William Parker / Raining On The Moon ‎- Great Spirit (AUM Fidelity, 2015) ***½

By Stefan Wood

Sometimes, one has to be reminded that traditional forms of jazz can still be as powerful as experimental and free improv. William Parker's Corn Meal Dance is one of those, a powerful bop album with vocals. Eight years later, AUM Fidelity has released music from those same sessions, Great Spirit.

The album is comprised of five completed tracks, one improvised track, and a throwaway final track that is more of a sketch than anything substantial. What is substantial are the wonderful four tracks at the beginning of the album; rich spiritual bop jazz similar to Doug and Jean Carn or Henry Franklin albums on Black Jazz from the 70's. Leena Conquest's voice fits within this aesthetic perfectly, having a gorgeous tone and flavor without being overly dramatic. William Parker's bass playing is subtly funky, something that he doesn't get enough credit for, because it is this funkiness that establishes a rhythm that guides and moves the other musicians throughout the compositions. Rob Brown (alto sax) and Lewis Barnes (trumpet) form the front line of horns, in the manner of the horn section from an Art Blakey Blue Note album, with Eri Yamamoto (piano) and Hamid Drake (drums) subverting the traditional roles of a supportive rhythm section with slight atonal notes and accents and changes in pace. 

 Standout tracks are the opener "Bowl of Stone Around the Sun," and "Great Spirit," both having positive energy and engaging toe tapping tracks. "Prayer - Improv" is the only track that, like the title says, is a true improvisation, with Leena soothing vocals resting on top of an aggressive but not piercing music by the band. It swirls around itself like a gathering storm, but does not threaten to explode, just maintains an even tempered mode. "Song for Whitney" is not from the same sessions, but from a 2012 concert in Montreal, featuring just voice and piano; a straight forward ballad. "Potpourri" is just that, the musicians all playing different things, with Barnes quoting Lee Morgan from an early 60's album, but it has no structure. Not sure why it is on the album at all unless to fill out the space. Nevertheless, "Great Spirit" is worth listening to for the first four tracks alone, containing some substantial music, with soul and funk that prove that established forms of jazz music can still kick butt. Recommended.

Read More

Pedro Sousa, Johan Berthling & Gabriel Ferrandini - Casa Futuro (Clean Feed, 2015) ****½

By Stef

This album missed my top-10-of-the-year list for the simple reason that choices should be made, but it was a close call. Pedro Sousa on saxophone, Johan Bertling on bass, and Gabriel Ferrandini bring us three long improvised pieces, and even if it was the first time they played as a trio, the result is absolutely stunning. The music has a slow, but determined intensity, no, a burning intensity, a heat of passion for sound and deep resonance, performed collectively, without leads or themes or melodies, just slow, penetrating sounds of sax bass drums that will keep you glued to your speakers for the entire length of the three long tracks, that despite the openness stays focused, and despite the inherent slowness, never slackens.

On the second and longest track, the volume increases, as Sousa makes his tenor scream and howl in the most heart-rending way, full of agony and despair, and without losing any of the intensity, the sax takes a step back to leave front stage to the arco bass for short bursts of sound, supported by half-muted blasts from the sax, and screeching cymbals, and when the volume gets reduced almost completely, embracing silence, not one bit of the intensity has disappeared, quite to the contrary, it is even more explicit, more powerful, with the bass moving to quiet repetitive plucking, inviting the sax for a wonderful display of multiphonics, offering shades of human voice inflections and more power, and then strangely the piece completely crumbles in little notes. Beautiful!

The last track, amazingly, keeps the intensity alive like the flame in a furnace, slowly at first, with arco bass and monotonous sounds from the sax, with occasional outbursts of volume, alternated by deep rumbling sounds, percussive clutters and accents but then the fire picks up, and how! without changing the speed, the attack becomes stronger, the ferocity too, moving from intimacy to more expansive playing, ending in energetic interplay.

A truly wonderful album.

Read More

The Thing – Shake (The Thing Records/Trost, 2015) ****½

By Martin Schray

In my review about The Thing’s last album Live, a collaboration with Thurston Moore, I said that they were my favorite band. So I was excited as usual when I picked up their new album and put it in my CD player … and it was not what I expected. To be honest, I was puzzled. Shake didn’t get me as promptly as Garage, Bag it, Mono or Boot, for example. But why was that so? Did that mean that their music was not as fascinating as before?

Mats Gustafsson (saxes), Ingebrigt Håker Flaten (b) and Paal Nilssen-Love (dr) have followed an interesting concept with The Thing. They take the power of blues and heavy rock and mix it with the freedom of improvised music using the riff as the foundation of their pieces. They do this on Shake as well but it wouldn’t make sense if they had just repeated this idea over and over again, without trying out something different. What is new on this album are the three tracks with Scandinavian titles: Håker Flaten’s composition “Til Jord Skal Du Bli“ (Norwegian for “To Dust You Will Return“), Nilssen-Love’s “Fra Jord Er Du Kommet“ (meaning “From Earth You Have Come“) and Colin Bergh’s “Sigill“ (Swedish for "Sign" or "Emblem"). All three compositions are unusually reflective for The Thing. In “Sigill“ Gustafsson meditates gloomily over gongs and a hypnotic bass-line, the music sounds like one of Nick Cave’s murder ballads (just without lyrics). Nilssen-Love’s “Fra Jord Er Du Kommet“ quotes his solo album “Cut and Bleed“ using reverberant metal material. Gustafsson and Håker Flaten only add sparse notes here and there before a melodic waltz emerges almost out of nowhere. Together with “Til Jord Skal Du Bli“ the piece makes a spiritual pair, in which The Thing integrate music of their other, more traditional free jazz projects.

However, there is still a great deal of the music which has made this band so successful. There are are cover versions of jazz classics like Ornette Coleman’s “Perfection“  (in a medley with “Viking Disco“) which they turn into a Blue Cheer track (something they did quite effectively with John Coltrane’s “India“ on Boot as well), and they also cover a rock song: their version of Loop’s “The Nail Will Burn“ rides on a five-note-riff, turning it upside down, wringing it out and using what’s left of it for a short and precise collective improvisation.

Finally, like on many albums before they have been augmented by guest musicians which add new sound colors to their music. Here they are joined by Anna Hogberg on alto sax and Goran Kajfes on cornet for “Aim“, the longest piece on the album, which starts with a reflective Gustafsson solo before the band displays another one of their rock riffs. Hogberg and Kajfes drop in after around five minutes and the piece literally blossoms out so that one might wish that they invite more than one musician for a cooperation on their next album (like Brötzmann’s Full Blast did with Keiji Haino, Mars Williams and Peter Evans on Crumbling Brain).

Shake is more varied than other The Thing albums, it needs more time and attentiveness but it is as fascinating and grows with every listening.

It is available on double vinyl, CD and cassette.

You can buy it from Downtown Music Gallery and Instant Jazz.

Listen to “Loop - The Nail Will Burn“:

Read More

Alex Ward Trios & Sextet - Projected / Entities / Removal (Copepod, 2015) ****

By Paul Acquaro

British Clarinetist and guitarist Alex Ward  begins his Trios & Sextet's Projected / Entities / Removal with a trio configuration of clarinet, sax and drums. A rumble on the drums, a drawn out note on the clarinet and the sax and they are off to strong start.

The opener 'Projected' features bouts of free playing capped on both ends by a melody played in and out of sync. The spirit is high and the playing can be fierce, like Ward's intense solo passage, during with his playing connects with and is repelled by drummer Steve Noble. Rachel Musson's sax intensifies skirts the edge of overblowing and a certain sense of danger follows her unpredictable lines. 

Track two, 'Entities' is performed by bass clarinetist Tom Jackson, bassist Olie Brice, and cellist Hannah Marshall. The brooding composition by Ward captivatingly showcases the interactions between these lower register instruments. Jackson employs wide intervals and quick passages over Brice's calm bowing. Marshall extends the pallets of sounds, sometimes harmoniously and other times adding great contrast. 

The last track, 'Removal', is the full sextet, with all the aforementioned players on stage at London's Vortex jazz club one day in March of 2014. With the expanded group, the 44 minutes of improvisation covers the spectrum of sound and textures. It starts off at a rapid clip with the violin front and center. The pulse is infectious and the saxophone's entry at the 2 minute mark is high energy. The background slashes away, creating a dense bed for the improvisers. By the 10 minute mark, the music has atomitized, and Ward, who has been on guitar, picks up the clarinet and engages in a spirited duo with Nobel that could be the subject of an entire album. 

By breaking apart his ensemble into smaller units lets Ward highlight different textures and approaches, and hearing the sextet together is an obvious joy.  Projected / Entities / Removal is a diverse and enjoyable listen.

Read More

In memory of Paul Bley

 By Stef

Many of you have in the meantime heard about the passing away of pianist Paul Bley, a true visionary of modern music, and of the piano itself. As the pictures above try to demonstrate, he started out as a non-conventional musical transformer, and we knew him of late as a wisened and sensitive pianist with a legacy that few can reach.

In all the years of his artistry, he may have covered a large variety of styles and formats, from fierce combos and bigger ensembles to chamber music and solo performances, but the key to all his music, and this from the very beginning, was the relentless emphasis on improvisation, performed with focus and discipline, allowing him to go deep in his art which was emotional, sensitive, once in a while dramatic or with touches of fun, and even little jokes (check the Live In Oslo video below for all of these).

A real human.

His music will stay with us for always. Our thoughts are with his family and loved ones.

Read More

Ulrich Gumpert Quartett - A New One (Intakt, 2015) *****

By Stefan Wood

It is the end of 2015, and I am staring glumly at the pile of yet to be reviewed albums by artists whose works need to be heard and discussed. And while I have already submitted by “best of” list, I pull out the next album to be reviewed, and after many listens, I’ll be damned if this isn’t one of the best of them all to come out in 2015.

The Ulrich Gumpert Quartett has dropped a bomb of an album. A New One, their latest on Intakt records, is simply the best album that Thelonious Monk never wrote. Or the Steve Lacy/Mal Waldron groups. It is a triumphant marriage of bop and free jazz, music that swings with an edge to it, sometimes biting but never vicious. This is fun, exciting music! The 11 track album, recorded in 2014, begins with the properly titles “The Opener,” a swinging hard bop tune that has a feel of an old Art Blakey 50’s Blue Note album, Jurg Wickihalder out front with his saxophone, Gumpert on piano, Jan Roder on bass, and Michael Griener on drums. Gumpert’s playing is a fusion of the eclectic swingingness of Monk and the exploratory freeness of the early 70’s Mal Waldron, with Gumpert’s own European sensibilities, which can be clinical at times. With Roder and Greiner, Gumpert’s rhythm section allows for Wickihalder to move about with range and enthusiasm. 

On the title track, “A New One,” Wickihalder rolls off a burst of rolling notes, then the others launch into a very aggressive sequence, piano out front in a breathtakingly fast free improvisation. “Recitativo Secco” is a melancholic track, noted for Wickihalder’s playing, moody and somber. “The Bop & the Hard Be,” is a stand out, with Gumpert soloing at the beginning, quoting Monk, before the group kicks into a high swinging, foot tapping mode. Wickihalder channels Steve Lacy and Charlie Rouse, soloing freely like the former and grooving like the latter. A great homage to the past, whilst being contemporary. “100 Maassgelinzerte” is another brilliant track, Wickihalder now referencing Monk in a gorgeous little solo at the beginning, then the others join in; a rollicking, slightly atonal tune, dopey in that special Thelonious manner, recalling his moments of ecstacy as he arose from his piano seat to do a little jig. “Number Nine” again uses that loping rhythm as a basis for a subtly swinging bop tune, emphasis on Gumpert’s soloing, keeping with the bop tradition, dextrous and fluid. Wickihalder follows with a medium tempered, swinging solo of his own. “Ja?!” has the feel and flavor of a Steve Lacy tune, combining the complexity of Monk with the openness of free improvisation, Wickihalder deftly navigating through the dense and difficult sequence of notes, as well maintaining the speed and aggressiveness that the others have put forth. The contrast between Roder and Greiner’s frantic pacing and Gumpert and Wickihalder’s controlled and complex phrasings is effective, and creates a good tension throughout the track. “Scrollin’” is another excellent tune, exploding in the beginning with a wild, rolling theme, going from low to high notes in a quick crescendo. It moves to a sprightly paced bop swing, highlighted again by Gumpert’s soloing, as well as Roder’s, which is starkly quiet. The others rejoin, climaxing with the same theme that began the track. 

 A New One is a bright, positive, absolutely ass kicker of an album, full of toe tapping moments, passionate and intelligent playing. A triumph for all, and a great album to close 2015.

Outstanding!

Read More

The Bureau of Atomic Tourism - Hapax Legomena (RAT Records, 2015) ****½

By Lee Rice Epstein

The Bureau of Atomic Tourism, or BOAT, is just your typical avant-fusion international superteam. A sextet led by drummer Teun Verbruggen, the BOAT has a core quartet (Verbruggen, Andrew d’Angelo on saxophone and bass clarinet, Nate Wooley on trumpet, and Jozef Dumoulin on Fender Rhodes) with rotating guitar and bass. This time around, the seats are filled by Hilmar Jensson on guitar and Tim Dahl on bass. Once again, the BOAT uses a unique term as an album title, this time referring to a single instance of a word within a given context (i.e., the only time a word appears in a language, an author’s written works, or a single text). That’s an apt description of BOAT’s sound and style, which is nearly one of a kind.

There’s a lot to dig into and discover on this album, so I’ll just hit on three highlights that show the range of the group.

“Hilsnur” kicks off the album with a calpyso, avant-funk groove, reminiscent of Threadgill’s Make a Move group, until Verbruggen takes a solo turn and the guitar and bass turn on the distortion. d’Angelo switches over to bass clarinet, and he and Wooley end the song with horns screaming over Dahl, Jensson, Dumoulin, and Verbruggen’s heavy, syncopated rhythm.

Dumoulin’s “Carlientje en Haar Bootje” is the extended center of the album, and it’s just gorgeous. After the initial sing-song motif, d’Angelo takes the first solo, on saxophone this time. The middle is given over to a long and spacey interlude, but Verbruggen, Dahl, and Jensson come in with a propulsive background for a wild solo from Dumoulin. By the time d’Angelo and Wooley come back in with a unison line, the sound is thick and atmospheric and very funky. When everyone abruptly drops out, I expected I was about halfway through the song’s 12 minutes, and was surprised to find it was the end of the track. The whole thing breezes past.

Wooley contributes “Ron Miles” to this recording, and it’s a curveball for sure. The song, on the surface, would seem suited to his acoustic quintet. Here, it allows the group to show another face, with Wooley and d’Angelo singing the elegiac phrasing melody. As with many Wooley compositions, though, that lyricism gets melted by some white-hot extended technique from both Wooley and d’Angelo.

And to me, these really showcase the impressive power of this group, flipping soundscapes completely, yet making the whole sound coherent and unified. Truth be told, I was predisposed to give this one fewer stars, even after the first few listens. The reason, I’m biased towards Marc Ducret, who played guitar on past BOAT albums. He’s a superb player, and I just had it in my head that I was going to be let down by the lineup change. Instead of firing off my initial review, however, I kept listening and allowed myself to discover Hapax Legomena is a fierce album, and another fine showcase for everyone involved.

“Hilsnur”

“Carlientje en Haar Bootje” 

Read More

Quatuor Machaut – Quatuor Machaut (Ayler, 2015) ****½

By Dan Sorrells

“It’s not a musicological approach; we don’t try to recreate the Mass,” says Quentin Biardeau in an interview with Citizen Jazz. He’s referring to the music on Quatuor Machaut, which finds its genesis in “Messe de Nostre Dame,” Guillaume de Machaut’s 14th century setting of the Ordinary of the Mass. “What interests me is the musical language, not the liturgy.”

You could call Quatuor Machaut a work of transubstantiation.Through the album’s namesake group—the saxophone quartet of Biardeau, Simon Couratier, Francis Lecointe, and Gabriel Lemaire—Machaut’s medieval score is unfixed, its language morphed and broadened by centuries of musical progress. Still, the music is rooted in the harmony and budding counterpoint of that early period music, even as there’s something deeply postmodern in the spectral, psychedelic sound of four saxophones reverberating in the cavernous Abbaye de Noirlac. Liturgy aside, there’s no divorcing this music from the significance of that massive cathedral resonance, which nourished the bloom of polyphony in the Middle Ages.

Much of the album features Biardeau’s own compositions, inspired by the Mass and fleshed out over three years of experimenting and improvising in different performance spaces. “Kyrie” floats from an ethereal opening to improvised soloing over a slow melodic line, finally settling into a gorgeous exposition of Machaut’s own movement. In tracks like this, Biardeau’s writing actually points back to a style older than even Machaut’s: a futuristic organum, his plainchant melodies adorned with an unbridled, improvised vox organalis, all in strange metal voices no medieval churchgoer could possibly imagine. But surely the overpowering, almost intoxicating feeling of the music is one they would recognize.

Quatuor Machaut feels like a study in contrast: the microtonal torsion of “Gloria’s” beginning against the beautiful consonance of its later discant, or the raspy, growling baritone in “Solus” versus the pipe-organ purity of “Credo.” But what’s most remarkable is how strongly the very old and the very new ultimately cohere: a seemingly eternal continuity that runs through these young musicians, products of an atonal, indeterminate age, playing 600 year old music in the hushed night air of a cathedral that’s older still.

Quatuor Machaut is significant music, unlike anything else in recent memory. A moment of silence marks the end of “Credo” before the quiet unison lines of “Ite, Missa Est” close the album. Around its warm notes, the outside world is heard for the first time in the immaculate recording, the faint drone of nighttime frogs and insects calling us back from the firmament, a summons by earthly things. Go forth, the Mass has ended.

Read More

Three more from Ivo

By Derek Stone

One of the best experiences in life is finding a new musician to love. It’s doubly rewarding when that musician has a discography as deep, wide and varied as Ivo Perelman’s. After being asked to cover three of Perelman’s new projects on Leo Records, I felt a fair bit of consternation - what could I possibly say about Perelman’s work that hasn’t already been said by someone with more expertise? But then I remembered: this is improvisational music! The modus operandi is constant expansion, leaps into the unknown, and missteps that land you somewhere far greater than your intended destination. Thus, I took a deep breath, and took a dive into the sonic world of these three incredible recordings.

Ivo Perelman & Matthew Shipp - Complementary Colors (Leo, 2015) ****

Recorded in May 2015, two months after the duo’s previous album (Callas, reviewed here by Colin Green), Complementary Colors continues their endlessly fruitful partnership. Like that album, the compositions were titled retroactively. This method of naming is perhaps not uncommon in the world of improvisational music, but in Perelman’s case, the titles seem to be frequently linked by some overarching theme or idea. For Callas, he chose the names of various roles that Maria Callas had played throughout her career. For this one, as evidenced by the album’s title, he chose colors that, when mixed together, negate each other to become a grey-scale color like white or black. When placed side-by-side, however, these same colors create a strong contrast; they appear more vibrant and alive. Likewise, the sounds and moods that Perelman and Shipp conjure up are enlivened by the contrasts between them. For instance, Shipp’s style is largely romantic; while he does occasionally let loose and tumble wildly over the keys, he is more apt to keep things relaxed and introspective. On the other hand, Perelman is inclined to take unexpected excursions, short jaunts that inevitably end up with the impassioned altissimo wail that has become something of a signature for him. However, he’s equally comfortable with a more conservative approach, offering full-bodied, languorous stretches of notes that suit Shipp well.

The piece entitled “Blue” is, like the color whose name it shares, cool and crystalline, a self-contained structure carved from ice. Shipp’s chords waft beneath Perelman’s stately intonations like fog, imbuing the whole affair with an ethereal quality. “Red,” on the other hand, finds Shipp in a more playful mode, offering up spry runs and clusters. “Blue and Red” begins with Perelman’s lone saxophone, but Shipp soon joins in and pushes him to exuberant heights. Perelman’s explorations of the dynamic range of his instrument are consistently intriguing, largely because of how listenable they are. He is bold without ever being confrontational or brash. He wanders down circuitous paths, observing, examining, occasionally latching onto short phrases and elaborating them, occasionally abandoning them altogether - but through all of this, he always makes sure to maintain a coherent sense of melody. “Magenta” returns to the solemn refrains of “Blue,” but the passages are even more serpentine and winding, so that it’s difficult to guess where they might end up. By comparison, “Green and Magenta” is more straightforward, with the two employing repetition to give the piece a stuttering, jumpy sense of momentum. Closing the album, “White” is lovely and understated; Shipp’s playing is spacious and elegant, with Perelman making use of a rich vibrato that provides emotional heft to the piece. It’s a wonderful conclusion to a wonderful recording.

Ivo Perelman, Mat Maneri & Tanya Kalmanovitch - Villa Lobos Suite (Leo Records, 2015) ****½

Recorded in the same month, Villa Lobos Suite takes an entirely different direction. The lush and romantic stylings of Matthew Shipp are replaced with the bristling, dissonant work of violists Mat Maneri and Tanya Kalmanovitch. Maneri and Perelman have worked together before (on last year’s Two Men Walking, for example), and Maneri has done duets with Kalmanovitch, but this is the first time for all three of them to come together in a trio. Unlike the other two albums reviewed here, no titles were given to the pieces. It’s perhaps to easy to see why; while Complementary Colors and Butterfly Whispers display a range of moods and melodic themes, Villa Lobos Suite is relatively monochromatic - a single frequency with varying degrees of intensity. It’s dedicated to famed Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, a man whose work Perelman has previously contended with on  1994’s Man of the Forest.

This was the last record I listened to out of the three, and it was certainly rewarding to hear Perelman operating in such a different context - and what a context! Maneri and Kalmanovitch scrape and slide across the strings with unabashed ferocity. The interplay in which they engage has hints of Béla Bartók’s famed string quartets, with their idiosyncratic blend of the savage and the refined. It makes for an incredibly dense foundation, one upon which a lesser saxophonist would easily stumble, but Perelman doesn’t falter. In fact, he flowers. The three of them have a near-psychic bond, and they engage in an impeccable back-and-forth that, because of how responsive and sympathetic it is, sounds composed. Out of the three records, this was probably my favorite. While I love Shipp’s piano work and how well he and Perelman interact, this particular combination is more compelling, precisely because of how abstruse and enigmatic it is. It gives me the same feeling that Cecil Taylor’s best work give me - a sense that a new language is being articulated and worked out, right before my eyes (or ears, as it were). Highly recommended!

Ivo Perelman, Matthew Shipp & Whit Dickey - Butterfly Whispers (Leo Records, 2015) **** 

Two months later, Perelman and Shipp were joined by drummer Whit Dickey to record Butterfly Whispers. With composition titles referring to the processes of cultivation, fertilization, growth, and human sexuality, I came into this album with the expectation that it would be a little looser, warmer, and more unrestrained than Complementary Colors. Indeed, Dickey’s drums bring a restless energy to the proceedings that recall the first days of spring: creatures stirring, sprouts pushing through the soil and towards the sun. Dickey doesn’t direct the flow of the pieces in any forceful manner, however. For the most part, he’s providing a drifting pulse beneath Shipp’s unruly runs and Perelman’s cascades. The first piece, “Waiting,” is a lovely introduction: Shipp and Perelman ascend and descend the scale together almost teasingly before Perelman takes frantic forays into the altissimo register. Midway through, they align with each other again to produce a dramatic bell-like oscillation behind which Dickey sparingly taps. “Secret Garden” is a solo piece by Shipp that, despite the calm contemplation implied by the title, establishes a mood of quiet desolation. On “Almost Spring,” Shipp stays out of the picture completely, giving Perelman and Dickey time to engage in a rhythmic, exploratory dance. On the final composition, “Her,” Perelman offers his most impassioned blowing yet, thus ending the album on an indisputably euphoric note. This is a fairly short collection of pieces, but there’s a lot to dig into and enjoy.
           

Read More

Happy New Ears Award 2015

An important note about the 2015 New Ears Awards:

The blog's poll is a simple tool, it doesn’t have a reliable way to limit the times a reader can vote, and we cannot control for errors or anomalies in a sophisticated manner, we can only monitor the voting and raise a flag of alarm when something seems abnormal. For this reason, we are calling the results from the polling data as of 12/29 rather than 12/31. Over the night of the 29th, we noticed an unusual spike of votes, nearly doubling the number of total votes in the poll to date.

We apologize for this change to the poll, the New Ears Award is a blog favorite and one that we feel highlights an innovative step in music and we hope to continue being able to run it as a public poll, but we will need to rethink our approach.

Anyway, the winner of the 2015 New Ears readers poll is...

Marcelo dos Reis & Angélica V. Salvi's Concentric Rinds on Cipsela

Dan Sorrells, in his review this past year wisely wrote ...

The tracks that begin Concentric Rinds are beautiful, unhurried, imbrued with the fullness of the resonant warehouse in which they were recorded. Dos Reis’s acoustic guitar and Salvi’s harp have similar timbres, intertwining into kaleidoscopic figures in the ambiguous middle ground between the instruments. The harmony and rhythm in “Spirals” has the organized, organic feel of music by composers like Terry Riley or Duane Pitre, with dos Reis preparing his guitar and playing it like a hammered dulcimer. While the duo often opts for a sound of peaceful concordance, there are bouts of more antagonistic interplay, as on “Convex” and “Concave.” Most striking is “Depth.”

A lovely album and a good way to cope with January 1st.

The results of the poll results, as of 12/29, are as follows:

• Marcelo dos Reis & Angélica V. Salvi - Concentric Rinds (20%)
• Luis Vicente, Marcelo dos Reis, Valentin Ceccaldi, Theo Ceccaldi - Chamber 4  (12%)
• Matana Roberts - COIN COIN Ch. 3: River Run Thee (11%)
• Pulverize The Sound - Pulverize The Sound (8%)
• Stephen Haynes - Pomegranate - (7%)
• Michael Zerang & The Blue Lights - Songs For The Big Book Of Love (7%)
• Eve Risser - Des Pas Dans La Neige (7%)
• Going II - Machinery (6%)
• Kris Davis Infrasound - Save Your Breath (4%)
• Pascal Niggenkemper – Look with Thine Ears (3%)
• Ingrid Laubrock Anti House - Roulette of the Cradle (3%)
• Kaja Draksler / Susana Santos Silva – This Love (2%)
• All Included - Satan In Plain Clothes (2%)
• Premature Burial - Conjuring (1%)
• Áine O'Dwyer - Music for Church Cleaners Vol. I & II  (1%)

We wish all of our readers and musical friends a very happy 2016! 

Read More