When three veterans of the avant-jazz scene meet for a fully improvised performance, you know that sparkles will fly, as they do on this album. The trio is Mark Dresser on bass, Larry Ochs on tenor and sopranino, and Vladimir Tarasov on percussion. The album brings two sessions together : one at the Bimhuis in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and the other in St. Petersburg, Russia, both with a few days difference in June 2008.
The music is, as you can imagine, very much an open exploration of sounds and intensity, with long sequences of short bursts and meandering phrases, all at a level above repetitiveness, in the somewhat raw and abstract regions of music, but full of soul at the same time. There are moments on the album when the mind starts wandering, because at times the music all very much within an identical range of action (but then I'm also tired and that may be the reason), and yet, then you get this piercing bow from Dresser or this yearning tonal bend from Ochs, or a sharp rim-shot from Tarasov, and you're back in the game. And that game is playful, evolving, ever-changing in its color and emotional load. Listen for instance on the clip below, how the music changes from a vertical sense of agitated nervousness (the beginning), over distress (as of the fourth minute), to sensitive sadness (around the fifth minute), and ending in resignation. True, it is sound exploration, but more than that. For these three musicians it is all about exploring emotions first and foremost.
You like uncompromising guitars? Hard-hitting drums and relentless bass? Here are some treats. Pump up the volume. Evacuate the neighborhood. Only the fearless can stay.
Stephan Sieben, Adam Pultz Melbye, Håkon Berre - Angel (Ilk Music, 2009)
I don't know how you call this. Trash jazz? Noise jazz? Punk jazz? Metal jazz? In any case violence and destruction are surely the code words for this Danish trio, with Stephan Sieben on electric guitar, Adam Pultz Melbye on bass and Håkon Berre on drums. They do not compromise. It is all energy and noise. The guitar is maximally distorted. It is all about power and rawness. It is all about destruction and rage. Even the pieces like "Me", that start quietly, do not stay like that for long. Energy kicks in and off we go, full of dissonant chords and chord changes over endless pumping rhythms. But in truth, they try in some tracks to be creative with sound, as on "Chicks", and even become calm near the end with "Ate". What kind of jazz? Fire jazz! Guaranteed to scorch your ears and ignite your scalp.
Olaf Rupp, Marino Pliakas & Michael Wertmüller - Toomuchisnotenough (FMP, 2009)
Regular readers of this blog will already have come across bassist Marino Pliakas and drummer Michael Wertmüller. Not so long ago they released "Black Hole" with Peter Brötzmann, music which has its sensitive moments, but is widely characterized by its power play, as you may expect from a band with the name "Full Blast". Now, the rhythm section accompanies the wild guitar of Olaf Rupp, who goes even a stretch further than Stephan Sieber.When you think you've heard it all, there is always a step which goes beyond expectations. This album comes without warnings for your health, and maybe it should. It is even hard to discern differences between chords because of the heavy distortion of the guitar and bass guitar. But in its mercilessness for the ears, it is a as iconoclastic as it gets, and that by itself deserves credits. Forget about what you know. Forget about genres too. And in the midst of this sonic hell, there are some surprising moments of creativity, yet you have to dig through the avalanche of noise to get to it. The best sonic clarity you get is from the drums, and I must say Wertmüller is a fantastic drummer. And I can appreciate Rupp's and Pliakas' unrelenting and uncompromising energy and attitude, but I do not think I will listen to this album very often.
While more snow is falling than most of us would want, the economic and social world is coming to a halt, icy chill is kept outside, night has fallen, and everything has turned to calm.
Then two albums are released, both almost simultaneously, miraculously similar, yet different. All ice and warmth, all vocals and percussion, both avant-garde folk. Unique, but apparently not.
I have reviewed Norwegian percussionist Terje Isungset's music before, and I must say that the "ice man" keeps delving deeper in his icy environment, turning it into a warm and welcoming place, where man and nature are in perfect harmony, despite the inhospitable conditions. The band consists of Nils Økland on fiddle, Sissel Walstad on harp, Espen Jørgensen on guitar, and Lena Nymark on vocals, with the boy choir of St. Hallvardguttene assisting. The percussion and the vocals are the most remarkable aspect of this music. Isungset carved out his own kind of approach, very traditional and based on folk music, but serene, beautiful and open-minded. True, musically he keeps repeating himself, but who cares? To have created such a very unique musical space, is just a dream for many musicians.
Evgeny Masloboev & Anastasia Masloboeva - Russian Folksongs In The Key Of Sadness (Leo Records, 2010)****
In the same vein, this new (soon to be released) and wonderful album by Evgeny Masloboev and his seventeen-year old daughter Anastasia bring an equally heart-warming, but then Siberian, album of voice and percussion. Evgeny plays drums, chang, santur, cymbals, piano, block-flutes, vibes, vargan, violin, acoustic bass, kitchen utensils, enamelled pots, marimba, industrial garbage, pieces of metal and an SPD-S Roland. All music is composed by Evgeny Masloboev, but based on traditional Siberian music. The overview of instruments he plays give you an idea of the uniqueness of the sounds you will hear, a weirdness that is equalled by the variety in rhythms and overdubs, yet as welcoming and inviting as the voice of Anastasia, whose singing remains pure and unperturbed by the clatter, ruckus and rebellious tension that is accompanying her at times. Like Isungset's, his music is tribal, yet pushed directly into an avant-garde context, full of countercurrents and unexpected turns, rich in instrumental try-outs and combinations, not afraid of a little mellowness and even bordering on kitsch at times, while still remaining accessible with regard to melody and harmony. In contrast to Isungset's music, Masloboev's compositions are anything but linear, starting somewhere, moving into different regions, rhythms and sonic textures as the piece evolves, and all this assembled in the studio with different pieces of recordings.
Jazz fans, bear with me: it is snowing outside, it is bone-chilling cold, all is calm, and yes, this is not jazz in the strictest sense, but at moments like this one, anything heartwarming is welcome.
The Oleś brothers are not only one of the finest rhythm sections in modern jazz, they always manage to play music that is clever, inventive and open, while still remaining fully locked in jazz. They have definitely found a likeminded artist in alto saxophonist Rob Brown, whose mastery of his instrument is phenomenal, a great match for the two brothers, while having the same openness to music. They find each other here for this excellent live performance, recorded with a great sound quality.
The album starts with the "Here & Now Suite", a piece in three parts, very much in a free bop mode, with clear influences of Ornette Coleman's angular themes, and a stop and go rhythm, and lots of high energy playing. It is with the slower "Rebeaming", a composition by Marcin Oleś that the album starts getting really strong, possibly because the theme seems to fit Brown perfectly, and because of the increased openness, that his playing becomes more yearning. This quality is maintained for the following pieces, on the very boppish "Black Eagle", and is surpassed on "Ash Tree", the slowest and most open-textured piece. The album ends with "Monkey's Hour", a piece with changing rhythms and tempi, full of nervous joy and angular playing.
Even if it is not the album that will be remembered in ten years from now for its musical vision (as compared to the Oles Brothers "Duo" album of last year, or Rob Brown's own "Sounds" or "Breathe Rhyme"), it is a joy to hear.
Listen and download from bandcamp (for a meager US$6).
That minimalism is not always a recipe for boring music, is wonderfully demonstrated by this fantastic album by Australian Jim Denley on alto saxophone and flutes, and Norwegians Kim Myhr on acoustic guitars, and Ingar Zach on percussion. The music is very pure in its unobtrusiveness, but keeps away from the exalted states of new age. Despite its lightness of texture and open-ended improvisations, there is a dark undertone, a menacing tension that gives the music its incredible power. Less is more, and these three artists deliver the goods. It is not always clear which instrument makes which sound, but that is totally irrelevant. What counts is the sound itself, how it's folded around the silence, how it makes the environment vibrate, how it builds substance out of the almost non-existent. On the longest piece, "Flash Expansion", a rhythmically and slowly strummed guitar chord forms the backdrop for a slow evolution of increasingly agonizing and gloomy sounds, which in turn develops into squeezed-out sax sounds over a dark rumbling. You do not know what is going on, or even how to possibly interpret it, but it is a fascinating listening experience. Denley's saxophones and flute reduce music back to its pristine original nature of vibrating air, Zach's use of percussion has a precision which is unequalled in building a sonic scene (just listen to his dark and hypnotic bells on the first track), and I have rarely heard a guitarist like Myhr, with a sound so sparse, so contained, yet equally telling more with a few chords than many others cannot create out of a zillion notes. Needless to say, this is highly recommended.
Jim Denley & Kim Myhr - Systems Realignment (either/OAR, 2009)
The Australian flutist and the Norwegian guitarist released another album last year, which is more electro-acoustic in nature. It is a little more complex in its texture and rhythms, but also less powerful in its overall sonic result.
I will not say that I have all of alto saxophonist's Jemeel Moondoc's albums, but close enough, with the exception of his earlier albums, released on his own Muntu label. Now, these albums are available again in a great triple CD-box, and that's great news.The box comes with a great booklet of more than 100 pages, with a short overview of the "loft" scene in New York in the seventies, an essay by Jemeel Moondoc, a detailed overview of the music on the three albums, and a complete sessionography.
Despite its limited number of recordings, the band stayed together for quite a while, with different line-ups, but still with the same rhythm section of William Parker and Rachid Bakr. The band had also some later recordings (New York Live! (1980), The Intrepid Live In Poland (1981), The Athens Concert (1982)), with Roy Campbell Jr. on trumpet. Moondoc kept playing with William Parker until now, in various line-ups and bands.
Although Moondoc clearly is the leader of the band, his main focus seems to be the coherence of the band's sound, rather than just him playing with a rhythm section. The music consists of multi-layered improvisations in which anything could happen,
Muntu Ensemble - First Feeding (1977)
"First Feeding" is possibly the most interesting discovery, with Arthur Williams on trumpet and Mark Hennen on piano, because these two other musicians do not show up in any of the later recordings. The three pieces are anchored in recognizable themes, but are otherwise long improvisational work-outs. Williams' tone on trumpet is warm and wild, Hennen's piano playing is pounding and extravagant, in the Cecil Taylor style. Moondoc gives lots of space to the other musicians in the three pieces, but especially on the long "Theme For Milford (Mr. Body & Soul)", and although is playing is excellent, I really would have wanted to hear him more. But the whole thing would fall to pieces if it wasn't so tightly held together by Parker and Bakr, who conserve the unity of the pieces, even if they let go of the rhythm and tempo once in a while. Both also get their own moment in the spotlight in the second part of the last track. The great thing about the album is its wonderful taste of the seventies: you sense the joy and the enthusiasm of the new musical possibilities that are being opened through free playing. It lacks some of the instrumental discipline we have come to know nowadays even in free playing, but it is so full of expansiveness and musical liberation that it is fun.
Jemeel Moondoc & Muntu - The Evening Of The Blue Men (1979)
This line-up is possibly the best of the Muntu line-ups, with Moondoc on alto, Roy Campbell Jr. on trumpet, William Parker on bass, and Rashid Bakr on drums. From the book you can learn that pianist Hennen and Moondoc drifted apart musically, that the alto saxophonist wanted more openness in his music. William Parker introduced Roy Campbell to the band, when Arthur Williams could no longer play and tour, like he had introduced Bakr to Moondoc many years before.
The sound quality of this live recording is a little less than on the first album, but the music is stellar. Starting with a long meandering theme, the pieces quickly folds into a free boppish mode, with Moondoc's playing full of confidence, and joy. The interaction with Campbell is fun. In Moondoc's own words about Campbell: "He's got these huge ears, he can hear shit, easily. He not only hears it right away, he can interpret it right away. He can put it right back at you. That was easy, so wonderful". And this chemistry is almost palpable on this album. Campbell goes deep in his ensuing solo, which is followed by a Bakr and a Parker solo, before re-uniting for the theme. The second piece, "Theme For Diane", is a slow and open-ended bluesy piece, which shows Moondoc's sensitive side, a great context for Campbell to let us hear his bell-clear moaning sounds in response: brilliant. Again, to Moondoc's credit, he gives ample space to the entire band, but he ends the piece is one of the saddest modes imagineable.
The third album brings a reduced line-up, with Moondoc on alto, Parker on bass, and Bakr on drums. The performance was recorded in Rashied Ali's loft : Ali's Alley, and was never released before. The great thing about the trio format is that we now get the chance to fully appreciate Moondoc's playing. Although free in spirit, you can hear his natural sense of melody and his boppish background. The most incredible thing is his sense of focus: the piece is thirty-six minutes long, but he can carry the entire improvisation without moving too far away from its original concept, which he keeps exploring with varying levels of intensity, sensitivity and power, without falling back on automatisms.
This is a lengthy review, but the CD box is worth it. The music itself is not always of the highest level, because Moondoc is not the great innovator in jazz nor the most incredible sax-player, but the nature of the music, the historical context, and the unbelievable quality and dedication with which No Business offered this music back to the world, make this already now one of the most recommended albums of the year.
Going beyond jazz, entering a gentle and improvised dialogue of sound and timbral explorations, this album shows the direction for many of new albums to come, from this band and others. The sounds are gentle, as described by the musicians themselves "careful and carefree", like a pointillist painting, with simple and soft colored dots creating a broad-sweeping yet intimate landscape, but here in a purely abstract context. There is no discernable melody nor rhythm, yet the whole album is relatively accessible. Yuri Yaremchuk plays tenor & soprano saxophones, and bass clarinet, Ilia Belorukov plays alto saxophone, and Andrij Orel plays "cheap acoustic guitar", and other objects. The music is inherently creative, and holds the middle between meditative pieces and free improv, very direct yet sensitive and surprising, with a strange aesthetic beauty. Despite its avant-garde and innovative approach, it is all very inviting.
If the genre of doomjazz exists, this album easily fits in it. The mad Italian trio pushes its own musical concept a notch further, into the darkest territories of the human pysche, full of slow heavy metal stalling rhyhms, and a mad bass, sax and cello to add the weirdest sound textures, agonizing, screaming, full of distress and derangement. The trio is Massimo Pupillo on bass, Jacopo Battaglia on drums, and Luca T Mai on saxophone, with Fred Lonberg-Holm on cello for the occasion. Their gloomy worldview is clearly illustrated by the song titles, such as "Things Fall Apart", and "Farewell to The Species", or "Anatomy Of A Lost Battle". The music is not violent nor aggressive, but it has this weird slowly distructive power, full of unworldly sounds, totally unexpected and forceful. It is frightening and oppressive and mad and utterly creative. In its sub-genre, it is absolutely exceptional, albeit with a total of twenty-five minutes too shortn too short, too short.
Originally released in 2005 on CD via the now defunct Xeng label (Italy), this incredible album gets the deluxe 180 gram, gatefold vinyl treatment and it's the first release of this newly created US label. If you're open to new things (and if you're not really an optimist), you shouldn't miss this one.
Although tenor saxophonist is based in San Francisco, and co-founder of the Asian Improv label, his musical style is very "Chicagoan", with a rhythmic phrasing that is at times reminiscent of Fred Anderson (in the rhythmic parts), sometimes of Joe McPhee (in the spiritual moments). On this trio he is also accompanied by two musicians from the windy city : Tatsu Aoki on bass and Chad Taylor on drums. The live performance was recorded in July 2008, at the1st International Animated Film Festival "Animator", in Poznan, Poland. Aoki, who is also a film-maker was member of the jury of the film festival and the trio was asked to musically accompany an movie by American avant-garde filmmaker and painter Harry Smith (who I had never heard of before).
The music on the album is a great trio outing, with improvisations flowing freely and melodically over a very rhythmic backbone. Wong is very lyrical, warm and expressive on tenor, without going over the top, and rarely overblowing. Aoki is in absolute stellar form, and so is Taylor, both adding complexities to fun, entertainment to forward drive. On "Taylorism", the drummer gets the lead, and "Swing for Tatsu", is indeed what it says, with bluesy scales and with a powerful finger-snapping walking-bass line. Wong's Asian influences enter the improvisation from time to time, especially in the improvised theme in "Return To Alishan". The most beautiful piece is the long "The Animator Suite", which possibly because of its more open-ended nature offers more options to improvise on for all three musicians: Wong sensitive, Aoki heart-rending on arco, Taylor subtle and creative.
Although I have never been a real fan of Peter Brötzmann, his new solo album is worthy of mention. He has released solo recordings before, and they have that additional quality of vulnerability that is often absent from his recordings with bands, in which his muscular and physical attitude to the saxophone dominates the music, expressing distress, anger, rage, violence and sometimes even a touch of madness in its uncompromising approach. This album has some of it, but it's also sensitive at times, not sweet, but an acceptance of smallness, of someone alone in empty space, the opposite of the unrelenting blowing with his bands that leaves no second of chance to silence. In the title track "Lost & Found", he is even melodious and lyrical, wailing full of sadness, then slowing down and reducing his volume as if in full resignation. For Brötzmann fans, the next piece "Universal Madness", finds him again in full steam for some seven minutes of power blowing, evolving over the whole register of his instrument, from the low to the very high, but never letting off steam, not until the very end of the piece, when his tone softens again. Deliberate or not, all pieces, despite the violence and the rage they express, end in a slow and sensitive and soft-tone voice, mirroring the album's title.
He can not only shout, he can weep too.
Brötzmann plays alto and tenor saxophone, b-flat clarinet and tarogato. The performance was recorded live on July 14th, 2006 a the Jazzgalerie in Nickelsdorf, Germany.
FMP celebrated its 40th anniversary last year, quite a feat for a label that is specialised in anything non-commercial. Brötzmann was with them from the very beginning in 1969. That's also an achievement.
