FMP. The Living Music; Munich 3/10/2017 - 8/20/2017; The Exhibition

Part One: The Exhibition

By Martin Schray

When Markus Müller curated the ECM exhibition at Munich’s Haus der Kunst in 2012 there were no plans for a similar one for FMP (Free Music Production). However, Müller has always claimed that when it came to art and cultural politics, FMP was Western Berlin’s most important contribution. Müller is an expert on the cult label, he wanted to write a book about it and constantly nagged Okwui Enwezor, Haus der Kunst’s director, about the project. Eventually, Enwezor suggested that Müller should organize an exhibition - and FMP - The Living Music is the result.

On the one hand, the exhibition highlights both the record production and samples of FMP’s most famous and often copied concert formats, Total Music Meeting and Workshop Freie Musik including all posters and unique photos. On the other hand, less well-known projects like FMP’s collaborations with dancers like Pina Bausch, visual artists like the recently deceased A.R. Penck, and famous writers like Günter Grass are also on view.

The exhibition is mainly presented in two rooms. After a video of the Globe Unity Orchestra in the entrance hall (s. below) Room 1 shows three of FMP’s most important special editions in vitrines: FMP 0030/0040/0050 with the music of Peter Brötzmann’s group (Fred Van Howe and Han Bennink including guest star Albert Mangelsdorff), then limited to 200 copies; the double LP Snapshot - Jazz Now/Jazz aus der DDR, which was issued in a limited edition of 800, and finally the Cecil Taylor in Berlin ’88 box set, produced in an edition of 1000. All these albums are out of print and if you haven’t had the chance to see the extensive and excellent booklets before, they alone are worth watching the exhibition (if you want to listen to excerpts, check out: https://destination-out.bandcamp.com)

Another vitrine documents FMP’s collaboration with women, starting with pianist Irène Schweizer and singer Maggie Nichols. As member of the Feminist Improvising Group they both played with Corinne Liensol, Lindsay Cooper, Sally Potter, Annemarie Roelofs and Georgina Born at the TMM in 1979. There are hardly any documents of this group, it’s a rather unknown chapter of free music, which is why this is one of the most insightful parts of the exhibition. Moreover, the label’s collaboration with musicians from the German Democratic Republic plays an important role. Apart from Snapshot - Jazz Now/Jazz aus der DDR you can study contracts between label boss Jost Gebers and GDR government agencies, in which they set out in detail that the label has to make the albums available in other socialist states like North Korea, Vietnam or Cuba. Authentic testimonies of the Cold War en miniature.

In room 2 the exhibition displays several videos of concerts and recording sessions in the FMP studio from the 1980s and 1990s, some of which have never been shown before and can be watched here for the first time - certainly not only for fans the most interesting part. There is footage from the 1984 Workshop Freie Musik showing Brötzmann as part of a septet with Phil Wachsman, Francois Dreno, Peter Kowald, Kent Kessler, Tony Oxley and Garreth List, a very unusual line-up worth listening to. In another video Brötzmann joins Butch Morris and Garreth List, a context in which he shows his introspective side.

Another important part of the exhibition explores Peter Kowald and his various steps across borders, as well as the numerous collaborations between FMP and artists like A.R. Penck, Martin Kippenberger, Günther Förg and Albert Oehlen. Kowald’s and Cecil Taylor’s collaborations with dancers like Pina Bausch, Min Tanaka, Cheryl Banks, Kazuo Ohno and Christine Brunel are also part of the show, as well as Günter “Baby“ Sommer’s recording with Günter Grass. Grass, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999, even supported some FMP projects.
The show ends with a presentation of various solo projects from the FMP complex. The work of the sound avant-gardist and instrument maker Hans Reichel is represented by the tongues of the “daxophone“ and a never before shown video of him recording.

In a nutshell, the exhibition concentrates on the most important FMP musicians and co-founders, only Alexander von Schlippenbach is a bit underrepresented. Markus Müller mentioned that it was a real piece of work to put the exhibition together, he actually spent years in Jost Gebers’s archive. Gebers, who worked as a social worker, did all this tremendous work in his free time. And - as a good German public servant - he daintily archived everything. Thanks to that we are able to watch an extraordinary exhibition, for free jazz fans it’s certainly a must.

FMP - The Living Music ends at 8/20/2017. The good news is that it will be presented in Berlin at Haus der Kulturen next year (probably in March) with a greater focus on the women in free jazz and hopefully with another row of concerts.

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Evan Parker & RGG – Live@Alchemia (Fundacja Słuchaj, 2017) ***

By Rick Joines

On June 12, 2016, Evan Parker joined RGG (Łukasz Ojdana on piano, Maciej Garbowski on bass, and Krzysztof Gradziuk on drums) for a 70-minute set of improvised music at Alchemia, in Kraków, Poland. So, what happens when a paragon of free jazz plays with a young trio who usually play a sort of meandering, lyrical, romantic jazz?

“Part One” makes a promising start. Parker, under the dreamy influence of RGG, dispenses with his usual fast-layered harmonics and instead plays a style reminiscent of West Coast Cool Jazz. Gradziuk, freed from the chore of merely keeping time, joyously plays every bit of his drum kit. Ojdana comps and echoes Parker’s riffs. As Parker plays, he draws lines of laid-back beauty with the artful distinctiveness of Picasso painting on glass. Here, as with Picasso, we witness the art and the man creating it at once. Ojdana’s melodic piano solo feels out of place, but he comes alive for a moment at its end, chording aggressively. The highlight is Garbowski’s bass solo. He strums dissonant dyads to accompany his own runs up and down the neck. This catches Parker’s ear, for he picks up Garbowski’s lines, echoing and complicating them.

“Part Two” is the most exciting part of the set. Odjana repeats a four-note melody and creates harmonics inside the piano. Parker enters, holding notes, growling and fluttering a little. Garbowski bows in, filling the air with the sound of long, plaintive cries. Again, Parker follows Garbowski. They play together for a bit, as the piano and drums drop out. During Parker’s solo, he seems to get stuck on a thought until Ojdana interrupts with his most assertive chording of the night. His comping becomes clusters; his chords no longer in major keys. For nearly 7 minutes of the 18-minute piece, everyone on the bandstand plays with one mind, driving the music past the limits of form. Gradziuk plays without inhibition. Parker’s fast, staccato runs skip like a small stone over water. There is even some call-and-response playing between Ojdana and Parker. Then Parker steps away, and RGG plays free jazz on their own . . . for a moment, until they fall back to earth and their wonted prettiness.

When Martin Schray recently reviewed another Evan Parker live collaboration on this blog, he rightly mentioned the “deep affinity, a shared consciousness” in that group’s playing. This occurs for a moment in “Part Two”; however, in the final two parts it disappears. Even in the freest of free jazz, one detects a conversation among like-minded people about some unifying ideas or elements, but not here. Parker drops out more frequently in the second half; it is as if the trio is not listening to him nor to each other. Ojdana perseverates on a handful of notes. Gradziuk’s drumming becomes distracting. Garbowski’s playing continues to be interesting, but in the last in the 37 minutes, their ephemeral concord is gone.

When I listened casually to this album, getting to know it, it was rather enjoyable. It was when I began to listen more closely that the shortcomings of this experiment revealed themselves. Evan Parker’s playing is intriguing because it is so different from what one might expect from him, but RGG feels out of its element—but, of course, getting out of one’s element from time to time can be valuable. If this were a 35-minute album of the first half of the set, it would have been stronger and might have ended on a much higher note than it does.

Some of this set is available on a series of videos, starting here:

Available here:

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Devin Gray - Fashionable Pop Music (s/r, 2016) ****

By Paul Acquaro

Drummer Devin Gray's quartet with guitarists Ryan Ferrier and Jonathan Goldberger, and bassist Chris Tordini is a potent post-rock explosion - at least that how it begins. 

The two guitarists twist distorted sounds around like they are sculpting with sheet metal. Legato melodies are stretched over the sharp angles and effect laden structure of 'Antiplutocracy'. As the long form improvisation unfolds, the electric guitars and acoustic drums and bass mix with the electronics in a textural and exciting way. The drums lead for the first half of the 20-minute track, guiding the hands of the artists as they twist the sounds into new shapes. Then, it stops. A few rattles of the drumsticks and a gathering of thoughts ensures, then the sound of electric guitar with a good deal of crunch begins to cut a meandering path. The music builds up a dramatic and ambient hellscape (I mean that in a good way) as it builds to the much anticipated climax. 

The other track 'Sowieso' means 'anyhow' in German, but more importantly it is the name of a sehr wichtig venue for improvisational music in Berlin. The track starts quietly with blips of electric guitar and some percussive chatter. Tordini does a walk on the bass and the acoustic/electric sounds slowly hush from an acoustic clatter to an ambient silence. The small sounds are eventually met with a driving rock beat and some straight ahead instrumental rock improvisation that would sound out of place on a Nels Cline Singers epic, with Goldberg and Ferrier trading sonic swaths. The last third of the track finds the group dissipating into the ambient again, having had made their point. 

This album reminds me of some of the music that the blog turned me on to a while back, like that great first Lawnmower album. I regret that somehow this excellent album languished on my iPod for such a long time. It came out about a year ago and I've listened to it repeatedly since, and suspect I will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Yeah, totally recommended.  

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A.R. Penck 1939–2017

By Lee Rice Epstein

Best known as a leader in the Neo-Expressionist movement, of which I am, admittedly, less familiar with, artist A.R. Penck also had a long career in free jazz. As a drummer and pianist, his music tended towards free, featuring long experimental improvisations that seem to barely hold together moment to moment, revealing themselves best at the macro level. There’s a rough beauty to a lot of Penck’s playing, a kind of raw and unfiltered play that isn’t always driving forwards. Penck primarily recorded with Frank Wollny as TTT (Triple Trip Touch). With TTT, Penck and Wollny recorded albums with, among others, Frank Wright, Lawrence “Butch” Morris, Jeanne Lee, Alan Silva, Billy Bang, Frank Lowe, Louis Moholo-Moholo, and Peter Kowald. Penck’s paintings serve as cover art for every album, gorgeous images going from dense, colorful pictorials to spare lettering on a plain background. It’s a fine metaphor for the playing itself, but there’s no one-to-one correlation with the art. Some of the sparsest covers decorate jam-packed material.

Although most of the recordings and sessions are undated, Penck and Wright’s dynamic partnership developed throughout the 1980s, after Wright had recorded his best-known albums. (Interesting side note, I’ve seen several comments over the years about whether or not these recordings are from the 1970s, likely because that decade is seen as the high water mark for free improvisation. But just based on the overall timeline, it’s almost certain that most of Penck and TTT’s output began in the ‘80s and continued on.) Their collaboration resulted in some of Wright’s most compelling playing. On Run With the Cowboys, Wright and Kowald join TTT for an outstanding firestorm of a session. And Concert In Ulm! with Wright, Penck, and Wollny is weird and wooly thing, with the trio breaking into a late take on Wright’s classic “Jerry.”

Likewise, the albums with Butch Morris showcase Morris’s playing more than his conduction, acting as something of a b-side to Morris’s main output. A 1991 triple-album—Hollywood Blvd. Concert: Holywood Blvd 89, Malibu-experiment, and Frank Wright—features both Wright and Morris in separate performances with Wollny and Penck. Recorded in 1989, shortly after Morris’s Conduction #11, Where Music Goes and just before Dust To Dust, the small groups with Morris captured on Holywood Blvd 89 and Malibu-experiment are outrageous in the best possible way. Wholly unpredictable, after a full album of breakneck improvisation, the opening of “Malibu Experiment,” with painter Markus Lüpertz guesting on piano and flute, features a gorgeous Morris melody that slowly gets chewed up and swallowed by Wollny and Penck’s absurd rhythms.

For anyone interested in free expression and abstract improvisation, you can fairly easily track down some of Penck’s albums. Although most of his music is now out of print, all the ones I mentioned, and many others, have been uploaded to the inconstantsol blog.

Stargarder 18, 1993

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Rempis/Piet/Daisy - Hit the Ground Running (Aerophonic, 2017) ****½

By Philip Coombs

First thing I do is sharpen a pencil. Then I open a notebook to a fresh page and run my hand over it feeling the smoothness and unbound potential for the last time. Next comes the title written at the centre of the top of the page, thus spoiling the crisp white, Hit the Ground Running. Next I write out the players and their instruments, which will likely get integrated into the review as opposed to just stating them in list form.

Dave Rempis (Tenor and Alto Saxophones)
Matt Piet (Piano)
Tim Daisy (Drums)

Next comes the label it was released on, Aerophonic and any relevant info I can did up like, its Rempis’ label and it was recorded live at Elastic Arts in Chicago January 21st, 2017.

Okay enough of that, time to get to work. Usually at this point, I hit play on whatever devise the track was recorded on and wait for the music and the words to come. SO with pencil at the ready and my structure in place I hit play on this record and wait for whatever comes at me.

It starts beautifully enough with a fractured melody from Piet and an equally matched rhythm from Daisy. They play around with this for a minute and a half to start the opening track, ‘Long Night Ahead’ until Rempis enters the equation with a soaring sax line that elevates the track to such a height that I could only do one thing. Put the pencil down. I could wait for the words to come for this one, but I would be waiting for quite some time. Today I’m a fan.

Only once the shock of this record started to wear off and I started to hear what they were doing and the constant joy of this track allowed me to keep my pencil in my hand, could I begin to extrapolate how good this track is. It is expertly recorded which allows each player to be expressive and contribute to the over all aural palate with every subtlety captured.

Each player is allowed to express where they are now in their jazz thinking but still have the foresight and self control to propel the track and calm the track whenever it is needed.

One of my favourite tracks of 2017.

‘Keep Alert’ the second and last track on the record, is equally as potent with the players expanding and compressing all over the place. The structure on this track is a little more familiar with each getting a more traditional solo space and neither of them are wasted.

And as if it couldn’t get any better, there is a humanitarian side to this recording. All proceeds go to “Refugee One, a local Chicago-based organization that creates opportunities for refugees fleeing war, terror, and persecution to build new lives of safety, dignity, and self-reliance.” Quote taken from their press release.

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Gonçalo Almeida / Rodrigo Amado / Marco Franco - The Attic (NoBusiness / Tombed Visions, 2017) ****

By Eyal Hareuveni

The Attic documents a live performance of an ad-hoc trio of three prolific Portuguese musicians working in the greater field of free jazz - double bass player Gonçalo Almeida, known from the LAMA and Albatre trios, the Tetterapadequ quartet and the Spinifex quintet, tenor sax player Rodrigo Amado, leader of the Motion Trio and the international This Is Our Language quartet (with Joe McPhee, Kent Kessler and Chris Corsano), and drummer Marco Franco, known from trumpeter Luis Vicente’s Clocks and Clouds quartet. The trio was recorded at the SMUP, in Lisbon’s suburb Parede on December 2015.

This ad-hoc meeting of these strong-minded musicians radiates a raw immediacy and also a strong affinity. The sense of freshness charges this meeting with a sense of danger and the liberty of taking chances and accordingly all five pieces flow but not in a linear manner. Still, the three musicians always opt for a highly collaborative and supportive interplay without asserting clear leading roles. In a way, this trio actually applies - literally - Amado’s prescriptions for his own Motion Trio, as were the titles of the pieces of its latest release: “Freedom is a Two-Edged Sword”, “Liberty” and “Responsibility” (Desire & Freedom, Not Two, 2016).

Almeida opens the performance with a commanding arco solo on “Shadow”. Amado later stresses the harmonic development suggested by Almeida with charismatic emotional calls, while Franco solidifies the rhythmic basis with subtle colors and all three together build to a powerful spiritual ritual. The following “Hole” is free-associative improvisation that avoids settling on a pulse or a clear narrative, but still moves in a tight and intense interplay. The sparse and lyrical “Spring” emphasizes, even more, the versatility of this trio as it shifts quickly between simple melodic motifs and pulses. The longest piece, the 16-minutes “Board” is structured as a classic, fiery, free jazz piece, spiraling patiently around a playful, muscular pulse that becomes more intense, stronger and ecstatic as the song progresses. The last, and shortest, piece “Nail” deepens the trio collective rhythmic interplay with a manic, Ayler-ian blow-out that brings to mind the sheer, boundless energy of outfits like those of Peter Brötzmann or The Thing.

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Ivo Perelman & Matthew Shipp - Le Poisson Rouge, May 7th, 2017

Ivo Perelman, Photo by Susanne Baltes

By Paul Acquaro

It’s a rainy Saturday here in New Jersey and I finally have a chance to sit down and think about last Sunday's release show for saxophonist Ivo Perelman's and pianist Matthew Shipp's latest set of releases on Leo Records, The Art of Perelman & Shipp. I've cued up Volume 3, Pandora, which pairs Perelman and  Shipp with bassist William Parker and drummer Whit Dickey, to set the mood.

So it's a late show at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC. An intimate and extremely attentive audience is gathered, chatting and waiting for Perelman and Shipp to take the stage. They appear exactly at 9:30 and quickly assume their places. Perelman is in jeans and a crisp white button down shirt, tenor sax in hand, Shipp is in jeans and a black t-shirt facing kitty-corner from the audience at a Yahama grand piano. With a nod and no words, they begin.

Matthew Shipp and Ivo Perelman, photo by Peter Gannushkin

It's a gentle start, a lyrical and somewhat romantic melody rolls out of the saxophone. Shipp is hunched over the keyboard playing slow deliberate chords as they together set the baseline. Shipp begins picking up the pace, a slight push to which Perelman responds with a quick run, then rests on a long single note. With just piano and sax, it may seem that is a lot of empty space, but that is hardly the case, soon they work up to an early crescendo, piano intense like a crashing wave and sax coasting over the crest.

The fluidity of their music is most striking. Throughout, Shipp's rhythm is riveting, keeping the music flowing, never stagnating. In a short solo passage, Shipp lets loose small melodic rivulets that quickly join into a steady stream. Then, Perelman re-joins, tossing out more and more jarring ideas. Rapidly ascending lines jump deftly between octaves, never losing the musical ebb and flow.

After they ramp down from another intense moment, Perelman is in the midst of a solo passage and suddenly the reverent atmosphere is pierced by a squeaky door. In the pin-drop silence - aside from his horn of course - Perelman is nonplussed as he seamlessly reacts to the unexpected sound - maybe subconsciously, maybe not. 

Shipp is now pawing at the keys, light and bouncing, his shoulders moving rhythmically as Perelman takes up the challenge and quickly finds the right rhythm to play. Soon, the pianist's body language changes, he becomes less buoyant. Perelman hits a few low blats before matching a sudden cluster of notes from the piano.

The dynamic range that they work with is fascinating, the music is alive, sometimes growing a bit louder, sometimes just more intense. They eventually reach yet another peak, though this time the tension is heart pounding. Perelman is hanging out in the high register, an utterly gripping sound, and Shipp is all sustain and storm … finally it breaks. It seems like an effortless set, the music coming out of Perelman in a constant outpouring, achingly beautiful and abstractly challenging within just a few bars.

Following the duo is Marco Cappelli's Italian Surf Academy with bassist Damon Banks and drummer Dave Miller. They are a power trio take on the Ennio Morricone spaghetti western genre. It's as excellent as it sounds, fun, raw, and striking a nice balance between composition and improvisation.

The latest series of 7 CDs from Leo Records (The Art of Perelman-Shipp) sees the duo playing with peers such as bassists William Parker and Michael Bisio, and drummers Andrew Cyrille, Whit Dickey, and Bobby Kapp, in various combinations. However, the two don't necessarily need the help, as this release concert showed, the pair certainly are their own gravitational center. 

Catching up with Perelman later, near the merchandise table, it seemed to be an obvious question to ask: after several sets of multiple album releases over the past couple of years (all on Leo), is there more to come? With a smile Perelman said yes … "until I’m out of ideas", which doesn't seem to be happening any time soon!

  

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Carlos Bica & Azul – More Than This (Clean Feed, 2017) ****

By Chris Haines

It almost sounds an absurd thing to mention with regard to the type of music that we review on the blog, but this album really does benefit from lots of repeated listens! The first few times I listened to this I thought it sounded like it contained some nice relaxed and pleasant music, which was re-enforced by the holiday snap style photo that adorns the cover of the album. But on repeated listens the subtleties of the music start to reveal themselves, which makes it a far more interesting prospect, with the cordial and pleasing phrases, such as on the opening track ‘Mafalda’, growing into a beautiful melody underscored by a sad and reflective feeling. I started to notice the careful use of delay that Frank Möbus uses on his guitar, which creates a pastel shade to his more subtle and delineated lines. Moments that seemed to provide some contrast to the relaxed nature of the music took on a much more dynamic shape of their own, providing interest and excitement that hadn’t appeared to have been there before. Also, the depth of the recording of Jim Black’s drums & percussion, where some parts of the kit are closely miked whilst others are an ambient tone in the background and sound like they’ve been recorded in another large room formed another significant point of discovery. Of course, this could be said of many free jazz, improv, and experimental recordings (as well as other music too), but with More Than This it is very prominent that the music seems to not give up its secrets lightly and requires a more patient, dedicated and active listening approach to really find the gems in this music.

Just to highlight a few more tracks, ‘Whale Rider’ contains a fusion-like melody with solo phrases, which is underpinned by the very rhythmic, syncopated, and creative percussion playing of Jim Black, and contains a lovely chromatic legato guitar solo. ‘Skeleton Dance’ with its perseverative Latin-melody and percussion that conjures-up the ol’ bones shakin’ like no other since XTC’s ‘Poor Skeleton Steps Out’. There’s also the tastefully melodic bass solo, of Carlos Bica, in ‘Patchwork’, the energetic crime-watch of ‘XY Ungelöst’ and the alluring homage to the Wadden Sea ‘Wattenmeer’.

Overall this is a very graceful album that has an understated and modest feel to it. As what seems to be a set of fairly conventional sounding tunes, it is interesting to note the subtleties that can be heard within and between the notes themselves, the ambiance and the extra dimension that it brings. The musicians are clearly at ease in each other’s company and this translates into the relaxed, spacious and lyrical vibe of the music. You’d certainly want to go back to this time and time again, where more secrets could be unearthed from this seemingly unobtrusive set of pieces.

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Recent Duo Releases of Peter Brötzmann

By Eyal Hareuveni

Peter Brötzmann's duos with American pedal steel guitarist Heather Leigh and Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love seem to be his favorite ones in recent years. The recent live recordings of these duos capture the deep connection Brötzmann's has with both Leigh and Nilssen-Love. I was fortunate enough to experience both performances in real-time and these recordings add more insights to these experiences.

Brötzmann / Leigh - Sex Tape (Trost, 2017) ****

From the first second of this performance, on the last and third night of the Unlimited Music festival in Wels, Austria, on November, 13th, 2016, it was clear that the duo of Brötzmann and Leigh stages some kind of a love story. The energy and the dynamics hinted that something primal, sensual connects these unique personalities. This insight was reaffirmed few months later when the explicit artwork for this album, prepared by Brötzmann, surfaced. This artwork echoes and twists a formative biblical myth, with the make-no-nonsense title that shouts it out even louder.

Well, Brötzmann was never shy how his music and art at all radiates his sexuality. Go and listen to his sextet playing Nipples (originally released on 1969, re-released by Trost sister-label Cien Fuegos, 2015) or Balls (originally released by FMP on 1970, re-released by Cien Fuegos on 2011), or check the poster he did for the Unlimited Festival that he curated in 2011 (captured on the 5-discs box Long Story Short, Trost, 2013).

Sex Tape is only the sophomore release of Brötzmann and Leigh, recorded in the middle of a European tour, following Ears Are Filled With Wonder (Not Two/Trost, 2016). However, this duo had already established itself as one of the main outfits of Brötzmann. Brötzmann and Leigh recorded recently another studio album that is about to be released later this year.

The live recording sounds now as a restless ritual of heavy - sonic - petting. Brötzmann begins with a typical muscular roar but Leigh is far from impressed by his manly call. Her sharp metallic lines force him to change his tactics, seducing him to play in her own game, a slow and noisy psychedelic drone. For a while, he enjoys this mischief. Still, the old lion has few more tricks up his sleeve and he knows how to swing Leigh to some fiery, cathartic climaxes. She jumps head-on, but soon she surprises him with soft, repetitive patterns of courting sounds, answered immediately with surprising emotional melodies by Brötzmann, who plays now on the tarogato. The peaceful, intimate dynamics do not last long before Brötzmann and Leigh resume another explosive confrontation, pushing each other to extreme, ecstatic terrains, eventually drowning in Leigh feedback-laden, metallic storm. Again, after exhausting themselves, both opt for more introspective and emotionally touching interplay that offers Brötzmann most vulnerable and gentle side. Finally, this emotional pendulum concludes when these tough-minded improvisers making peace, in their own proud and most intense terms, by no means surrender to each other but totally fascinated by this mysterious sex thing.

Brötzmann / Nilssen-Love - Levontin 7, Tel Aviv, 30th March 2015 (No Label, 2017) ****

If Sex Tape showed the improvising wisdom of Brötzmann in a free-improvised setting, then this documented meeting with Nilssen-Love owes more to their free jazz backgrounds. Brötzmann and Nilssen-Love play regularly during the last decade, beginning in the Chicago Tentet and instantly continuing in different formats, trios - with fellow reeds player Mats Gustafsson, koto player Michiyo Yagi, cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, electric bass player Massimo Pupillo and trombonist Steve Swell - and the Hairy Bones quartet, but always returning to the duo format. This live recording from the Israeli, Tel Aviv based Levontin 7 club is their third duo recording, released by Nilssen-Love's mysterious no-label, in a cardboard sleeve designed by Brötzmann.

Both looked quite exhausted before the performance began, taxed by tiresome flights and endless touring schedule, but nothing of this affected their on-stage stamina. Brötzmann began with an intense, wild attack, that was organically yoked to fast-changing, hard-driving rhythmic patterns of Nilssen-Love. Their level of communication was so natural, immediate and profound that no more than a millisecond was needed to shift their rhythmic focus to a different dynamics. The real magic happened when both moved from free jazz whirlwinds to freer terrains, sketching more emotional, lyrical textures. Nilssen-Love alternated between light African polyrhythms and sparser coloring using different cymbals and metal objects, enabling Brötzmann to charge this interplay with beautiful, lyrical melodies, still blended with deep intense shades. Wisely they kept structuring together a multifaceted, nuanced texture, a kinetic architecture that has muscular, tough foundations but its higher, heavenly outlines have some kind of liquid-compassionate qualities. I could have listened to them playing love for hours if not days, but hey had to catch early morning flights.

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Sound Etiquette and Dialectical imagination

Sound Etiquette (Orenda, 2017) ****

Sound Etiquette is a trio hailing from the Bay Area, formed by drummer Aaron Levin, keyboardist Eli Wallace, and saxophonist Nick Obando. Together, they work with an exciting sound palette, primarily guided by Wallace's sumptuous analog electric keyboard's shimmer and growl.

'Entrance' is an entrancing tune that kicks off like a soundtrack lacking a film. Short melodic bursts from the sax lock in with syncopated comping from the electric piano, the drums are an insistent splash of cymbal and snare. In the track's closing moments there is some free improv foreshadowing, and the follow-up 'Spiral Recollection' is quick to capitalize on this. Wallace employs a throaty sound and pushes out a thick groove that when meeting up with Obando's sax, simply explodes. By the third track, 'Escape Velocity', we're into some heady poly-rhythms between the drums and piano, along with energizing squalls from the sax. Relief can be found on tracks like the ballad 'A Clearing' where Obando's sax playing suggests the wee hours of a good night out, 'Solar Winds' may be the ultimate statement from the band - a decidedly early Weather Report like collective non-solo submerged in atmosphere and electro-acoustic colors.

Sound Etiquette is a fine recording from this West Coast trio, with roots firmly planted in the soil of early jazz/rock, and growing into something else entirely.

Dialectical imagination - The Angel and the Brute Sing Songs of the Rapture (Atamandi, 2017) ****

Dialectical Imagination is the duo of NYC-based Eli Wallace, heard here exclusively on piano, and Bay Area drummer Rob Pumpelly. Though configured minimally, the sound world that they create is big. Wallace approaches the piano with passion and Pumpelly - who is credited with the compositional concepts - provides perfect counter balance.

The album begins with 'Refusing Confusion', a title that could almost be read as a political statement in current times. The track begins with the splash of piano and percussion, quick jolts of melody connected by a pulse, and about halfway through, it coalesces into a tremendous climax. Wallace's melodic instinct are sharp and he uses the momentum that he and Pumpelly generate to push and pull the listener through a grand tour of musical emotions. The track is an example of their exciting use of dynamics and yin/yang of inside/outside approaches to come. The following track 'Immutable Light' draws on a McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones vibe, piano drenched in sustain, the blocks of chords building dramatically, while the drums become a powerful propulsive force. On the flip side, there is the tender openness of 'Sky in Eye Free of I', where the intro is dipped in a fine coating of melody, but becoming more fractured, and at times even ferocious, as the track progresses.

The album is, to the eye, a tape release, however, a quick inspection reveals it is actually a USB drive with both WAV and MP3 versions of the music files, along with the artwork. The Angel and the Brute Sing Songs of the Rapture can also be found for purchase on Bandcamp.

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