Vocals, vocals, vocals ...

I am not usually a fan of vocal jazz, let alone spoken word and jazz, for reasons explained earlier and elsewhere. From classical opera over musicals to avant-garde vocals, the artificial changes enforced on the vocal chords create an emotional distance to me, rather than the opposite, in a way that I can't really explain, because that effect is not generated in rock music (think Robert Plant or Tom Waits). Anyway, once in a while some worthwhile albums are released and Leo Records even a whole series of them. Since this is not my kind of music, I will refrain from giving these albums a star quotation.

Yet the list also again demonstrates Leo Feigin's unrelenting sense of new musical adventures. If all music sounded nice to all people, it would certainly lack character. These albums have character with truckloads.

Joachim Gies & Sound/body/cells - Shimmering (Leo Records, 2009)

German saxophonist Joachim Gies teams up with fellow countryman Denis Stilke on drums and Israeli vocalist Ronni Gilla. This avant-garde music is entrancing, with Gilla's singing holding the middle between weird sounds and ritualistic shamanic incantations. Highly unusual, with moments of intense beauty. Really worth hearing.

Sainkhò Namtchylak & Dickson Dee - Tea Opera (Leo Records, 2009)

Mongolian singer Sainkhò Namtchylak has performed before on Leo, and even has seven solo vocal albums on her discography. Here she teams up with Dickson Dee on electronics. The music is dedicated to the tea cultures of China. Dee's utterly strange yet compelling electronic backdrop forms a wonderful context for Namtchylak's unique and often hypnotic improvisations.

Katja Krusche & Martin Krusche - I Am One (Leo Records, 2009)

Improvisations for vocals and accordion by this Austrian couple. No doubt about their skills. No question about the quality of what they bring. You're probably a better judge than I am.

Stefano Luigi - Painting On Wood (Leo Records, 2009)

Stefano Luigi Mangia's vocals hold the middle between traditional jazz singing, musical and avant-garde, full of theatrical drama. Really not my cup of tea. With Gianni Lenoci on piano, Pasquale Gadaleta on bass and Marcello Magliocchi on drums.

Viviane Houle - Treize (Drip Audio, 2009) 

Canadian vocalist Viviane Houle plays thirteen duets (hence the title) with some of Canada's best modern musicians, such as Peggy Lee, Jesse Zubot, Chris Gestrin. Her vocal acrobatics may be surprising and astonish some, they leave me cold. This music is frankly beyond me.


© stef

Read More

Li Tie Qiao - Wind Of Lunacy

I once had the chance to visit the huge 798 Art Zone in Beijing, where a thriving community of modern plastic art exhibits sculptures, paintings and installations in a former weapons factory, an evolution that seems to give some hope to humanity. It also seems like the visual arts precede music, because now experimental jazz and music also start to get attention.

One of the performers is Li Tieqiao, whose solo sax album is his latest brain child. Without formal music education, Li switched his wood flute to trombone to sax, which is now his main instrument. He was presented to me as the Chinese Evan Parker, which I can understand, but not quite. Li seems to have by-passed a few decades of jazz history, taking up the most recent of free jazz in Norway, some indie rock music, and electronics, and turned them into his own personal soundscapes.

And even if this album is a solo sax record, officially, it is more electronics that you hear than the instrument's original sounds. Despite that, he manages to create sufficient tension to keep the attention going, especially on the first two tracks, on which there are still some rhythmic and even harmonic explorations, added to that some interesting shades and coloring of tones, which range from animal-like cries to industrial sounds. The third piece is pretty flat. The fourth gives the kind of cosmic and meditative soundscape which has been beaten to death by many before. The last track has the sax more prominent on the foreground.

Even if this will not be my favorite album of the year, I sincerely hope that Li and the new crowd of Chinese musicians will discover and share their experiences. As Li says in an interview about free jazz : "It was the most natural, liberating sound ... When you perform like this, your mind abandons everything. No two notes are the same ? I feel like we are conversing with each other through our instruments, discussing crucial questions".

From weapons to art, from language barriers to "conversing through instruments", there is hope indeed.

For those of you living in Belgium, or close by, the concert hall Vooruit (Gent) organises a four-day concert program this week dedicated to modern Chinese music, at which Li Tie Qiao performs . 

© stef

Read More

Lotte Anker, Craig Taborn, Gerald Cleaver - Floating Islands (Ilk, 2009) *****

One great album in a decade is an achievement, two great albums in one year is exceptional, yet this trio with saxophonist Lotte Anker, pianist Craig Taborn and drummer Gerald Cleaver does it. After "Live At The Loft", published earlier this year, also on Ilk, the trio is back with a new studio album. Anker also figures on the excellent "Mokuto" album. Cleaver participated in the equally great "Farmers By Nature" with Craig Taborn, and on Miroslav Vitous' "Remembering Weather Report".

This is the third album by the trio, and they get better with each release.

The album starts with repetitive prhases on the saxophone, built around a single tonal center, accompanied by muted minimal drumming by Cleaver, soon to be joined by the piano, setting the tone for pure musical hypnotism. Anker keeps building the tension by slightly altering the tone and the pitch, leaving the foreground to the piano, equally soft and minimal, but she keeps the sax present, barely audible, with Cleaver maintaining his muted rumbling sounds, Taborn keeping the attention going, but then after a while the sax resurfaces, slowly moaning, fragile and vulnerable, full of soaring lyricism, then the volume builds, Cleaver gets his sticks out, Taborn uses his left hand for some more powerful chords, and the composition shifts seamlessly into the sixteen minute long second track "Ritual", with intensity and tension building and growing, at a slow and wonderful pace, full of restraint and passion, mesmerizing and trance-inducing, with the rhythm becoming more angular, with the piano pounding chords, the drums kicking and the sax keeping up its wailing, screaming, full-toned howling, with the rhythm shifting underneath, falling in step, moving away again, and when you think this must end, well,... it just doesn't, the power increases, the volume increases, the tension increases, ... mad, mindless, repetitive, full throttle, the piano goes haywire, the drums go nuts, and then the sax reduces its pitch, and the rhythm changes again, odd-metered, with only piano and drums hammering on without the sax, increasing the tempo, dominating the scence, and then, out of nowhere,  the sax is back again, for another round of heart-rending, gut-wrenching high-pitched wailing, only to end with the piano turning the music out of the storm into quiet waters, full of impressionistic sophistication, moving into the third piece, "Transitory Blossom", on which Anker's sound is again as sensitive as it gets, soft and fragile, evoking the temporariness of things, with almost romantic piano, and again the piece flows as one into "Backwards River", more wayward, more avant-garde, with staccato playing by all three instruments, yet adapting quite rapidly to each other while shifting the piece together towards different musical territory, more nervous, full of wild agitation, with currents and counter-currents played by Taborn on his keys, with Cleaver going berserk at the drumkit, and when their double violence reaches the relentless power of high-speed rapids, the sax joins to add her slice of mayhem to the rhythm section pandemonium, with squeals, shouts, and howls, on and on and on, but things do come to an end, and the the piece suddenly slows down into a jumpy rhythm, unwillingly almost, but the sax goes, the piano goes, the drum stays, leading out and leading in the last track, "Even Today I'm Still Arriving", as if the river reaches the ocean, with the sax sounding like seagulls, then the sax plays solo, melodic, lyrical, yet weird in a way, and also beautiful, sensitive, with the piano adding sad minimalistic and impressionistic tones, calm and measured, with Anker adding some sparse notes, not many, but with a stunning emotional depth.

This album has it all : the mastership, the skills, the balance, the musical baggage to draw from, the musical vision, the coherent delivery, the variation, the adventure, the passion, the discipline, the raw emotional power, the sophistication, .... Absolutely stunning.


Buy from Instantjazz.

Listen and download from eMusic.

© stef

Read More

Jesse Stacken & Kirk Knuffke - Mockingbird (Steeplechase, 2009) ****

Usually I try to be cautious to keep close to this blog's profile in terms of the music that I review : adventurous, innovative, expressive, boundary-shifting music, with deep artistic vision. But once in a while it's difficult to ignore or not to share my enthusiasm for music that does not fit this category.

Pianist Jesse Stacken and trumpeter Kirk Knuffke tackle the music of Ellington and Monk, but then in a context and with a stylistic revision that belongs to early jazz, and on top of this with the technical refinement of a classical chamber ensemble. The end result is musical joy from the very first note to the last. This is an ode to the beauty of composition, melody and interplay, without any further pretense or ambition. Whether "Bright Mississippi" or "Misterioso", or especially "Skippy", the versions this fantastic duo brings of Monk's compact music is crystal clear, precise and joyful. Alternating these with Ellington's more melancholy and bluesy compositions "Isfahan" and "Sunset and The Mocking Bird" is a great idea because it adds variation. The album ends with "Four In One", with both musicians playing the tune in unison at breackneck speed, and in truth, a piece to laugh out loud just from sheer listening enjoyment at their skills and at the end result. Not free, not avant-garde, but a daring and refreshing take on two icons of jazz history by two young musicians whose normal biotope is modern jazz. Enjoy!

© stef

Read More

Ivo Perelman - Mind Games (Leo Records, 2009) ****

 In the liner notes to the album, Art Lande writes "Mind Games is the latest adventure in an odyssey of intuition and expression, freedom and control", and that's a quite apt description for Ivo Perelman's music, with Dominic Duval on bass and Brian Willson (with double "ll") on drums. The Brazilian saxophonist is a lyrical powerplayer or a powerful lyricist, depending on the viewpoint, with melodic phrasings coming spontaneously out of traditional jazz and Brazilian music, yet embedded in a restless search for freedom and emotional expressivity of a kind that surpasses the mediocre. I wrote earlier that it requires excellent creative inspiration to make a trio a captivating listen from beginning to end, and Perelman is a master in this. He has a story to tell, with lots of variations, plots and subplots, tension and suspense, integrating moments of intimacy with wilder excursions, but always with a great sense of pace and rhythm. Dominic Duval's style of non-conformist sensitivity is a perfect match for Perelman. I did not know drummer Brian Willson, who has performed quite a lot with Duval but hasn't released many albums so far, yet his rhythmic wizzardry is here fully at the service of the tenorist, and he gets the chance to demonstrate his great skills on "G.S. Farewell", a very long piece on which the drums kicks off, then dominates the pace and the sound, making the improvisation evolve like waves that come and go, swell and flatten, intensify and relax. Perelman has quieted down a bit compared to some of his earlier releases, yet he has gained in eloquence and subtlety without loosing his adventurousness and sense of freedom. One of his best albums.

© stef

Read More

Frode Gjerstad, Nick Stephens, Louis Moholo-Moholo (Loose Torque, 2009) ****

Frode Gjerstad is a very prolific musician, according to himself preferring to play with his larger ensemble "Circulasione Totale", because the sound is denser and more varied, yet the costs higher. The trio format is of course more nimble and affordable, and he has played in many, with Øyvind Storesund and Paal Nilssen-Love, with William Parker and Hamid Drake, Wilber Morris and Rashid Bakr, with Paul Rogers and Kevin Norton, with John Edwards and Mark Sanders, and now one with Nick Stephens on bass and Louis Moholo-Moholo on drums. The Norwegian had played and released with both musicians in the past, quite a lot even, but never in a trio format.

To hear them play here is quite a pleasure, very much in the European free improv tradition, in which the intensity of the interaction between the musicians is key, with the sounds created on the spot with an immediacy and directness that almost goes against the natural flow you would expect from any music.

The album's title "Quiddity" refers to the very nature of things, the commonality of characteristics that makes an object what it is, and what it shares with others of the same group.

The more abstract a description, the more elements it shares with others, the more you come to total unity. So it can be both a musical as spiritual thing. The music is abstract, starting on the first track, "The Nature",  with high-pitched short, almost whistling notes of the alto, with equally pointillistic support from bass and drums, evolving over very agitated and nervous playing on the second piece, "The Gist", and strangely enough the third track, "The Whatness", ends in longer notes, stretched tones, a concept which is continued on the last track, "The Essence", on which Gjerstad switches to clarinet; a piece which becomes almost intimate, fragile. Obviously each track is more varied than described here, with the necessary shifts in tempo and intensity. I focus too much on Gjerstad while describing the above: the quality of the playing and the unity displayed by the three musicians is absolutely excellent. Stephens is fast, deep, versatile and precise on arco and plucked, and Moholo-Moholo's rumbling and sharp polyrhythmics are as much defining the music. And that is abstract in nature and form. And free. And one.

© stef

Read More

Trio Passeurs - Existences (Futura Marge, 2009) ****

 After Alexandra Grimal and Maguelone Vidal, Véronique Magdelenat is the third female French saxophonist that makes an album of value this year. Accompanied by Bernard Santacruz on bass and Christian Rollet on drums, she forms the Trio Passeurs. As Magdelenat writes in the liner notes, her music is about "energy, poetry and freedom, finding new forms, taking care of our souls, caressing our bodies, pulling our heart-strings, mixing the colors of life". Quite a program, yet delivered indeed with a right balance between energy and sensitivity. Only one track, "Petit Caillou", has a clear bluesy rhythmic and melodic pattern, while all the other pieces are more in the free improvised form, mostly downtempo, sometimes nervous, but mostly very subtle in the timbral explorations, even to the extent of negotiating emotional complexities in the hardly audible regions, or bringing full voice wails of agony or liberation of energetic tension. The trio works well together to create a single vision, and Magdelenat for sure a new voice to be reckoned with, especially if she can break away completely from form and structure, she's at her best.

Buy from Instantjazz.

© stef

Read More

Five Spot - Poltva (SoLyd Records, 2009) ****

The band's name reveals that this is a quintet, with Lithuanian Petras Vysniauskas on soprano, Ukranians Yury Yaremchuk soprano, alto and clarinets, and Mark Tokar on bass, German Klaus Kugel on drums and Roberta Piket from the US on piano. All five musicians have solid backgrounds, both in traditional contexts as in a more free environment, as is the case here, for this live performance at the Lviv Jazz Festival in Ukraine in 2007, and it is free jazz in the spirit of the seventies, with the whole band working together on a coherent musical flow, rhytmic and forward-moving, with the musicians very concerned to build a unique sound rather than using the improvisation for personal expression. In the hands of lesser musicians this becomes a perfect recipe for either chaos or boredom, but you get the opposite here: discipline and deep listening skills, creativity and variation make this quite a captivating program.

Listen and buy from CDBaby.

Buy from Instantjazz.

© stef

Read More

Bill Dixon - Tapestries for Small Orchestra (Firehouse 12, 2009) *****

Trumpeter Bill Dixon's music has always been hard to classify: rooted in jazz, with the adventurousness of the avant-garde, open for the use of electronics, and with the composed and structured approach of classical music, while still leaving sufficient space for improvisation. Last year he released a stellar album, "Seventeen Musicians In Search of A Sound: Darfur", and this one is at the same high level throughout, if not better even.

The musicians are almost the same, but then in a trimmed down version, with no less than five trumpet-, cornet- or flugelhorn-players : Bill Dixon, Taylor Ho Bynum, Graham Haynes, Stephen Haynes and Rob Mazurek. The band is completed by Glynis Lomon on cello, Michel Cote on contrabass and bass clarinet, Ken Filiano on bass, and Warren Smith on vibes, marimba, drums, typani, and gongs.

Even if this is a solid horn section, most of the music is quite open-textured, with initially a relatively limited number of instruments playing at any given time, duos, trios, quartets, with - no surprise here - almost always a trumpet in the lead role, but then at certain moments the horn section locks in for a huge swell of sound. That being said, the improvisations are not what you would expect: Dixon's overall carefully crafted sound dominates the improvisations, with few notes being played, and themes, in so far as you can call them like that, slowly evolving, with the horns in different groups acting in counterpoint. The music becomes more dense with each track, with the whole small orchestra playing together to create a unique soundscape.

Like on his previous album, the overall mood is slow, dark, austere and somber. No reasons for joy to be found. The flow of the music is interspersed with radical voices coming up, sometimes to take over the scene, sometimes only to let out a few cries, and then dissolve again into the background murmur. Yet the soloists can be very frantic, having urgent stories to tell, often brilliantly accompanied by Warren Smith, who takes a lead role on vibes in the beautiful "Silvers - Sand Dance For Sophia", or the solos are sad, melancholy or expansive. On some pieces, hardly any improvisor comes to the fore, with electronics and the dark background sounds conjuring up images of wild primeval times, when out of universal and unclassifiable existence, suddenly individual voices and life emerge. The whole album is actually one large composition, broken down in eight tracks, with each some distinct characteristics yet all part of the same sound.

Many modern music alienates and shocks, and it may take some time before you get used to certain aspects of it. Here it's the opposite: you get sucked into a universe that is different, weird, inhospitable, mystic, yet feel likes home. As a listener you feel a deep recognition of what is being played. It has such a universal value, that you can relate to it on some very deep and fundamental level.

And that is the absolute marvel of Dixon's music : it is unclassifiable, it is beyond what you expect even from music. An ambitious genre-bending masterpiece. And a spectacular listening experience.

It's a double CD with DVD. Since I downloaded from eMusic, I cannot comment on the DVD, but I would say it's worth having the full hard copy of it.

Listen and download from eMusic.

Buy from Instantjazz.

© stef

Read More

Fred Anderson Quartet - Live At The Velvet Lounge, Vol. 3 (Asian Improv, 2009) ****

From the very first notes of the solo sax intro, you recognize Fred Anderson's tone, phrasing, rhythm but also his passion and soul, right there in front of you. Nothing new, but as always a delight. No bad word about the old master, and when his band joins in the festivities, the audience cheers loudly and enthusiastically, and rightly so. With Francis Wong on sax, Chad Taylor on drums and Tatsu Aoki on bass. The latter two have figured on many of Anderson's records, but of his 20-odd albums, it's only the third one with another saxophonist, Kidd Jordan and Ken Vandermark being the other two.

As you can expect, the music brings the usual lengthy yet focused improvisations over a polyrhytmic drums and repetitive bass vamp. If you don't move on his music, you must be made of stone. And if you're not moved by his music, same thing. Yet at the same time, because of the length and the repetition, and the interlocking saxes, weaving great textures, moving towards each other, away from each other, echoing, challenging, the end result is quite hypnotic and spiritual too. While at the same time open to fun and self-relativation. A rare combination. So even if you think like me, that you must have heard many of it  somewhere before on one of Anderson's albums - but which one? - it's a pointless thought, because the music is just great. It was great then, it is great now. Body, heart and soul. Pure joy!

© stef

Read More