Fred Lonberg-Holm & Ken Vandermark ‎– Resistance (Bocian, 2015) ****

By Martin Schray

When Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello, electronics) and Ken Vandermark (sax, clarinet) played in Weikersheim last May everybody expected a sure thing: two protagonists of the Chicago scene who have known each other very well from different ensembles like Peter Brötzmann’s Chicago Tentet, Vandermark 5, Pipeline, or the Frame Quartet (to name a few). But parts of the audience were puzzled in the break between the first and the second set. The music took very unexpected twists and turns, Lonberg-Holm made excessive use of electronics, some people had the impression that the two did not really match that evening. And when they seemed to have found a common ground – they stopped it all of a sudden to move the music in the opposite direction. Not everybody liked that. But isn’t improvised music about the unexpected?

Resistance, the duo’s live recording from 2013, is another example of surprising music. Here it might be easier to follow them on their paths, although the twists and turns can also be found on this recording, for example in “Z=sl”, which starts with Lonberg-Holm playing his cello almost like a bass, adding distortion to the sound, before the track moves into softer regions just to return even more violently. Both instruments are closely interwoven, Vandermark’s tenor climbs along Lonberg-Holm’s textures like vine around the branches.

His cello reminds of twigs snapping in “E=pj”, while Vandermark’s clarinet mourns over these soundscapes. Then Lonberg-Holm shifts the track to new classical music avoiding his brutal electronics completely. Nevertheless the music sounds stressed towards the end which is a result of the fact that Vandermark uses circular breathing in this part.

Resistance is a lucky bag of sounds and ideas: the distorted electric cello reminding of a gloomy Jimi Hendrix while Vandermark changes between clicking sounds and deep, guttural tones that pay tribute to Peter Brötzmann’s style (“I= V/R”), the cello blowing like a locomotive or meandering between fuzz-tone guitar, the cries of monkeys or clean bowed tones that remind of Steve Reich which is juxtaposed by Vandermark’s tenor simply soaring over these sounds, following them blindly singing in his masterful voice when he is left alone on stage (“p=I2r”).

Fred Lonberg-Holm and Ken Vandermark are like a small band on this album, tight, voluminous, ideally matched, often it seems as if the music was pre-composed (but all of it is freely improvised). The music is like a dance between a songbird (cello) and a belling deer (tenor saxophone), sometimes their energy literally collides.

The second set in Weikersheim was more like the music on the album, the audience liked it much better and there were a lot of “bravos” after the last note. But I also liked the first part for its
abruptness and unpredictability.

The album is available on CD, you can buy it from www.instantjazz.com.
Or through the Downtown Music Gallery.

Watch them at a show in Chicago here:

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Satoko Fujii Tobira - Yamiyo Ni Karuso (Libra, 2015) ****½

By Stef 

One time, some seven years ago, I wrote the following on Satoko Fujii's music "I can guarantee, with certainty, that, somewhere in 2087, in a bar on the planet ZOrghk942, when some legally extraterrestrialized, yet interesting jazz afficionados are thinking back about their favorite music at the turn of the century on planet Earth, that Satoko Fujii will come up in the discussion. Many - and I mean MANY - of the musicians that we think of as good today, will unfortunately have totally disappeared into oblivion, disappeared into a black hole outside history, fortunately together with some other zillion musicians who occupy radio space. What makes Satoko Fujii great? The answer is simple : she is music, she loves music, she creates new languages in music. And I mean indeed the plural of the word. She has more ideas in a year than most musicians in a lifetime, and she manages to create with each CD and with each line-up something exceptional, out of the ordinary, unique and yet accessible, relatively speaking then". 

So why do I refer back to this? First, because my subjective statement is still valid (and still subjective), and second because she demonstrates this again with a new line-up, now with herself on piano, Natsuki Tamura on trumpet, Todd Nicholson on bass, and Takashi Itani on drums. 

As with each new band, this one also delivers the goods, not only because of the quality of the musicians, but because of the sound and approach that Fujii takes to bring yet another view on what her music can bring. 

On this album, not much seems prepared or composed. Fujii gives her band members lots of freedom, and Tamura kicks off with trumpet whispers, primeval sounds that generate reaction from the percussion, then the piano presents a great theme, somewhat triumphant and insistent in tone, sucking up the sound of the rest of the band, which like in a maelstrom gets attracted to the inevitable centre, and when this happens, silence emerges, and space is given to the drums, which changes the nature of the piece again, resulting in quiet piano, yet intense, somewhat changing timbre, eery, muted strings, clear sounds, inviting exploratory interaction with the rest of the band, chaotic, colliding, clashing, increasing in volume, relentlessly, the trumpet soaring, then the piano theme comes back again, forcing the rest of the band into its powerful drive, aligning forces in the same direction, hammering, pounding, then full stop and quiet chords and harmonies, subtle and gentle, opening space for the bass, followed by a more quiet moment by the quartet. 

Fujii is a big picture thinker, someone who likes broad sweeps of sounds, and strong contrasts between the violent and the quiet, the composed and the improvised, between chaos and discipline, yet always with careful attention for the little details and the emotional depth which bring the music so much further than just some theatrical dramatic effects. And of course not to forget the inherent beauty of the compositions. 


Recommended!

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Weasel Walter & Chris Pitsiokos - Drawn and Quartered (2015) ****

By Paul Acquaro

So, the gauntlet has been thrown down on using the term 'extended techniques' (sort of), and I accept the challenge to not use it (maybe). Though such a useful phrase, I'll admit, it's a bit of a shortcut, it's a tad lazy, and it can end up maybe even reinforcing the notion that there is a 'right' way for an instrument to sound. Henceforth, I shall banish the word from my reviews, I will set autocorrect to deal with it.

Drawn and Quatered, a duo effort from saxophonist Chris Pitsiokos and percussionist Weasel Walter comes screaming to life, taking no prisoners in its embrace of extended techniques all the sounds that their instruments can afford. It is an energetic effort from the get go, and the duo uses every side, shape and sound they can to create an intense and interactive set of music.

The names of the tracks - 'Hanged', 'Drawn' and 'Quartered'  - do not suggest anything nice and the music lives up to this. It's brutal, it's bruising and at times it's beautiful. Pitsiokos is a force to be reckoned with - from piercing blasts to deep bellows, overblown passages to relaxed meditations. He is also an excellent match for percussionist Walter, whose work with Mary Halvorson, Nate Wooley, Yoni Kretzmer, Peter Evans, Nels Cline and others has been documented here on the blog. Walter, it seems, is a musician who can incorporate an endless array of objects to effectively extend his rhythmic ideas. The interaction between the two musicians is almost like a game of cat and mouse, with Walter mirroring the woodwind's bursts with fervor and Pitsiokos darting about the complex rhythms expertly. 

It's hard to say if there is a 'melody' or a 'tune' on this album, rather on these tracks there is an endless supply of ideas, starts, and endings that seem motivated by the moment rather than by a well-laid plan, and what we end up with a bountiful and bloodied cornucopia. This is a tremendously energetic duo and a highly recommended album that is simply brimming with ideas.

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Fire Music: A History of the Free Jazz Revolution

The blog has a pretty solid policy regarding crowdfunding and promotional requests - that it is just not our goal - we want to share information on the music and musicians who have something important to contribute to free jazz and improvised music. However, sometimes a project comes up that just seems right - like Tom Surgal's in-progress documentary on Free Jazz 'Fire Music: A History of the Free Jazz Revolution'.

Surgal, along with executive producers Nels Cline and Thurston Moore, has been working on securing funding to finish the film. The Kickstarter campaign, as of writing is less than $4,000 short of its goal but there are only a few days left to go.

To help spread the word, we took the opportunity to ask some questions to Surgal (who incidentally is a musician himself and is releasing an album with his group Whiteout and Nels Cline this fall) about the project and (maybe even more importantly) his music collection. For more in-depth information about the documentary, visit the funding page and check out the video. 

FJB: Why make this film?

TS: In order to expose the world to one the most important and radical musical forms in cultural history. 

What does the title 'Fire Jazz' mean?

Fire Music was a term from the 1960s to characterize an incendiary new brand of avant-garde Jazz.

What can we expect to see in the movie (free jazz, free improv, etc.)?

Electrifying performance footage combined with in depth interviews with the originators of some of the most important music of the twentieth century.

The name suggests a certain approach to free music, do you also consider the type of free jazz pioneered by the AACM and furthered by lowercase artists? 

Fire Music is an umbrella term used to initially describe the inflammatory music emanating from the streets of New York. Once the creative spark was ignited, the music took root in all sorts of places and metamorphosed in the process. St. Louis had the Black Artist Group, Holland had the Instant Composers Pool, Germany had the Globe Unity Orchestra, England had the Spontaneous Music Ensemble and indeed Chicago had the AACM. All these musical entities are as essential to the story that I am trying to tell as anything that ever came out of the New York area.

How would you describe your approach to making the film?

The same approach I've used to make music videos all these years, run and gun. Try and create as much beauty as is humanely possible with the money allotted. I've never had the luxury of big budgets, poverty is my idiom.

Since the blog focuses on album reviews, we'd love to talk about albums. So, what album or musician opened your ears to Free Jazz? When?

When I was 13 years old I heard an interview with the great Rahsaan Roland Kirk, who was in the news because he and a group of fellow activist/musicians had been storming the sets of locally produced talk shows in order to demand more Jazz on the airwaves. Rahsaan in interview talked enthusiastically about  artists like John Coltrane and Albert Ayler. His extolling on their musical virtue would forever change ( enrich ) my life.

How much - ballpark figure of course - of your personal collection of music is dedicated to 'fire' Jazz?

I own many thousands of Jazz albums, and I probably posses almost every avant-garde record of note that has ever been released. That being said I also have an enormous collection of straight ahead Jazz. I also collect a wide variety of other musical genres, everything from Tropicalia to Contemporary Classical to Algerian Rai, anything that strikes my fancy. It's all one just one continuum. In the words of Charlie Parker : " It's all music. "  

What are some of the albums that you feel are particularly important to the music?

( In alphabetical order by artist ) 

1 ) Bells: Albert Ayler

A one-sided live LP that captures Ayler at his most gutturally emotive.  Ayler's typically anthemic themes are punctuated by torrid solos and wildly improvised ensemble sections. The album radiates with electric energy.

2 ) BAG (Black Artists Group)

Classic release from the St. Louis ensemble that is rife with all the earmarks of the midwest Free Jazz continuum : heavy dense blowing contrasted by quiet sparse sections with a liberal dose of exotic miscellaneous percussion interspersed throughout. Mysterious as it is potent.

3 ) In Search Of The Mystery : Gato Barbieri

Argentine transplant Barbieri erupted on to the scene with this maiden release. Armed with his poignant, gruff tone, Gato managed to fuse Latin Intensity with the New York energy to create his own signature sound..

4 ) For Alto : Anthony Braxton

Four audacious sides of unaccompanied alto saxophone. The album that challenged the very concept of the saxophone's role in contemporary music; naked, virtuosic, powerful.  

5 ) Macine Gun : Peter Brötzman

Early recording of a summit of prime avant garde players from throughout Europe. Germans, Dutch, a Belgian and a Brit join forces to create a marvel of bare aggression. Han Bennink told me that that they recorded in the dead of night, in a kind of bunker like setting. Conditions that may have fueled the musicians' collective fire.

5 ) Intents and Purposes :  Bill Dixon

Key organizer of the "October Revolution,"  Dixon conjoins Third Stream with New Thing in this seminal release. Unique instrumentation includes cello, flute, english horn, and clarinet. Evocatively structured compositions that vary in dynamic range from delicate to unbridled. 

6 ) Where is Brooklyn? : Don Cherry

Essentially an Ornette Coleman quartet album without Ornette. (Ornette does however pen the liner notes.)  Pharoah Sanders blows mightily, his rough hewn tone the perfect compliment to the quixotic playing of Cherry and company. 

7) Interstellar Space : John Coltrane/ Rashied Ali

Maximalist master Coltrane in his most stripped down setting, accompanied by a young Rashied at his multi-directional best. Arguably the greatest duet album ever recorded.

8 ) Out To Lunch : Eric Dolphy

Definitive recording of five originals by multi- instrumentalist Dolphy, that highlight his inimitable Free Bop style. All star ensemble that includes Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Hutcherson, Richard Davis, and Tony Williams.

9 ) Nommo : Milford Graves featuring Don Pullen

An immortal pairing of these two perennial stalwarts of the New York avant garde. The music achieves maximum density while still retaining an airy sense of space. Milford is at his most melodically inventive, and Pullen is ceaseless in his percussive attack.

10 ) The Black Arc : Noah Howard

A vibrant release that showcases Howard's pronounced compositional skills and wailing horn solos with tight rhythmic interplay throughout.

11 ) Black Beings : Frank Lowe 

Extreme, histrionic, unrelenting, Lowe and Joseph Jarman burn with visceral intensity while a frenzied Rashid Sinan pounds up a polyrhythmic storm 

12 ) Topography Of The Lungs : Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, Han Bennink

The coming together of  the two leading lights of British avant garde with Dutch master percussionist Han Bennink was an event of historic proportions. Evan and Derek's aggressively pointillist lines are perfectly accompanied by Han's spastic pummeling. Frenetic bursts of wild sound are punctuated by dramatic stops and starts; the silence between sections often resonating the loudest.

13 ) Tauhid : Pharoah Sanders

A mysterious masterwork filled with bells, balafons, and other exotic miscellaneous percussion. The best example of Pharoah's inimitable blending of ethnic sounds and polytonal abandon.

14 ) Life At The Donaueschingen Music Festival : Archie Shepp

A live recording that captures Shepp at his most blistering. The album is comprised of one long track entitled "One For John" which serves as a musical tribute to then recently deceased John Coltrane.The double trombone combination of Roswell Rudd and Grachan Moncur lends the session a kind of Dixieland gone amok quality.

15) Burning Spirits : Sonny (Huey) Simmons

Sonny' s acutely lyrical style is supremely augmented  by a driving sextette that includes the greatest bass tandem ever recorded in Cecil Mcbee and Richard Davis.

16) Astro Black : Sun Ra

Self proclaimed native of Saturn and mystical svengali Sun Ra, mixes wailing horns, other worldly synthesizer sounds, and driving percussion, into an intergalactic stew of mind altering music.

17) The Giant Is Awakened : Horace Tapscott

Tapscott was  a key figure of the criminally unsung Los Angeles avant garde contingent that at one time included Eric Dolphy and Ornette Coleman, before they made the moved to New York and ascended to fame.This record is an exemplary example of Tapscott's angular compositional forms and cinematic arrangements. The album is also notable for being Arthur Bythe's first recorded effort. 

18 ) Unit Structures : Cecil Taylor 

Cecil at his most percussively explosive, propelled by a large ensemble comprised of double sax, double bass, trumpet, and drums. Each selection is so endowed with thematic complexity, that they resemble miniature suites.

19 ) Afrodisiaca : John Tchicai

A massive work recorded by Danish Congolese Tchicai upon his return to Europe after his much storied stint in New York. Twenty Six musicians are employed to create the mammoth title track alone, playing a wide range of instruments that include tympani, organ, balafon, ophicleide, and glockenspiel. A work of great artistic depth that combines one of a kind orchestrations with hellaciously improvised sections.

20 ) The Frank Wright Trio (self titled)

The good reverend Wright rings forth with his singular brand of soulful ferocity, accompanied by the always eminently inventive Henry Grimes on bass.  

If you were to pick one quality of improvised music that speaks to you the most, what is it? Why?

The raw visceral quality of the jams. Because the courageous act of giving vent to your inner most feelings through your instrument is a thing of beauty. 

What do you want the people who see this film to walk away with?

To appreciate the radical innovations of the original mavericks who created this form. To revel in its naked fury and bask in its artistic complexity. To appreciate the commitment and pure audacity of these sonic radicals, who without popular or critical support, would soldier on and in the process create some of the most sublime music of all time.

Visit the Kickstarter page to learn more. 

Just for the record, the blog is not anyway connected with this project, except that we are excited to see it when it's released!

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Mario Pavone – Blue Dialect (Clean Feed, 2015) ****½

By Troy Dostert

It’s great to see Clean Feed adding a veteran of Mario Pavone’s stature to its roster.  The label has done such a fine job in recent years of documenting many of the most creative and forward-thinking artists in jazz and free improvisation, and bassist Pavone certainly deserves to be in the conversation as one of them, especially when it comes to the piano-bass-drums trio format, arguably the most appropriate showcase for Pavone’s distinctive talents.  A couple years ago Pavone released Arc Trio, an exceptionally fine outing with Gerald Cleaver and Craig Taborn.
 
And with this iteration of Pavone’s trio (what he calls “Arc Trio Blue”) we have Blue Dialect, this time with the no-less-impressive Tyshawn Sorey on drums and Matt Mitchell on piano.  It’s another superb entry in Pavone’s catalog of expertly-crafted post-bop recordings.

As expected, the trio’s musicianship is first-rate.  Mitchell in particular is a revelation, with a seemingly endless array of patterns and phrases at his command; his two-handed runs are especially convincing and effective.  He’s able to articulate the serpentine logic of Pavone’s compositions while at the same time pushing them forward, putting his own stamp on them.  Sorey’s understated, sympathetic and fluid drumming is the perfect rhythmic foundation for pieces that sometimes develop unpredictably, with subtle shifts in dynamics and tempo.  And as always, Pavone is a marvel, staying in close rapport with Sorey and Mitchell even while undertaking his own high-wire explorations.

Highlights include the second cut, “Xapo,” a Monkish piece, deceptively simple, that allows plenty of room for Mitchell’s relentless investigations; “Silver Print,” featuring Sorey and Pavone in extraordinary near-telepathic conversation, both goading and responding to Mitchell; and “Trio Dialect,” a forceful, propulsive group improvisation with far more ideas than seems possible in under five minutes.   

For a compelling glimpse of the trio in action, see the following clip from a performance from last year:

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Konstrukt and Guests – Islington Mill, Manchester, 12.08.15

 A Free Jazz Blog experiment ... concert reviews! Colin Green leads off the effort with a review of Konstrukt's show in Manchester, England, this past Wednesday evening.
Let us know what you think about this venture.

By Colin Green

Konstrukt have been touring Europe, including Venice (where they recorded themselves as a double quartet – sounds interesting) Berlin (where they were joined by William Parker, who was apparently dancing) and London’s Cafe OTO (with Alexander Hawkins (piano)). Two days later, they played at Islington Mill in Manchester, a converted industrial mill that serves as an exhibition and performing space and houses creative artists in a variety of media, some of whom joined Konstrukt for their second set, along with local musicians.

Konstrukt have a recently released album: Kaish: Live At Kargart (Holidays Records, 2015) a performance with Akira Sakata from this January (recommended). Since that recording, the line-up has changed, with a new rhythm section, and they now consist of Umut Çağlar (keyboards, electric guitar, woodwinds, reeds); Korhan Futacı (tenor and alto saxophones, voice, percussion); Barlos Tan Özemek (electric bass); and Berke Can Özcan (drums). The new members – the electric bass, in particular – have given Konstrukt a more hard-edged, muscular sound. There’s still the same flexibility as before: lines and patterns swerving in multiple directions, but with a better internal balance and no danger that the front-men will obscure the often dislocated rhythms behind them. The music is less diffuse, but has gained in clarity. Part of Konstrukt’s appeal is the sense that their music occupies several different spaces at the same time, areas that are now more sharply defined. As before, their music can teeter on the edge – a feeling of heightened spontaneity – and the first set closed with a gloriously chaotic up-tempo thrash.

For the second set, Konstrukt were joined by local musicians Graham Massey (B-flat and alto clarinets, electric guitar) and David McLean (Fender Rhodes and tenor sax) together with Sam Weaver (modular synth) who is enjoying a residency at Islington Mill (although unfortunately, he had to retire early due to technical problems). In addition, we had Rachel Goodyear, who provided “live drawing” projected onto the stage, using graphic images, wet ink and fabrics, all of which provided for a novel and busy second set. The combination of an electric-Miles sound of swirling piano, alto clarinet, echo-effects and drones, spurred on by propulsive bass and drums – and with projected images on top – made it feel like the early Seventies (though I suspect I was the only member of the audience who could remember multi-media performances from that far back).

The open-ended nature of Konstrukt’s music lends itself to the guest appearances of which they’re so fond. There’s plenty of space left for others to make their mark. There was some nice double saxophone work from Futacı and McClean, rising to a fever-pitch, and towards the end we had unison horns playing Stax-soul riffs over a blues-rock base – stirring stuff. There’s nothing like live music.

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Matthew Shipp Trio – To Duke (RogueArt, 2015) ****½

By Tom Burris

To say Matthew Shipp has been outspoken on the subject of “the jazz tradition” is an understatement.  Considering this, the arrival of a Duke Ellington tribute album from Shipp made me really excited.   Shipp doesn’t negate tradition; he never has.  He simply regards it as what came before.  Why shouldn’t the most inventive pianist of his generation pay tribute to the most inventive band leader and composer of the first half of the 20th century?  Duke’s music isn’t going to go away; it was built to last.  And that is an understatement too.  It's also pliable enough to withstand every corruption Shipp exposes it to; he toys with every aspect of these standards, including the melodies themselves.  The purity that Ellington intended still shines through; and I'm sure that's Shipp's intention as well.  He wouldn't bother messing with this music if it wilted before the modern world.
An early standout track is “In A Sentimental Mood,” where Shipp introduces the song in a very unsentimental fashion, simply playing the melody as straight as possible – forcing the melody to carry itself, without any overwrought emotion behind it.  Bassist Michael Bisio and drummer Whit Dickey play freely underneath, alternately supporting and distracting attention from the piano.  The melody gets continuously chopped up and reassembled until it is finally restated straightforwardly at the end. 

On “Take The 'A' Train” Shipp plays a few bars of the intro, then promptly lays out over the crazed rhythm section for awhile – then repeats the same bit.  He does this once again before playing out the rest of the head.  The subway car turns bullet train quickly with the melody line colliding furiously with improvisational flurries of notes.  Telepathic fury rules this ride as all three musicians move as a single unit, eventually pulling into the station as the melody returns to its original form over Bisio and Dickey's grinding brakes.  It's an amazing track – probably the finest cover of this tune I've ever heard.  Absolutely stellar.

Shipp's own “Tone Poem To Duke” sends him inside the piano to plunk a bit on this “He Loved Him Madly” from the post-everything school.  Let's imagine your dog chewed up your haiku poetry assignment and you had to fold-and-tape it all back together until it resembled spitball origami.  But somehow it turned out to be beautiful instead of a mess.  Shipp takes a solo turn at “Prelude To A Kiss,” which is reverently (but freely) played.  Again, the song is torn apart and reassembled carefully – but this time I'm reminded more of Monk's approach to the Ellington songbook.  Whether this is intentional or not, it's a beautiful interpretation that is successful on every level. 

“Sparks” is an intense blowout showcase for the trio, relaxed and intense simultaneously – the collective confidence level rising through the roof.  Bisio and Dickey are downright terrifyingly cohesive cohorts as they support and prod Shipp as he levitates above the keyboard.  The disc ends on “Solitude,” which begins with Shipp playing the melody relatively straight with Bisio and Dickey freaking out underneath.  The bands rides a repeated descending chord progression near the end (before the head is repeated) like it's their last chance at redemption.  And then they fly into the sky like we knew they would.

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Ingrid Laubrock's Anti-House - Roulette of the Cradle (Intakt, 2015) ****½

By Paul Acquaro 

Roulette of the Cradle, the latest release by Ingrid Laubrock's Anti-House - an ever expanding elite group of New York improvisors - begins with a solo drum. It soon switches to solo slide guitar, which then collides into the piano for a climatic ending.

The following track, 'Roulette of the Cradle', continues this game, and one wonders if in fact if there is an order or not, or just how the passages were scripted, if at all. It's hardly a question even worth pondering as the series of passages, passing from musician to musician, build up with a lurching intensity. The song that eventually emerges, with pianist Kris Davis leading the way, is a driving uptempo piece.

The Anti-House woodwind section has been enhanced with the inclusion of clarinetist Oscar Noriega, which creates a whole new set of choices and options for the group. Convoluted and intertwining, the musical lines of the title track lead knowingly into 'Face the Piper, Part 1', which begins lightly with Laubrock favoring the upper register of her soprano sax and Halvorson plucking out choice notes to shadow her. During the track, John Hébert's bass slides about thoughtfully in the background, along side Tom Rainey's rumbling percussive textures. The sonic landscape they create is unique - small crescendoing hills and meandering melodic brooks dot the horizon, until they reach 'Part 2', where they enter what I'll call the valley of dry bones. Here, Rainey's stick work and Halvorson's unvarnished tone deliver an introduction that keeps going until the the sax and piano breaks things up with a unison melody. 'From Farm Girl to Fabulous, Vol 2' apparently picks up from where 'Vol 1' ended on Anti-Houses' last recording, Strong Place. The tune showcases a sound-collage oriented side of the group - but not without also rocking out fabulously. Finally, 'Red Hook' benefits from both playfulness and pathos woven into its composition.

The compositional approach on Roulette of the Cradle brings together the best aspects of each musician's playing. It's most likely safe to suppose that they have all worked together enough now to interact purely on an intuitive level, but more so than just improvising, there is an arc and progression to the songs that speak to the leader's compositional prowess as much as the individual contributions. 

A highly recommended recording, no doubt! 

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John Butcher & Gino Robair – Bottle Breaking Heart Leap (Alt.Vinyl, 2015) ***½

By Colin Green

John Butcher dislikes the term “extended technique” – a phrase that appears regularly in our reviews – as it suggests a hierarchy which for him, doesn’t exist. His exploration of the soprano and tenor saxophones has produced a vocabulary in which there is no meaningful distinction between a standard and extended means of producing sounds: they are all as one. His starting point is not notes but sonorities, and not just those of the saxophone but of the space in which he’s performing. He prefers not to know what that acoustic is where possible, and to discover its resonant frequencies and peculiarities while playing. In his solo work, the result is a cycle of vibrations encompassing ear, breath, instrument and acoustic, heard as a constantly renewed feedback of sound.

Things are rather different when he performs with others. According to Butcher, he’ll play with anyone once and see where it goes, but there are about fifty musicians with whom he feels he can play sympathetically. One of these is Gino Robair, with whom he’s performed often as a duo, in trios, and as part of larger ensembles. Robair takes a similarly broad view of percussion. In this performance – recorded in May 2012 at Left Bank, Leeds (a former Church) – in addition to drums, bells and cymbals, sounds are produced by mechanical vibration: the “energised surfaces” Robair is credited with playing, as well as a Blippoo Box. Butcher plays tenor and soprano (acoustic and amplified).

In a number of respects, listening to this album is a matter of what not to do. It’s tempting to identify who’s playing what and to think in terms of a duo. Is that a cymbal overtone, electronic whine or saxophone harmonic, or possibly all three merging into each other, maybe just feedback; was that staccato burst drums or Butcher’s use of plosives? Tempting, but probably fruitless, as it cuts across what’s actually going on. Whereas the distinctive character, phrasing and timbre of a musician often informs his or her contribution, in this performance musical personality is suppressed in favour of the overall aural landscape. It’s the sounds which count, not who’s playing them or how they’re produced.

There’s no denying that for some, this is all decidedly outré. There are no tunes or motifs, not much that could be described as dialogue, and no musical progression in the conventional sense (perhaps, not in any sense). As is often the case with improvisation, we’re required to adjust how we listen and our expectations as to what’s going on. A more profitable way of appreciating this is not to apply familiar musical categories, but to think in terms of contrasting and sympathetic movements and gestures, or different surfaces – rough, translucent, reflective, shattered. This is not to say that the function of the music is to conjure up a succession of mental images – ultimately, it’s about what we hear (and feel) rather than see, even with our mind’s eye – but it provides some understanding of the aesthetic at play, which requires considerable discipline and focussed listening by both musicians and audience.

There is emotional content: levels of intensity and invention, as well as subtleties – some events take place on an almost microscopic level – but there’s room for drama and contrast: textures can be carefully layered or just atomised, and there’s no shortage of variety. The performance doesn’t reach the heights however, of the quite superb On Air (Weight of Wax, 2013), recorded the day before, at the end of a European tour for which John Edwards (bass) was added to the duo, and who seems to have provided that extra spark.

Butcher has said that in the past he made a conscious decision to avoid some aspects of the jazz tradition, which have nevertheless crept back into his music. That’s not really apparent in this recording – the saxophone is still very much an inventor of sonic possibilities rather than inheritor of a tradition – but the expansion of his playing to include more recognisable jazz phrasing can be heard in in the recent video clip of the duo, below.

Bottle Breaking Heart Leap is a 180g vinyl only release (250 copies) with beautifully quiet surfaces – necessary to appreciate this kind of playing.

 
           

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Trumpet duos for quiet moments

By Stef

There's nothing like a calm and subdued duo album to pass a quiet evening. The atmosphere is good and relaxed, and you can be alone or with friends, just enjoying the rest after the hectic moments of work and traffic jams and shopping and kids and ... all the rest. Sitting down, and relaxing. You want some inobtrusive music that guarantees high quality playing and subtle emotions, we found three albums that will fit the description. 

Wojciech Jachna & Ksawery Wójciński - Night Talks (Fundacja Słuchaj, 2015) ****

Wojciech Jachna on trumpet and Ksawery Wójciński on bass. In contrast to the energy and the fireworks in his collaborations with percussionist Jacek Buhl, "Night Talks" is a quiet, subdued and even melancholy album, with references that almost go back to the "cool" jazz of Chet Baker and others of the fifties, but then performed in today's spirit and with today's technique and openness. 

The accessibility, the intimacy and the freedom all combine perfectly to make this a really nice album, not one that will be a milestone in music history, but it will offer many great moments of musical joy, as it has offered me in the past few weeks.

Indeed, great music for late nights.

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

Tin-Bag - The Stars Would Be Different (Epigraph, 2015) ****

It sounds like Tin/Bag, the duo of Kris Tiner on trumpet and Mike Baggetta on guitar goes back in time, in the sense of jazz history, dropping the more adventurous attempts of their first albums. This album is like a modern "cool jazz" album, intimate, accessible and open-ended.

If you like calm evenings, with music that is welcoming and warm, I can easily recommend this one. It's the kind of album that I always expected Bill Frisell and Ron Miles to bring (i.e. a more subdued and bluesy version of "Heaven"), but I guess this is even better, because a little less polished, rawer and authentic.

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

Not Twice - Flight Plans (Epigraph, 2015) ****

By Stef

We find trumpeter Kris Tiner back in the company of two keyboard-players : Jordan Aguirre and Andrew Koeth. Even if it's a trio, it often sounds like a duo, with the keyboards creating a calm yet solid electronic background for Tiner's trumpet to soar over, in a very expansive and generous way. They combine a variety of influences to create their "sound", from traditional jazz over free jazz to ambient and electro-acoustic music. Tiner at times sounds like Lester Bowie, because of his deep bluesy tone.

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

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