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Albatre - A Descent Into The Maelstrom (Shhhpuma, 2013) ****

By Stef   

Today the new Clean Feed batch has arrived, and we're still struggling to get some of the previous releases reviewed. This album comes from Shhhpuma, the Portuguese label's side project, now featuring Albatre, a sax trio that brings us a refreshing and modern new sound.

The trio is Hugo Costa on alto sax, Gonçalo Almeida on electric bass and German drummer Philipp Ernsting, but their take on jazz is anything but what you can expected. It sounds like the grunge version of jazz, with heavy moments of raw violence alternated with quieter melodic moments, like a mixture of Zu with Jim Black's Alasnoaxis.

Bass and drums come with all the anger and energy of a rock or punk band, while the alto screams and wails full of distress and agony like only a sax can in the best of free jazz modes. The music is raw, direct, without embellishments and needless decoration. This is straight-in-your-ears power jazz, but then of the clever kind and with depth.

A Descent Into The Maelstrom ... indeed!

Buy from Instantjazz.

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Lisa Ullén & Nina De Heney feat. Okkyung Lee - Look Right (LJNaxos, 2013) ****

By Stef 

The first track reminds me of Charlie Haden's "Song For The Whales", on which a deeply moaning arco bass plays high-pitched gliding overtones - the description may sound contradictory but it isn't - and you're drawn in the wonderful world of deeply evocative music. 

The three female artists, Lisa Ullén on piano, Nina De Heney on bass and Okkyung Lee on cello make this a gut-piercing performance, full of intensity like striking a raw nerve. 

On the second piece they start playing with modular interaction and rhythms, with bits and pieces of sounds colliding against each other, seemingly disorganised yet fitting well together in a strange harmonic chaos. 

The third track is started by the bass, playing on the strings and the instrument's body, with the piano adding quick and varied rolls of notes, joined by the cello's dissonant discourse, forcing the piano to more energetic playing, Cecil Taylor-like, using the full breadth of the keyboard, then remarkably the cello releases the tension and the two other instruments follow suit. 

On "Easel 2", the arco strings are having a ball, first in the lower, then the higher regions, echoing and counteracting each other, shifting intensity between slow to absolute frenzy, with the piano adding chords sparingly, like a soothing force. 

"2 Tales" starts with plucked strings on the bass, offering a low pace repetitive dynamic, with the cello, also pizzi, and the piano, also adding touches and accents on the strings, maintaining the slow pace and the granular texture. "Icon Untitled" offers some 'real' piano-playing, on the keys, bringing a lot of substance and density to the album, changing texture and power, to be taken over in the second part by the bass and cello, offering drama and tension at the same time. 

"Utopian Sigh" is again a quiet piece, with precise and subtle interaction between the three instruments, which draw sketchy brush strokes to form a balanced an open canvas, an almost organic piece ending in the most faint sustained high tones, sad and fragile and sensitive. 

Even if at times hard to get into, the music has its own aesthetic, with a good variety of sonic texture and character. 

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Alex Bonney & Dave Kane - Less And More (MiniLoop, 2013) ****½

By Stef 

Allright, let me be honest. The artwork is ugly and the album is short (eight tracks of of which the longest is close to four minutes and the shortest one minute), and those are about all the negative comments I can have on this album : the improvisation and the playing are exquisite.

On the unusual combination of trumpet and bass (see here for other albums), we get the full flavour and contrast - or complementarity - of both instruments : the brass and the wood, the horn and the strings, the high and the deep tones, the clarity and the warmth, all used and pitched against each other to perfection, but then these two musicians do even more with this, in this limited space of just a few minutes : they write little stories, each with its own flow and sound and character and style, sometimes intimate, sometimes contemplative, sometimes energetic, sometimes sinister, yet never going for cheap effects or shock.

Alex Bonney is on trumpet, and he's been active in many UK jazz bands and projects over the years, including with Paul Dunmall and Mark Sanders, as well as in the Brian Irvine Ensemble and the Graham Collier ensemble, to name but a few.

Dave Kane is on double bass, originally from Ireland, and he also studied with Brian Irvine.

The great thing about the music is that both artists don't seem to have any eagerness to demonstrate skills, or force-feed us musical ideas, no, although they do demonstrate skills and they do demonstrate musical ideas, it all comes naturally, spontaneously, music just flowing out of their instruments, almost without effort, yet beautifully, or no, rather ...  exquisitely.


Listen to the track below (keep listening!) and order the album from the label.

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Joe McPhee - Sonic Elements (For Pocket Trumpet and Alto Saxophone) (Clean Feed, 2013) *****

By Janus and Karl

Being Joe McPhee must be wonderful because with his music he has the ability to touch the most delicate strings of your heart. In 2011 he opened the third day of the Chicago Tentet+1 residence to celebrate Peter Brötzmann’s 70th birthday at Café Ada in his hometown Wuppertal with a dedication to the late Billy Bang. It was a blues meditation on soprano sax which almost drove the audience to tears.

But being Joe McPhee must be hard work as well. When you’ve still been blowing miracles out of your lungs every day for forty years (and being among a fistful of unbreakable free jazz veterans), when you’ve been constantly promoting the logical evolution of your lifetime’s musical paths as much as you’ve been getting involved in a countless number of embodiments in the musical scenario without boundaries, there must have been some kind of strange and strong fluid running through your veins. One day you’re on stage guiding the transcendent guitar feedbacks of some rock outsider, the other day you team up with some polyhydric noise creator, or you are just spending a two-day-residence-gig melting in the glorious “dirty Chicago Tentet” at Café Oto driven by one of your old comrades. No time to mess around!

So what happens when you are alone with your horns and brasses again? When your sound is so unveiled after so much time and so many experiments? Well, see above.

McPhee is in no hurry, he takes all the time he needs to warm up his instrument like a kid getting confident with his new toy (he!). On his new album “Sonic Elements” the dedication of “Episode One” to Don Cherry is rather to be intended as a homage to a trailblazer in the use of the pocket trumpet as improvising instrument than a reference to the grand old trumpeter. McPhee silently inflates the pipes, enjoying every single rasp coming from his breath coalescing in shrieking clusters, slap-tonguing on the mouthpiece, clawing the metal and murmuring. The evolved phrases of his musical speech coming after this long intense prelude seems to come from a sort of second adult self replacing the former embryonic one.

Following this imaginary path of growth doesn’t surprise the use of the voice filtered through the instrument, as a new step of evolution and conscience. If the artist already faced two of the four classical elements (“Air” in the first minutes of this sonic journey and “Earth” through the human voice) the closing minutes are plunged in the “Water”. The musical fluid flows along the piston valves, the “Air” pulls back among the dropping sizzle of the overstuffed pipes. McPhee preserves the clash of “Earth” and “Fire” for his beloved blues and alto sax and dedicates “Episode Two” to Ornette Coleman – and what a majestic and outstanding blues manifesto it is indeed! But not necessarily in the case of Coleman’s Texas blues feeling (or his harmolodics), even if the track starts like it. McPhee triggers off light-footed lines displaying his incredible musicianship on the instrument (but there is definitely no showing off) before he turns to a Steve-Reich-like minimalism, to repetitive phrases, and hoarse croaking. He even produces rock phrases in this wild, yet elegant mix before he intersperses pointed trills, wild runs, and desperate cries only to return to minimalist phrases again. The cement that holds everything together is his down-to-earth Mississippi blues sound, these beautiful dark lines which are so fragile that they seem to be torn apart, in its foot-dragging this music is of the utmost beauty and melancholy.

The album was recorded at Cankarjew Dom, a concert hall in Ljubljana/Slovenia in 2012. It is one of the most fabulous recent solo recordings and we highly recommend it, because being Joe McPhee is most of all being pure joy for all the listeners.

Listen to Joe McPhee on pocket trumpet here:

and on alto saxophone here:

The album can be bought from instantjazz.com.

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Harris Eisenstadt September Trio - The Destructive Element (Clean Feed, 2013) ****½

By Martin Schray

Recently we had a very interesting discussion on Ellery Eskelin’s album New York II in which Joe and I were rather critical while Monique, who reviewed it, really loved it. The most fascinating thing was that Mr Eskelin himself joined the discussion in the comment section and added some very insightful arguments as to his idea of a combination of open improvisation with warm and smooth sounds. I listened to New York II again and could see his idea behind it but somehow I thought that he could do better – and he does: On Harris Eisenstadt’s September Trio album “The Destructive Element” the integration of Eskelin’s beautiful tenor sound into Eisenstadt’s compositions works in an almost perfect way.

The September Trio is Harris Eisenstadt (drums, composition), Ellery Eskelin (tenor saxophone) and Angelica Sanchez (piano) and “The Destructive Element” is their second CD after the self-titled debut, which tried to integrate new classical music ways of composing in jazz ballads with the result that the album had an intellectual touch somehow. Their new album tries to separate these genres, which suits the pieces much better.

The album starts with “Swimming, Rained Out”, one of three marvelous ballads, which are structured in a similar way: First there is a rather free intro (in the first case a diffident drum solo), followed by Angelica Sanchez’ solid chords providing an ideal harmonic carpet for Ellery Eskelin’s exquisite melodies while Eisenstadt remains in the background, rather adding sound colors than usual rhythmic support (maybe Mr Eisenstadt’s most impressive quality). The same goes for “Back and Forth” and “Cascadia”, which start with free improvisations on piano before they delve into sheer beauty as well. The title track is a ballad as well but it follows different rules.

Another element on this album are Harris Eisenstadt’s  personal preferences which he tries to transfer into music, like writer Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim quotation  in the title-track, Arnold Schoenberg’s avant-garde music in the two parts of “From Schoenberg”, and Akira Kurosawa’s movies in “Here Are the Samurai”. The two “From Schoenberg” parts are the most ambitious compositions quoting Schoenberg’s “Concerto for Violin and Orchestra” while “Here are the Samurai” represents the whole album in a nutshell. Eisenstadt, Eskelin and Sanchez start with a somber balladesque cascade, then the tune continues with rolling percussion and a challenging confrontation of saxophone and piano painting the fight of the Samurai with the bad guys (whether you have Kurosawa’s Yojimbo or The Seven Samurai in mind does not matter). Last but not least the cool jazz themes in “Additives” and “Ordinary Weirdness”, which always fall apart before they have the chance to get pretentious, are also two of the many highlights of this album.

After Convergence Quartet’s “Slow and Steady” this is Mr Eisenstadt’s second coup within a few months. Let’s see what he comes up with next. Highly recommended!

Buy from instantjazz.com.

Watch a featurette about the album here:

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Hidden Forces Trio - Topus (Bruce’s Fingers, 2013) ***

By Colin Green

I sat down to listen to this disc with some trepidation. The Bruce’s Fingers’ June update had described the musicians, from Seville, Spain, as also having “parallel existences in the world of heavy rock, doom metal, gothcore [or whatever the appropriate term is]”. Matters weren’t helped by the painting on the cover – a dental nightmare – or some of the track titles: El hijo secreto, no el bastardo (the secret son, not the bastard) and Panza de azufre (sulphur belly). I was expecting music full of adolescent angst, but it turned out to be rather different. As the adage has it: never judge a book by its cover.

Gustavo Domínguez (clarinet, bass clarinet), Marco Serrato (double bass) and Borja Díaz (drums), play composed and improvised music. The composed material has a folkish touch, wistful and plangent. After an initial free jazz flurry, the title track is a faintly Moorish melody, over loping bass, which gradually descends into the lower registers, as the bowed bass and bass clarinet explore a darker version of the theme.

In Porque no llueve, los santos peregrinarán de espaldas (because it doesn’t rain, the saints return to the pilgrimage) an attractive melody is first played gently on bass, repeated on clarinet, and then in outline on drums (but for rather too long). The remainder of the piece is thoughtful – but at times borders on the soporific – and I would have liked to have heard playing with rather more concision, and a touch more gusto.

On the whole, the improvised material is rather disappointing.  El hijo secreto, no el bastardo runs out of steam with an over long and rather aimless drum solo, unreprieved by accompaniment from the bass and later, clarinet. Las colinas (the hills) is somewhat diffuse, and lacking in character. There are some interesting textures, but it sounds a little like improvising by numbers.

The trio seems to gel in the final track – La novia del chivo (the kid’s girlfriend) – rolling drums and pulsing bass with rather more brio in the clarinet, but it’s short-lived, as the piece comes to a premature close after two minutes. Curious.  

Something of a mixed bag, therefore. Over the album, rather too much of Domínguez’s work on clarinet consists of scalar-like runs and arpeggios, but often not a great deal more. I can’t help but feel that the trio simply needs to play together more, and take a more critical view of its material. Maybe some angst would help.

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Ikue Mori & Steve Noble - Prediction And Warning (Fataka, 2013) ****

By Colin Green

Advances in computer technology have allowed electronic sounds to be generated and modified with ever greater sophistication: an eclectic mix of musical pitches, field recordings of objets trouvés, and clusters of novel textures – combined with a frequency range from the subterranean up to the barely audible – often heard simultaneously or in rapid-fire succession. (Am I alone in wondering how this vast array of sounds is achieved by someone sitting at a desk in front of a laptop computer, or a table strewn with wired together boxes?)  Such immense diversity can be used in a positive way – to confound our expectations – but the absence of fixed references can also result in a sort of aural disorientation: one cannot listen in a continual state of surprise. Electronics also tend to lack the expressive, often subtle, phrasings and inflections that are part and parcel of playing an acoustic instrument, with which our ears are so familiar.

In consequence, purely electronic music is often in danger of becoming rather homogenised and monotonous – paradoxically, sound without limits can end up sounding terribly limited. For this reason, in an improvising context, they tend to work best when in a dialogue with regular instruments, even when those in turn are subject to electronic transformation. In this recording, Ikue Mori (electronics) and Steve Noble (drums, percussion) take full advantage of their respective resources, to produce a thoughtful montage of the unexpected and the familiar, which retains interest throughout.

One of the ways this is achieved is by exploring contiguous areas of the sonic spectrum – points of contact between different sounds, textures and rhythms, and where they overlap (the idea is, in fact, at least as old as Stockhausen’s Kontakte for electronic sounds, piano and percussion, from 1960). Cymbals produce a rich series of overtones, and during the first piece, Seismic Waves, Mori draws attention to this by adding splashes of distorted cymbal sound, merging into white noise, so as to make it sound as if Noble’s cymbals are taking wing. The next piece, Montparnasse Derailment, is a duo between electronically generated rhythms, and actual percussion, acoustic and electronic beats and pops overlapping and intermingling. (Tokyo born Mori started to play drums after she moved to New York in 1977, and in the 1980s experimented with drum machines.) Elsewhere, Noble’s crisp chimes and drum thwacks are met with facsimiles of those sounds. On other occasions – such as the opening to Inferno – it is unclear precisely who is responsible for what in the overall texture.

This is not an arid exercise in sonic exploration, however, and Mori extends her electronics beyond the merely imitative. She conjures up some wonderfully rich colours, such as the thick, smeared chords in Combustion, heard over Noble’s totemic drumming. She avoids one of the pitfalls of electronic music – sounding like a child let loose in a candy store – by restricting her palette when the need requires. In Land of Famine, Noble scrapes out long resonant sounds on metal percussion, while Mori intersperses soft sounds played in reverse – decay moving to attack – followed by quasi-gamelan bells, fading in and out as if from a dream. Similarly, Noble’s contribution is often limited to simple, vaguely ritualistic drum figures, most dramatically in Black Death (Steve’s March), during which he beats out a relentless military march on his snare, then whole kit, followed by cymbals only, surrounded by electronic swarms swooping in various – sometime contrary – directions.  

One thing computers can to do better than humans is extremely complex or accelerated patterns. In Convection, rapid, zigzag sequences keep bubbling to the surface; and during the latter part of Land of Famine,Mori builds layers of repeated figures – each proceeding at a different speed and subject to separate treatment – which gradually quicken, expanding like the tendrils of a plant in accelerated motion.    

This is the sixth release from the recently formed Fataka label, which is building a refreshingly diverse catalogue, all of which can be recommended.


The album can be bought from instantjazz.com.

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Secret Keeper - Super 8 (Intakt, 2013) ****

By Paul Acquaro

Mary Halvorson and Stephen Crump's guitar and bass duo release Super 8 is all about atmosphere. Thoughts of Frisell come easily to mind in the opening moments of 'Moom Song', a minimalist musical painting, but they soon dissipate as the deeply unique and personal musical conversation of Secret Keeper reveals itself.

Halvorson, whose singular approach to the guitar and composition has been extolled on these virtual pages many times before, employs her unique approach here as well. Crump's bass is a delightful foil, equally supportive and driving, and as a conversationalist, he's quite a good listener. His bowing and plucking adds movement and also anchors Halvorson's unexpected intervals and slippery pitches.

Some of my favorite tracks include the buoyant, but only a minute long, 'Winds me to Pieces' and the insistent almost 10 minute 'Toothsea'. Unusual melodic ideas and agitated rhythms seem perfectly logical in thier context.  'Night Light' illuminates this perfectly. As the song progresses the interactions become more intense, the bass notes fit perfectly between the guitarist's rapidly dispersed lines.

The sound flows naturally for this creative and engaging duet.

Enjoy:

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Steve Lacy & Joe McPhee: The Rest (Roaratorio, 2013) ****

By Martin Schray

There are a lot of duos I would love to hear but unfortunately the musicians have never recorded or performed together (and some never will) - Ornette Coleman and Peter Brötzmann, Bill Dixon and Nate Wooley, Ingebrigt Håker-Flaten and William Parker, Okkyung Lee and Fred Lonberg-Holm, or Martin Küchen and John Zorn come to my mind spontaneously (feel free to add some more). Steve Lacy and Joe McPhee was another of these matches made in heaven I have always wanted to hear and luckily Roaratorio has released the only performance of these two master saxophonists - a really unique moment in free jazz history.

In June 1977 Lacy and McPhee shared a double bill in Basel, Switzerland and Lacy invited McPhee to join him on soprano saxophone for a duet to close his set. Lacy’s performance was issued on the marvelous Clinkers LP and now - 36 years later –  here comes The Rest.

The performance starts with a tossing of short licks and both of them seem to feel very comfortable with each other immediately. Mc Phee’s raw sounds and guttural tones meet Lacy’s delicate and elegant lines, and while McPhee often keeps playing riffs, Lacy is able to improvise around these lines (now and then they even display a certain kind of humor). You can hear how they process circus melodies, Lacy’s typical Monk themes or McPhee’s blues riffs and once there is even a short reminiscence of Henry Mancini’s “Elephant Walk”. But in general there is a strong focus on the percussive aspect of their playing.

 The album is not a competition between the two alpha dogs, it is sensational how they let each other breathe (especially at the end of the short performance) and it is hard to believe that this is a spontaneous get together when you hear how well Lacy’s sophisticated subtleness works with McPhee’s grounded energy.

The Rest is a limited one-sided LP (it is a 19-minutes-track), as usual on such Roaratorio releases the cover artwork is by Judith Lindbloom. A download coupon is included.

The album can be bought from instantjazz.com.

Listen to an excerpt here:

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