Pierre Bastien - Dialogues and Shadows (Futura Resistenza, 2024)

The album is a co-created soundscape with French sound artist and instrument builder Pierre Bastien, whom we reviewed earlier on this blog, also in collaboration with Almeida. This album is even better than the first one, more mature, less focused on effects and more on the music itself. It's eery and compelling at the same time. Mesmerising and strange. You hear a whole world of sounds with somewhat familiar sonic bites coming from unidentifiable instruments.  Don't miss this one.

Albatre – Bruxas (Shhpuma, 2024)

After six years, we get a new album by the doom jazz trio Albatre, the brainchild of Gonçalo Almeida on bass, keyboards & electronics, Hugo Costa on alto sax, baritone sax & effects, and Philipp Ernsting on drums & electronics. This is not for the faint of heart, yet it is smart and meticulously organised, with frequent rhythm changes, different accents and sonic colouring. The jazz version of death metal (or something to that extent: I get totally lost in all these 'metal' subgenres). This is as violent as other of Almeida's endeavours are gentle. The title "Bruxas" is Portuguese for witches. Don't say I did not warn you ...

Carla Santana, José Lencastre, Maria Do Mar, Gonçalo Almeida - Defiant Illusion (New Wave Of Jazz, 2024)

 

This album is also quite exceptional. We've already mentioned Carla Santana's work on electronics with the "Variable Geometry Orchestra" and the "Isotope Ensemble". Here is a rare album with her as a leader, in the company of José Lencastre on alto and tenor sax, Maria do Mar on violin and Gonçalo Almeida on double bass. This gentle chamber music is surprising and beautiful at the same time. Apart from the rather unique sound of the ensemble, the interaction between the violin and the arco bass are exceptional, with José Lencastre finding the right level to add to it - and even becoming a string instrument almost. Santana's own electronics are never obtrusive yet fully harmonic with the overall sound. Highly recommended. 

Gonçalo Almeida & Rutger Zuydervelt - Eventual (Gusstaff Records 2024)

"Eventual" is the third release by the duo of Almeida on bass and Zuydervelt on electronics. The latter was asked to create the soundtrack for a documentary, and invited Almeida to join. Even if the music was eventually not used, both musicians continued their creative collaboration. This is their first full CD. In start contrast to some of the other albums reviewed here, the sound is quiet, dark, drone-like with the bass exclusively played with a bow. It's a single track, that evolves minimalistically around one tonal center, with minor shifts in timbre and colour. 

Almeida & Jacquemyn - Encounters (FMR, 2024) 

"Encounters" is a double bass duo with Belgian Peter Jacquemyn, who is also a chainsaw sculptor. The music fits in the tradition of Peter Kowald on bass, a direct physical yet intimate dialogue of two musicians who challenge and celebrate each other's playing. Almost the entire album is played arco. 

Dávila, Almeida, Furtado - Illusions and Lamentations (Phonogram Unit, 2024) 

The trio of Pacho Dávila from Colombia on tenor and soprano saxophones, with Portuguese Vasco Furtado on drums and Almeida on bass gives us a pretty straightforward free jazz trio. The quality of the playing is excellent, with constant good quality and all three musicians in great shape. 

 

Bulliphant - Sleep (Off Record, 2024)

Almeida also performs in the Belgian-Dutch quintet Bulliphant. The other musicians are Bart Maris on trumpets, Ruben Verbruggen on saxophones, Thijs Troch on piano & electronics, and Friso van Wijck on percussion & bells. Like its predecessor "Hightailing", the album presents a mix of modern jazz styles, creative and welcoming, but with in my opinion not enough musical coherence. 

Spinifex – Undrilling the Hole (TryTone Records, 2024)

"Spinifex" is Dutch band led by alto saxophonist Tobias Klein, with Bart Maris on trumpet, John Dikeman on tenor, Jasper Stadhouders on guitar, Gonçalo Almeida on bass, and Philipp Moser on drums. This is already their eleventh album together. The music can be categorised as modern creative jazz, with very strong compositions, great unison themes, tight arrangements, steady rhythms and rhythm changes, and great musicianship, also in the improvised solos. Definitely not free jazz, yet great fun to listen to. 

In sum, Gonçalo Almeida is not only an excellent bass player - and we're really not surprised he's so much in demand in various ensembles and styles - he's especially versatile and creative in developing totally different languages of expression. "States of Restraint" has a relatively unique sound, something special and precious, but so does "Sub Aere", with its unusual duet of organ and bass, the mesmerising collaboration with Pierre Bastien, or the chamber jazz with Carla Santana. Each time Almeida is in the (co)-lead in shaping something new, and sometimes with contradictory and opposite approaches. The quiet contemplative sound of "Eventual" is almost the exact opposite of the doom jazz of Albatre. He shows himself to be a creator, an inventive adventurer, presenting us with sounds unheard, with novel approaches and interesting surprises. Many other musicians have been very prolific in 2024, but none with the same reach and innovation as Almeida. He's not only a searcher, but also a finder, not only a researcher but also a discoverer. Hence my choice. 

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