New Sounds from Argentina

By Alexander Dubovoy

I cannot say that, prior to writing this article, I was familiar with the Argentinian scene. I can now say that this ignorance was sorely to my detriment. NendoDango Records is playing an instrumental role in documenting the careers of exciting artists out of Buenos Aires. This music demonstrates vibrancy and creativity at the highest level.

Paula Shocron - Los Vínculos (NendoDango, 2018) *****

Generally, when I review albums, I like to go in cold for the first listen, without reading the liner notes. You can imagine my surprise when, upon putting on Los Vínculos, I was greeted by a quiet and warbling recording of the aria from J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations. As it turns out, this album is a dialogue between present-day Shocron and a series of recordings of a young Shocron practicing the Goldberg Variations. Hence, the title can be translated to “the links” or “the ties” between the present and the past.

The concept is truly brilliant, and the practice recordings are strangely contemporary. While they are certainly Bach, they are also full of repetitions, as Shocron practices passages in search of perfection. They are replete with silences, as she stops and reviews a phrase. They are, furthermore, permeated by everyday noises and anything but audiophile. Shocron heightens the unusual character of these recordings through sonic manipulations, including what sounds like a low-pass filter on El Recuerdo and fast-forwards on Caos. The result is endlessly fascinating and strangely compelling.

Present-day Shocron’s playing is similarly stellar. At some points, present and past Shocrons play separately, inviting her to compose what are essentially new movements within the Goldberg Variations. At other times, the two play together, ushering in dizzying moments of four-handed counterpoint. On probably my favorite track on the album, El Espacio, Shocron fills the awkward gaps in her practice recording with faint extended technique noises. Her playing extends from barely audible strums inside the piano to bombastic, fiery passages. I never quite know what to expect, and I am grateful for that fact.

When thinking about piano overdubbing in the jazz tradition, my mind immediately goes to Bill Evans’s Conversations with Myself. Similarly, Brad Mehldau’s After Bach is a dialogue between a contemporary jazz pianist and J.S. Bach. The nature of Shocron’s conversations on Los Vínculos, however, is entirely different. Sometimes, when revisiting a place I went to in my childhood, I am shocked that there is any continuity between that person and the one who now writes this article. Shocron creates a beautiful artistic statement out of this cognitive—and now musical—dissonance.

Luis Conde, Paula Shocron, Cecilia Quinteros, Andrew Drury, Pablo Díaz - Geograficciones (NendoDango, 2018) ****½

Luis Conde, alto saxophone & clarinet
Paula Shocron, piano
Cecilia Quinteros, cello
Andrew Drury, drums & percussion
Pablo Díaz, percussion

Geograficciones documents an exchange between some of the most exciting artists from the Buenos Aires scene and American percussionist Andrew Drury, an interaction made possible by a partnership between NendoDango, Different Track Recordings and the Continuum Culture & Arts International Cultural Exchange program. The music develops in fascinating and unusual ways that remind me of the experience of exploring a new environment. Perhaps, the title, a portmanteau of the Spanish words for “geography” and “fiction” makes sense in this context.

The first track, “Now” begins with quiet conversations between percussion and prepared piano. I love Shocron’s playing here, which explores the timbral and rhythmic possibilities of a single note. As with much of the album, the music is often extremely quiet. It forces us to listen to the breathtaking impact of small textural changes. Quinteros joins on cello and demonstrates her supreme command of the instrument’s range and upper registers. Conde only begins playing about two minutes into the track in a stunning entrance, bringing with him power and intensity, as well restraint.

One of my favorite tracks, “Sur”, alternates between breathtakingly quiet interactions between cello and percussion and more bombastic piano-led passages. As with elsewhere on the album, the music develops as though through its own internal logic. Often, the changes are barely perceptible, and yet they are still profound and undeniable.

This powerful improvised music constantly surprises. It strikes a difficult balance between the most minute sensitivity and inflammatory intensity. It is a journey worth taking.

Yves Arques, Miguel Crozzoli - Drops of Sun (NendoDango, 2018) ****

Among the albums reviewed here, Drops of Sun is possibly the most melodically-driven. That is not, however, to say that timbre does not also play a key role in its musically development. I was at first hard-pressed to believe that there were only two musicians playing, Miguel Crozzoli on saxophone and Yves Arques on piano and “elements” (including prepared piano and percussion).

At least according to the track titles, the album seems to follow a process of spiritual awakening. It begins with an exploration of a drone note that both sets the tone and establishes a harmonic center. As the album progresses, however, it moves further away from more traditional modes of musical development. On “Whispering truths of unknown durations”, the music grows quieter, characterized often by breaths into the horn and timbral work by Arques until it concludes with a gong hit.

On “Until consciousness fall apart, overwhelmed by its limitless reality,” the music returns to some of its prior harmonic spaces but with newfound intensity and sonic potential. It resolves in “Letting all be dreams to be dreamed”, where Crozzoli’s beautiful tone brings new expression out of the horn until it lilts quietly away, accompanied by the high harmonic registers of the piano. The impression it leaves is lasting.

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Escape Lane - Escape Lane (Vent du Sud, 2018) ****

By Stef

As regular readers know, 'the Bridge' series, is an initiative which creates ad hoc bands of American and French musicians. Escape Lane are Jeff Parker on guitar, Ben Lamar Gay on cornet, Joachim Florent on bass, and Denis Fournier on drums. The original band, formed by drummer Denis Fournier had Marquis Hill on trumpet, but he who was not available for the 2017 tour in Europe, and hence for their sophomore album.

The vinyl edition is twice a little over twenty minutes long, as you can expect, and a real joy from beginning to end. The French rhythm section turns the fully improvised concert into a rythmic post-boppish performance, joyous and intense at the same time, with sad bluesy overtones, especially at the end of the first side which continues on the second side, with a very moving trumpet solo by Lamar Gay.

But our attention goes to Jeff Parker, a very eclectic and versatile guitarist, who is as comfortable in traditional jazz guitar, and modern jazz as he is with the post-rock of Tortoise and the post-jazz of the Chicago Underground Quartet/Orchestra. On this album he again demonstrates his skills, as a solid accompaniment for the rest of the band, with wah-wah funky ideas and atmospheric moments on the second side of the album, but more importantly with a wonderful slow and equally bluesy solo on the first side. He is one of those guitarist who prefer precision and phrasing over speed. There is no showing off, no need to do anything but make great music.

And that makes this entire performance so great: it's nothing spectacular, not ground-breaking, but you listen to it as if you are part of the audience. It's intimate - with the occasional hesitation and a sound quality that is not always perfect, and maybe that's even an advantage, like old blues music where authenticity gets priority over sophistication - and the four musician go deep in their jazz history to bring a performance that is at the same time fun to listen to, modern, entertaining and very moving, with lots of space for individual soloing, which accentuates even more the strong collective interaction.

 

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Eric Dolphy - Musical Prophet: The Expanded 1963 New York Studio Sessions (Resonance Records, 2019) *****

By Stuart Broomer

Last year’s archival releases included John Coltrane’s Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album a previously unknown 1963 session; however, Eric Dolphy: Musical Prophet, essentially a reissue of recordings from the same year, may have a certain priority. The sessions that originally produced Conversations and Iron Man (now supplemented with a CD of alternate takes, two takes of the previously unissued “Muses for Richard Davis” and the formerly released but misidentified “A Personal Statement” by Bob James with Dolphy and countertenor David Schwartz), marked a unique opportunity for Dolphy to document something of the breadth of his musical interests, with the freedom to record originals and standards in settings that ranged from solos and duets to groups of five to ten pieces.

Eric Dolphy led one of jazz history’s truncated lives; like Clifford Brown, Scott La Faro and Booker Little, he died shockingly early in his career. Though Dolphy managed to get to 36 while the others made it to their mid-twenties at best, he had only emerged from the shadows of Watts and Charlie Parker around 1958 when he was 30 years old. In the next few years he would be an indispensable figure in the free jazz revolution. A singular presence on: Charles Mingus’sCharles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus; George Russell’s Outer View, Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz; and John Coltrane’s major works of 1961, Africa/Brass, Olé and the Village Vanguard Recordings. Dolphy was a key figure in the making of all of them, on some the precipitating figure. For Mingus and Russell, among the most formally visionary composers of the era, Dolphy seemed to become their voice; for Coleman and Coltrane, the highly distinct and central horns of the time, Dolphy managed the strange trick of being utterly distinct—both more and less traditional than either—from both.

After he moved to New York in 1959, Dolphy began to record with great frequency. His first recordings as leader were with Prestige, the label recording him as both sideman and leader, usually in relatively conventional quintets (only Out There, a quartet with Ron Carter on cello, deviated from the norm). The label was still releasing live recordings from the Five Spot and European venues in 1964 when Dolphy died. The only studio recordings he made under his own name between Far Cry (December 21, 1960) and Out to Lunch (Feb. 25, 1964) were these sessions from July 1 and 3, 1963, supervised by Alan Douglas for the FM label. It is the greatest concentrated body of his own music that Dolphy ever recorded, and only circumstances of release and copyright have kept it from being recognized as such.

Producer Alan Douglas was a genuine visionary who made great jazz records, sometimes by simply putting together great musicians. A year before the Dolphy sessions he had produced Bill Evans and Jim Hall’s Undercurrents and the Ellington-Mingus-Roach Money Jungle . This would apparently be the only time that Dolphy recorded his own music without to some extent fitting into a record company’s favored format. The first day’s recording was a session of duets with Richard Davis, producing enough material for an LP, a brilliant, ground breaking duet LP, a format that would be unlikely to appear in the Prestige and Blue Note catalogues and that here stretches both the language of the instruments and improvisation itself.

Two days later, Dolphy gathered 11 musicians in groupings from quintet to tentet to record pieces ranging from Fats Waller’s “Jitterbug Waltz” to Dolphy’s own raw and explosive “Iron Man” and “Burning Spear.” While Prestige and Blue Note seem to have avoided recording standards, Dolphy relished them, and here he gets to cover several, including “Alone Together” and “Come Sunday” with Davis and an unaccompanied solo version of “Love Me” with startling leaps between registers and keening end to end runs (among Dolphy’s great performances of standards is a version of “Stormy Weather” with Mingus that presses expressionism to psychodrama).

* * *

Time interacts in numerous ways with our perception of a piece of music: the circumstances—macro and micro—of our first and subsequent hearings; the duration and intensity of our listening; the seemingly ceaseless improvisation of memory. In a different way, there’s also the specific impact in time and a work’s general reception, its scale and assessment. For me, these Eric Dolphy recordings, essentially based on two original LPs, Conversations, released in 1963, and Iron Man, released in 1968, have different degrees of significance.

I heard Conversations when it was initially released, late in 1963 or early 1964. It would be the first record I ever reviewed. I gave it to John Norris, the editor-publisher of Coda to consider. He didn’t print it, explaining that Coda only reviewed records sent to them for review, but I was enlisted as a regular writer. Had the teeming horns of Iron Man appeared around the same time, I’m pretty sure I would have responded even more enthusiastically, the way I had toFree Jazz, the way I would to New York Eye and Ear Control, but I suspect FM (a minor label that released commercial folk music and mainstream jazz singer Chris Connor) was putting out the least “exceptional” material, just as they couldn’t figure out how to get an “outside” jazz record to its audience, given that Coda was just part of a larger scene, a welter of regional, marginal, committed outlets that FM wasn’t linked to (and that ESP would discover so magnificently a year later).

The significance of marketing now comes full circle with the three CDs and extensive booklet of the Resonance reissue. Dolphy is now a “Genius Rediscovered” on the cover of DownBeat, a major event in jazz media that need “mainstream” geniuses even if, like Dolphy, they were driven out of America 55 years ago, a musical brother to Bird and partner to birds, admired by Garvin Bushell—present on these recordings--who had played with Jelly Roll Morton, yet derided in the jazz press as “anti-jazz.” It would be nice, however, if there wasn’t something a little reactionary about this package, nice if there were a little room for a fact checker or a reality checker in the deluxe packaging.

Here’s a passage from an excerpt from a 2008 McCoy Tyner interview with John Kruth discussing the addition of Dolphy to the Coltrane quartet: “Jimmy, Elvin and I felt that we had built something and were still on that journey. We didn’t exactly understand where John was going in terms of adding Eric…Olé was one of the highlights of Eric’s presence.” In the daily hive of performance, it’s unlikely that a working musician will be intensely aware of chronology, especially 50 years later, but someone writing about the era might have some idea of the Coltrane band’s evolution. At the beginning of 1961, Steve Davis was still the quartet’s bassist. He was soon replaced by Reggie Workman who appeared consistently until the end of the year. Art Davis frequently appeared as a second bassist and was on Olé (recorded May 25) along with Dolphy (famously identified as “George Lane”), Freddie Hubbard, Workman and Davis. That same month (two days before), Coltrane, Dolphy and Tyner were recording portions Africa/Brass and putting scores together, with chords provided by Tyner and orchestration and conducting by Dolphy. On May 23, Paul Chambers was the second bassist; on the second session, June 7, it was Art Davis. “Jimmy” (Garrison) begins alternating with Workman during the marathon October-November stay at the Village Vanguard, but Workman is the bassist on the fall ‘61 European tour that included Dolphy and bassist on the last 1961 Impulse studio date (earmarked for Ballads). When did Jimmy Garrison have time to resent Dolphy’s sudden intrusion?

Robin D.G. Kelley’s detailed notes refer to a Fort Worth tenor saxophonist named Dewey Redmond, perhaps the father of the more famous Joshua “Redmond”? Much of the booklet consists of a long string of short interviews in which reed player after reed player, from Sonny Rollins to David Liebman, expresses great admiration for the practice regimen required for Dolphy to maintain his technique on his three very different instruments. Few--Marty Ehrlich among them--seem keenly aware that Dolphy was producing extraordinary music. Joe Chambers takes the opportunity to recall the endorsement of Stanley Crouch, of himself, not Dolphy particularly, (“The avant-garde was really what you were doing”) as opposed to the music Chambers refers to with “not to name names, but that certain other people who were known as revolutionaries were playing.”

A brief biography of another interview subject (the sole European) bears quoting: “Han Bennink is a Dutch jazz drummer who has performed with a number of American jazz greats in the 1960s including Dexter Gordon and Sonny Rollins.” Notice the weird tense, “has performed…in the 1960s,” as if the decade is still here. Not to trouble anyone with the idea that there is any post-Dolphy music out there, but what, one might ask, has Bennink done lately, in, say, the 55 years since Dolphy died? I don’t think I’m flattering the FJB readership by assuming anyone reading this has a pretty clear idea, from a half-century of the ICP to perhaps thousands of ad hoc formations including almost every major figure in free jazz and the free improvisation movement. But of course, Dolphy’s music, for many of us, wasn’t an end but prophecy that has fed much music since, embodying what Evan Parker named so succinctly in an album title “The Ericle of Dolphi.”

This conservative presentation echoes what happened to Dolphy and FM records the first time around. Conversations emphasizes the compositions of others, the small groups and the abstract interplay of Dolphy and Davis. There’s joy in Prince Lasha’s “Music Matador,” a Caribbean explosion with Dolphy’s bass clarinet whooping over the riffing woodwinds of Lasha, Sonny Simmons and Clifford Jordan, and it continues with “Jitterbug Waltz” with Bobby Hutcherson and an 18-year-old Woody Shaw making his recording debut. The second side of the LP presents Dolphy’s solo on “Love Me,” and an extended duet between bass clarinet and Richard Davis’s bass on “Alone Together” an astonishingly “free” duet that well might, with the Giuffre 3’s Free Fall, stand as a signal achievement of third stream and free jazz finding a common ground that continues to develop.
The music becomes far more intense with Iron Man and the appearance of the nonet and tentet (likely Dolphy’s only opportunity for large-scale orchestration following his brilliant beginnings with Coltrane’s Africa), but Iron Man didn’t get to reveal its riches until 1968, four years after Dolphy’s death, when record bins were stuffed with 1961 “Memorial” recordings, three years after the release ofOut to Lunch, as many years after Albert Ayler’s Spiritual Unity and Sun Ra’s more challenging music, even a couple of years after the release of Coltrane’s Ascension, the kind of saxophone maelstrom that Iron Man foreshadowed. None of Dolphy’s 1963 work will ever be commonplace, but in the rapidly evolving musical language of the times, Iron Man arrived in an utterly different context than that in which it was recorded, his radically visionary work seemingly only current.

Though this significant part of Dolphy’s music was effectively taken out of the active dialogue of ‘60s free jazz (it’s unlikely that the big band ever appeared publicly), that it’s now available, in one place, with its alternates and optimal sound, should still be celebrated.

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Guitar Roundup

By Paul Acquaro

Marc Ribot's Ceramic Dog ‎– YRU Still Here? (Yellowbird, 2018) *****

Guitarist Marc Ribot is a long standing favorite of mine. In all of his guises - whether the folk and blues solo work, his always spot-on accompaniment, the 'fake' Latin band, or the raucous Ceramic Dog with bassist Shahzad Ismaily and drummer Ches Smith, he always has something exciting to offer.

On last year's YRU Still Here the guitarist is pissed and political. This is a monster of an album full of hard-charging proto-punk/funk tunes and snarling lyrics, it balances political and racial drama with humor and sly takes on a myriad styles from the retro-robot funk of "Oral Sidney with a U", the Middle Eastern flavored "Orthodoxy", or the Neil Young's Trans/Ennio Morricone mashup of "Rawhide", and the Cubano Positizo's like "Pennsylvania 6 6666" with lyrics invoking brutality from Ismaily's childhood in an intolerant all American town. "Fuck La Migra" is a check on the early Trump abomination, and a angry fuck you to their mendacious policies. However, my favorite tracks are the straight ahead rockers, like "Shut that Kid Up". Sans lyrics, just guitar, bass, and drums it bristles with attitude that says as much about the precarious state of the world as the others.

Samo Salamon & Tony Malaby - Traveling Moving Breathing (Clean Feed, 2018) ****½

The interplay of musicians in a free improvisation setting is something that, even after all of these years listening and writing about music, still astounds me. What is it that makes a session work? I know that there are as many approaches to it as there are musicians, but, when say a trio clicks, they can really make some unreasonably good music together. Slovenian guitarist Samo Salamon works here with a free jazz saxophonist colossus on this recording - there is rarely a setting in which Tony Malaby does not impress, and the percussion work of Roberto Dani has fit into situations ranging from rock to theater to free jazz and has been working with Salamon for well over a dozen years. The sum of these parts more than meets the qualification of sounding reasonably good and go well into the unreasonably good.

Salamon goes for the jugular on several of the songs, letting the electric guitar marinate in distortion and heavy rhythmic passages. Malaby’s saxophone work runs the gamut, from the sounds of clicks and the compressed mouth pieces to soaring in the high register, to funky tattered passages. Dani provides both free and associative playing as well as driving straight ahead rhythms when needed.

Andreas Willers & Jan Roder & Christian Mariën - Derek Plays Eric (Jazzwerkstatt, 2018) ****½

I am not sure of the percent of, or even which Derek and Eric we're talking about here - be it Derek Bailey, or Derek and the Dominos, or Eric Clapton, or whomever, but the playing of German guitarist Andreas Willers is absolute killer on this recording. The guitarist whose debut album was a solo album on the venerable German FMP label in 1981, is working here with bassist Jan Roder and drummer Christian Marien, and the result is a power trio that is both powerful and nuanced. The opening "Steampunk '69" is a crusher of an opening track - straight ahead rock rhythms, melodic excesses reminiscent of Live at Village Gate by Larry Coryell, The follow up 'Plodding Along' features a looping bass line over which the guitar delivers shimmering strokes. But maybe it's all a set up for the third track "Roost'r / Tunnel Boogie", where the slide comes out to devastating effect as the elastic groove perfectly underpins the swampy guitar playing. Then, the set up of "Gentle Maya: Dance of Maya / Eat Your Blues / Valedictory" is unmistakably John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra's opus, and it incorporates prog rock a la Gentle Giant. The follow up, "Goobye Pork Pie Hat / The Marshall Needs El Juicio", begins with a pulsating straight ahead delivery of the great Charles Mingus song, but then erupts into guitar-hero shredding, which is just a whole lot of fun. "I Ain't Got Nothing But the Blues" is an acoustic blues / Derek Bailey mash up that makes no logical sense but works so well. Listen closely as well to the track "Laili", the guitar-bass tandem interplay seems like a slightly dirty secret. There is a ton of variety here, straight ahead rock fun and more than enough off the beaten path playing to keep you listening for a long long time.

Álvaro Domene - The Compass (Illuso, 2018) ***½

The next two records are the most experimental of the lot today, and in fact it's this solo recording from New York based Álvaro Domene that takes home the prize for being the most unusual. It's not so much an album of songs, though the tracks are all split up and named with some intention, but a reassessment of what a guitar can do. Sure there are sounds that border on metal, with sudden riffs like on Coulomb's Barrier", but these soon dissolve into squelches and smears of sounds. The track "EMS of Despair" starts with ambient tones stretched until they disappear, followed by tense partial arpeggios and tingling tonal clusters, and "Mudskipper" has an almost playful beginning with serious attention being paid to the whammy bar (or a pedal, I'm not sure if whammy bars are a much of thing anymore) bending tones before delving into a slightly more conventional solo over an apocryphal drone. The album was recorded without overdubs or multiple tracking, and there are times when Domene sounds like a frightful demolition team, but it's just him and his dark vision.

Henry Kaiser and Max Kutner - Wild Courses (Iluso, 2019) ****

I'm typically a fan of a guitar duo. There is so much musical ground that can be covered, colors to be revealed, and ideas to exchange that there is a virtual endless array of possibilities. on Wild Courses, Henry Kaiser, a relentless and prolific musical explorer and Max Kutner ,who has a surprising array of projects going on as well, get together for a real celebration of the strings. The duo uses 12-string acoustic and electric guitars and an 8-string bass to create and thoroughly explore their musical world. The opener is gentle, "Lucky Fool", where Kaiser's bass provides not so much a solid footing, but random outcroppings that Kutner on a high-tuned 12-string uses to pull himself up. The interchange is delicate, Kutner's sounds is mandolin precise and ringing (reminding me a little of John Abercrombie's electric mandolin work). The follow-up "The Silence Wager" features two 12-strings, but one is searing and distorted while the other is tuned low and wanders windy paths through clusters of notes and tones. The bottom drops out on "Dreams Interpreted by Opposites", which is a spacious and ambient float interrupted by electronic squalls. Two tracks "Boot Mistaken for an Axe Sheath" and "Did it matter, does it now" are both acoustic duets with somewhat conventional song forms - albeit very 'somewhat'. The former begins with a interesting rhythmic riff, which the other guitar then joins with a counter melody of equal, but not exactly aligned groove. The two follow in parallel play, with implied connections. The latter is begins with a preconceived riff that is more motion than motif, but leads into a delicate interweaving of melodic ideas. 'Glider' introduces some slide guitar over a bluesy accompaniment - quite a contrast to some of the more experimental tracks, and a nice anchor in the middle of the recording.

Cuong Vu 4TET : Change In The Air (RareNoise, 2018) ****

How had I left this album untouched for so long? I mean, this is the Bill Frisell album I wanted to hear after I picked up "Gone Just Like a Train" from a little record store in Hoboken back in 1998. At least that's how I felt the moment the track "Alive" picked up. Here was the guitarist playing with that Americana swagger and twangy Tele that brings tears to my eyes.

Seattle based trumpeter Cuong Vu has joined forces with Frisell before, in fact in 2016 they released Ballet (The Music Of Michael Gibbs) - and worked together over a dozen years ago on the trumpeter's It's Mostly Residual (Auand, 2006). However, like  on  Ballet, they are joined by bassist Luke Bergman and drummer Ted Poor, who each brought a set of recordings to this session. The aforementioned 'Alive', with the sauntering comping by Frisell and soaring melodies from Vu, is from Poor, as is the soaring "Lately", which features a lovely melody and a serene harmonic development.

The album begins with a standard that never was. Poor's "All That's Left of Me in You" is in title and spirit something of a bygone era, preserved in the pages of a Real Book for the next generation. Vu's solo is scrumptious and Frisell's accompaniment is perfectly balanced between comping and gentle splashes of color. However, the real prize here is Bergman's 'Must Concentrate', which in a short four and half minutes uses its hopeful melody to give Frisell and Vu to burst into (well contained) flames. Vu's "Round and Round" is a much freer piece, where there seems to be little but suggestions from the composer as to how accompany his open ended melody, and reprises two tracks later as "Round and Around (Back Around)", with a much more solid ending statement. The album is capped off with a composition from Frisell, "Far From Home", leaves a tinge of melancholy in the air.

Jakob Bro - Bay of Rainbows (ECM, 2018) ****

Here is a gentle coda to this round-up: the sumptuous sounds of Jakob Bro whose playing simply rolls and flows like a gentle waves in say, a Bay of Rainbows. With the help of Thomas Morgan's sympathetic bass lines and the deeply nuanced drummer Joey Baron, there is little that can go wrong, and little does. The album is a live recording from NYC's Jazz Standard in NYC from this trio which also released "Streams" on ECM in 2016. Bay of Rainbows also continues the deep collaboration of Bro and Morgan, whose playing together now goes back at least a decade. Bro is a master of using space and time to hone his songs. Morgan, similar to his work with Frisell on Small Town, engages Bro in a sophisticated tug of war. It never rushes, or is rushed, and it never feels drawn out or overdone - the waves are the result of a gentle, but insistent flow. Some standouts are the atmospherically thick and dripping "Red Hook", and the crunchy 'Dug", which bursts with restrained tension. However, it's not the stand-alone songs that matter as much as it is the confluence off the musical streams.

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William Hooker Trio (feat. Ava Mendoza & Damon Smith) - Remembering (Astral Spirits) ****

By Martin Schray
 
William Hooker, one of my favourite drummers, has always liked to work with guitarists, e.g. Lee Ranaldo, Jim O’Rourke, Thurston Moore (all from Sonic Youth), Elliott Sharp and Donald Miller, for example. On Remembering, he’s heard in a trio with one of today’s most interesting guitarists, Ava Mendoza, and bassist Damon Smith.

Mendoza’s style is eclectic, she combines the sound of Robert Fripp, James Blood Ulmer, and Sylvia Juncosa. She lets the phrases proliferate, comprising and expanding them. Her shrill, sharp sound makes her a perfect partner for Smith and Hooker, whose drumming is turbulent and thunderous as usual. In the quieter moments the trio displays an enormous energy. “Grand - I Will“ for example, starts off slowly, the trio needs a little time to pick up speed, the guitar meandering, flickering. Mendoza always plays her guitar slightly offset, as if she was a bit off track, however she soars over the rhythmic bed created by Hooker and Smith. In general, the music is a captivating mixture of free improv and avant-garde rock.

What’s puzzling though, is the fact that this actually was a coherent 35-minute performance. However, the musicians and the label have decided not to release the performance as a single unity, but split it into seven tracks, ranging in length from 2:36 to 7:02. They fade out and back in again, which is a bit strange. But the music is excellent, no doubt.

Remembering is available as a cassette and as a download.

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Wolfgang Muthspiel - Where The River Goes (ECM, 2019)

We received an unusual guest contribution for guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel's latest ECM release Where the River Goes. The writer, Marinella Barigazzi, offers a poetic take on this music, capturing in words images of the sounds flowing from the speakers, plus adds some additional words from the guitarist. 

Where The River Goes

By Marinella Barigazzi

Where does the river go?

It flows slowly, from the source to the rock.

It passes by moss, it echoes in the valleys.

It captures the tenuous light of the dawn and sends back its sound.

Between light and shade, it flows through the forest, caressed by ferns.

The notes rise high up, to greet the rays of the sun.

Notes that call other notes, that intertwine, that separate, that exchange smiles.

The river drifts slowly, reflecting skies and harmony.

Then suddenly it increases rhythm, sending out spray and vigour.

It intersects far away voices and creates of them icons, colouring them with passion.

It proceeds with small steps and opens its sound to the hand of the wayfarer.

It wisely skims over vibrating chords playing arpeggios in the gleam of the sunset.

Where does the river go?

   The river is here.

        The river is music.

Wolfgang Muthspiel about the disc:

Each song has a different inspiration. "Where The River Goes" is inspired by Brad Mehldau (a certain part in a Duo record with Joshua Redman).

"For Django" is inspired by Django Bates (the way he treats his middle voices in his arrangements).

"Descendants" is inspired by my experience of recording Rising Grace.

"Buenos Aires" is inspired by Guillermo Klein and a week I spent with him in Buenos Aires (he has become an important musical friend and partner).

"One Day My Prince Was Gone" is inspired by Miles Davis (both the Standard "Some Day My Prince Will Come", and his absence). 

"Panorama" is an improvisation, inspired in part by Eric Harland's drumming.

How does it feel to play with such a great musician as Brad Mehldau?

It is a luxury to play with Brad. I would say that the mark of the truly gifted musician is the balance of control versus openness for the moment. Both are vital to good Jazz music. In Brad that balance is perfect. Mastering music at this level is hard, but being open to whatever happens and contributing exactly those notes, which make the music better, is rare.

_____

Wolfgang Muthspiel - Where The River Goes (ECM, 2018) ****

By Paul Acquaro

Prompted by Marinella's contribution, I listened to the album and found myself drawn deep into the confluence of Muthspiel's delicate fretwork, Ambrose Akinmusire's warm trumpet tone, pianist Brad Mehldau's subtle shadings, and bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Eric Harland's empathetic and driving rhythm work.

Where the River Goes is not a free jazz album, rather it's well composed and fits the ECM aesthetic swimmingly. Like his fellow guitarists on the label, such as Jakob Bro and the late John Abercrombie, the strongest musical element is the crystalline balance of tone and timbre with motion and momentum. While the album is Muthspiel's, trumpeter Ambrose Akinsmusire whose invigorating and  propitious playing is star material.

On the track "Blueshead" for example, the group gets into a fairly strident groove and Akinsmusire adds an extra bit of bite, while on the opening title track, his entrance after a gentle lovely build up is exquisitely executed. "For Django", features Mehldau's lyrical piano work in the introduction and throughout the achingly melodic track, and again at the start of "Clearing", where the open but terse melody bends slightly bluesy with the pianist's voicing.  The album's midpoint "Buenos Aires" is a sumptuous balled featuring Muthspiel on the nylon string. The short solo track is gentle, but evocative, with a feeling of longing nestled between the notes. As the piece goes on, a more rhythmic element is present. The closing track, 'Panorama' is a nice example of the bass and drum work on Where the River Goes. Muthspeil is again on nylon, and the guitar's round tone is nicely matched by Harland's percussion and Grenadier's unobtrusive support. The song ultimately unfolds like a deep breath marking the end of satisfying journey.

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Goh Lee Kwang & Christian Meaas Svendsen - Gibberish, Balderdash and Drivel (Nakama Records, 2018)

By Stef

A guitar and bass album, with Goh Lee Kwang from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on nylon guitar, and Christian Meaas Svendsen, from Kongsberg, Norway on double bass. 

The album was recorded in an independent art gallery close to Kuala Lumpur with a handheld device. 

It tells us the story of the first encounter between two different mindsets, nationalities and generations trying - and totally failing at - making any sensible dialogue with their respective musical languages.

Still, the music flows unobstructed, blissfully ignorant of the lack of mutual understanding. It is like water running through rough terrain. It doesn’t pause, it doesn’t quarry or question why. It just moves on to the next thing, then the next, then the next. The music sporadically taps into graspable and palpable ponds of understandable gestures and musical interplay, but doesn’t dwell or linger. It doesn’t dig deeper once it has hit a spot, or analyze the current moment to draw more out of it. On the contrary, the dialogue here seems to be one of no-intention. Any meaning is created only by our habitual convention of action and reaction, of recognizable patterns.

Further still there is a musical integrity at play which stands firm on its own ground. It’s just that the music on this record does not try to make sense of it all. The music is talking about trivial things - about the weather, about the noise from the city, about... whatever. No conclusion needed. Just listen closely and ask yourself: does your skin connect you or separate you from the rest of the world?

The CD and LP come with a custom made pencil which can be used to draw your own artwork on the cover.

All the text above is an exact copy of the album's liner notes. What more can I say? Oh yes, somebody's cell phone rings somewhere halfway the performance, and it probably belongs to one of the musicians because it's clearly not picked up ...

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

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Maurice Louca - Elephantine (Sub Rosa/Northern Spy, 2019) ****

By Eyal Hareuveni

Sun Ra and his Arkestra visited Egypt in 1971, recorded three albums including one with local drummer Salah Ragab, and, obviously, visited the Pyramids where Sun Ra had another one of his unbelievable, psychic experience. According to Sun Ra (as quoted in John F. Szwed biography of Sun Ra, Space Is the Place), while he was in the King’s Chamber at the Great Pyramid, Sun Ra chanted nine times the word Ra - the ancient Egyptian deity of the sun. Then, suddenly all the lights went out, but Sun Ra managed to lead his party in total darkness through a twelve-story high staircases and through the narrow entrance to the Queen’s Chamber where the lights miraculously came on again.

Egyptian, Cairo-based guitarist-pianist-multi-instrumentalist Maurice Louca - known from the Middle-Eastern super-group Karkhana and other alternative groups as the Dwarfs of East Agouza and Lekhfa - was born a decade after the historic visit of Sun Ra, but like the great master from outer space he leads a large ensemble that feels at home in experimental-cosmic jazz territories. Louca spices his own cosmic-psychedelic vision of jazz with sensual Arabic scales and West-African and Yemenita trance-like, minimalist rhythms. Elephantine, his third and most ambitious album so far, suggests meditative themes and melodies about a better, peaceful world, but allows the listeners to stick to the dancing habits of the current, old world.

Elephantine was recorded in Stockholm in August 2017 with a 12-piece Egyptian-Swedish-Italian ensemble, including fellow-Egyptian vocalist Nadah El Shazly (Louca played and composed songs for her album, Ahwarأهوار, Nawa, 2018), Swedish sax player Anna Högberg and double bass player Elsa Bergman and Italian drummer Tommaso Cappellato. This unique ensemble delivers Louca’s exptic spells with fiery passion and engaging elegance.

“The Leper”, that opens Elephantine, establishes the hypnotic groove of this album while repeating psychedelic-spiritual jazz mantras, but ornaments the infectious pulse with Middle-Eastern percussion instruments. The short “Laika” dives even deeper into the sixties and seventies spiritual free jazz, now coloring the brass choir with sensual-angular Middle-Eastern voices. “One More for the Gutter” confronts Louca’s gentle and breezy, West-African guitar lines with the hyperactive, fiery free jazz ensemble. The most beautiful song here, “The Palm of a Ghost”, is a return to Louca’s musical roots in Cairo, featuring a delicate, chamber strings-based arrangement with the suggestive delivery of El Shazly and oud player Natik Awayez and violinist Ayman Asfour. The title-pieces deepens the meditative-dreamy atmosphere of the previous song. “Al Khawaga” concludes Louca exotic journey with a different option of playing with colossal, repetitive groove, still, dancing and swinging sensually.

Maybe Sun Ra has not left our fragile planet but keeps transmitting his enlightening messages from the Great Pyramid?

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Catching Up with Luís Lopes

By Eyal Hareuveni 

Portuguese Guitarist Luís Lopes does not like to revisit familiar or conventional territories, rather he likes to keep exploring new sonic terrains and reinventing his highly personal language as a master of noisy sounds. His latest albums feature him as an instigator of a Portugues supergroup, in a noisy duo format and as a quiet collaborator in a local quintet.

Julien Desprez and Luís Lopes - Boa Tarde (Shhpuma, 2018) ****½

The duo with French guitarist Julien Desprez, known from his solo Acapulco project, Eve Risser’s White Desert Orchestra, and former incarnation of Mats Gustafsson’s Fire! Orchestra, employs electric guitars as experimental sound generators. Both Desprez and Lopes use their instruments and assorted gadgets and effects as non-recognizable interfaces, but do so with organic feeling and finesse. The musical paths of Desprez and Lopes go beyond simplistic categories and and draw elements and strategies from free jazz, art rock, free-improvised music, abstract noise, with great focus on their very personal sound. Desprez plays with his whole body, often looks like he is dancing while using his pedal effects to his palette. Lopes is a mad scientist of feedback blasts.

Boa Tarde, good afternoon in Portuguese, was recorded in a studio in Lisbon on August 2016. The afternoon for Desprez and Lopes was not quiet or pleasant, but quite wild and brutal. The four pieces, all titled with female names, offer a spectrum of dark, electric storms. The first one “Iris” is the most radical one. Desprez and Lopes slowly build thunderous momentum, and when their storm matures, it hits the listener head-one with its massive, sinister omnipresence, threatening to drown everything in its way into a deep abyss of processed, feedback noises and metallic drones. The brief “Adelaide” compresses this brutal tornado into a compact, tortured form. “Gracinda”allows some space to trickle between the aggressive yet quite resourceful grind. Desprez and Lopes could have secured a safe and fast course to China if they would have kept their kind of drilling effort a bit longer than 15 minutes. The previous pieces train the listener to trace some emotional veins in the last, more contemplative but still turbulent “Constança”.

Desprez and Lopes promises to recalibrate your brain neurons to our anguished, disorienting times. The best therapy you can seek in one afternoon.

LFU: Lisbon Freedom Unit - Praise of Our Folly (Clean Feed, 2018) ****

About five centuries ago the Dutch Christian scholar Desiderius Erasmus published his satirical essay “In Praise of Folly”, mocking European superstitions and other follies of the pious Catholic church. LFU - the Lisbon supergroup-free-improv--nonet - draws its inspiration from Erasmus classic essay, assuming the role of the follies - savages - who in their chaotic and mad manners brings us closer to God.

The Lisbon Freedom Unit was initiated by Lopes but it is a democratic cooperative with no leader, featuring old and new comrades of Lopes. He and tenor sax player Rodrigo Amado are half of his Humanization 4tet. Reeds player Bruno Parrinha and cellist Ricardo Jacinto are his partners of the Garden Trio. And RED Trio is here too - pianist Rodrigo Pinheiro, double bass player Hernâni Faustino and drummer Gabriel Ferrandini (him and Amado are also ⅔ of the Motion Trio), and the young EITR duo - tenor sax player Pedro Sousa and turntables and electronics player Pedro Lopes - completes the line-up.

In Praise of Folly was recorded in two studio sessions in November 2015 after two different live performances that were totally different in spirit. The first night was filled with sonic density and ferocious energy, but the second one was more disciplined and introverted. The studio material balances these two strategies. The four improvised parts are far from being chaotic, though the energy is still quite volcanic but expressed as a logical conclusion of LFU restrained interplay. But the most fascinating aspect of LFU is its rich sonic language.

The nonet managed in a short while to color their dense and nuanced textures with an imaginative and deep palette of sounds, often blurring common roles and sounds of reeds and string instruments or between the piano, guitar, turntables and the drums. The abstract, quiet segments are the the most impressive ones. These parts sound as a lyrical transformation of AMM innovative, minimalist sonic spectrum.

But as we are still far away from our gods, maybe LFU should unite again with some new cray follies.

Ernesto Rodrigues / Guilherme Rodrigues / Bruno Parrinha / Luis Lopes / Vasco Trilla - Lithos (Creative Sources, 2018) ***½

It is impossible to follow all the releases of viola player and Portuguese Creative Sources label head, Ernesto Rodrigues. If you follow his Bandcamp page you may get the impression that he releases two or three albums every week. And, indeed, he already released 26 albums after Lithos was released earlier this year.

Lithos, after the Greek word for stone, is another free-improvised meeting conducted by Rodrigues, in a studio in Lisbon on February 2017. This session features cellist Guilherme Rodrigues, bass clarinet player Bruno Parrinha, Lopes on electric guitar, and percussionist Vasco Trilla, all of them frequent collaborators of Ernesto Rodrigues. Lopes and Trilla recorded with Ernesto Rodrigues in another improvised quintet the album Nepenthes hibrida (Creative Sources, 2017).

These five improvisers do sound as if all were sculpting and polishing a huge sonic stone, patiently and methodically, first by applying delicate, extended bowing and breathing techniques and modest effects. Later, the quintet adds more tension and thorny methods to its disciplined interplay and the austere atmosphere of their mutual work, but keeping it quiet and reserved. As if to state that delicate, almost silent vibrations may penetrate even the toughest stone.

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Jo David Meyer Lysne - Henger i luften (Hubro Music, 2019) ***½

By Eyal Hareuveni

Norwegian guitarist Jo David Meyer Lysne is only 25 years old but already has developed an idiosyncratic aesthetic that borrows from the quiet, minimalism of Morton Feldman, the sparse, atmospheric soundscapes of guitarist Steve Tibbetts, and experimental sound art, all channelled into evocative, cinematic textures. His debut album as a leader, Henger i Luften (literally, ‘Hang in the Air’), is inspired by poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s conception of music: “Air’s other side, pure, gigantic, and not for us to inhabit”. This album follows his intimate duo with double bass player Mats Eilertsen (Meander, Øra Fonogram, 2017).

Henger i Luften features a chamber like acoustic sextet. Half of the musicians, including Lysne himself, extend their instruments sonic palette with subtle electronics. The ensemble was assembled to perform Lysne’s music for a silent film. Lysne recorded the ensemble in studio, then took the best realized ideas from the studio improvisations, recomposed and edited these pieces into a coherent cinematic narrative, with the help of producer-double bass player Jo Berger Myhre (from the Splashgirl trio).

Henger i Luften lasts only 32 minutes (and released as a limited-edition vinyl plus digital download option), but manages to suggest highly imaginary, enigmatic soundscapes. These soundscapes maintain a strong tension between the pure, dreamy sound of the acoustic strings instruments - Lysne’s acoustic guitar and prepared 12-string guitar, cello, viola, bass, plus the vibes, grand casa and sax, and the subtle yet sinister, ambient-synthesizer envelope. Lysne sketches with this tension detailed images of light and shade and desolate, frozen landscapes that intensify the cinematic drama. Lysne’s guitars tower in these mysterious soundscapes as a lone mountain that resonates and sings his hypnotic chants in an endless space, letting these sounds hang in the air.

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