Rodrigo Amado - Let the Free Be Men (Trost, 2021) *****

By Paul Acquaro

"Let the Free Be Men" is Lisbon based tenor saxophonist Rodrigo Amado's "This is Our Language" quartet's third outing. It began in 2015 the self-titled album, which was a homage to free jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman, from the mix of the title of two Coleman recordings This Is Our Music from 1961 and In All Languages from 1987, to the similar stellar line-ups. For Coleman's group, it was himself on alto sax, Don Cherry on pocket trumpet, Charlie Haden on bass and Ed Blackwell on drums; and in this quartet, it is Amado on tenor saxophone, Joe McPhee – pocket trumpet and soprano saxophone, Kent Kessler on bass and Chris Corsano on drums. A solid foundation, no doubt, and as excellent as their first and second albums where, this quartet is not one content to rest.

The album begins with 'Resist!' - a defiant title for a track that begins defiantly with a solo drum introduction from the crafty and fascinating Corsano. The upstate New York drummer always works something magical into his playing, and with Amado and McPhee he serves as both a connector and catalyst. Though it is Kessler who joins in first, the two wind instruments waste no time in winding up the intensity. Amado delivers short, powerful melodic lines while McPhee adds exclamation points via the trumpet. At the five minute mark, the saxophone is flying over Kessler and Corsano's insistent rhythm and soon McPhee has rejoined on soprano sax, adding high pitched counter melodies.

The title track is 13-minutes of tension building ecstasy. It begins with a low moan of bass and saxophone and unfolds slowly like an unraveling fern. Starting small and ball-like, the tones expand, becoming interweaving lines, growing at a perfect ratio of melodic intent and free association. About half-way into the track, Kessler and Corsano kick things into higher gear, and here is where the patient unfolding yields to mounting intensity. It does not take long for Amado and McPhee (who is on sax as well here) to be shooting out long, serrated edges of sounds, sounding something like what the primordial fern leaf looks like - ancient, strong, beautiful and hearty, like something that was once food for dinosaurs and nurtures us still.

The next track, 'Men is Woman is Man,' starts with the feel of a buzzing forest. Yes, I'm still stuck here in the nature metaphors, but please bear with me. The insectoid hum turns into more mammalian chatter, with Kessler drawing out short, choppy bowed tones to which McPhee buzzes against with the trumpet. Amado lays back as Corsano adds his unique percussive flair, but then soon begins adding chirps and squawks to the scene. The sounds come together and the forest is abuzz, conversations zipping back and forth, until finally settling down to rest.
 

"Never Surrender," which closes the recording, seems to be titularly related to the first track, and of course musically related to it all. The track starts off somewhat exploratory but comes together quickly. About four minutes in there is an exchange between Amado and McPhee that is as classic free-jazz as it can be – simultaneously energetic but different approaches that aim for the same purpose, both elevating the tension and tickling the ears.

Language, of course, evolves, rules change with usage, new vocabulary is added, and ever more complex ideas are conceptualized. Between these four seasoned players, their language is all of this, alive, evolving, building and changing. In some sense, this group takes most expressive elements of free jazz - which is indeed a lexical sponge - and wrings out the best words.

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An overview of female ensembles at the occasion of Hearth's release of Melt

(Marilyn Mazur's Shamania - uncredited picture)

By Stef Gijssels

With Hearth, a new female ensemble saw the light of day. In fact, all-female jazz bands are rare, except for occasional duo performances. 

"Les Diaboliques", the trio with Joëlle Léandre, Irene Schweizer and Maggie Nichols was among the first in the early 90s, I guess, a deliberate choice to show and to encourage the female perspective in modern music. 

Here are some more all-women ensembles that are larger than duo performances. The strong presence of Nordic bands is evident. 

• Magda Mayas, Annette Krebs and Anthea Caddy on "Thread"
• Lotte Anker, Marilyn Crispell and Marilyn Mazur on "Poetic Justice",
• Lotte Anker with Sylvie Courvoisier and Ikue Mori on "Alien Huddle'
• Sylvie Courvoisier, Joëlle Léandre and Susie Ibarra on "Passaggio"
• Lisa Ullén, Nina De Heney and Okkyung Lee on "Look Right"
• Rachel Musson, Naoko Saito, and Audrey Lauro on "The Region Of Braille Respiration"
• Marilyn Mazur's Shamania with Lotte Anker, Josefine Cronholm, Sissel Vera Pettersen, Hildegunn Øiseth, Lis Wessberg, Makiko Hirabayashi, Ellen Andrea Wang, Anna Lund, Lisbeth Diers and of course Marilyn Mazur. 
• Great Waitress with Magda Mayas, Laura Altman and Monica Brooks: "Lucid" and "Flock";
• Lauroshilau with Pak Yan Lau, Audrey Lauro and Yuko Oshima on "Live At Padova"
• Anna Högberg Attack with Anna Högberg, Elsa Bergman, Anna Lund, Lisa Ullén, Elin Larsson, Malin Wättring on their self-titled debut album "Anna Högberg Attack"
• Shitney with Maria Faust, Karine Amsler, Qarin Wikström on "Earth Core"
• Like The Mind with Lisa Ullén, Peggy Lee, Lisen Rylander Löve, Meredith Bates, Emma Augustsson and Elisa Thorn on "Live At Fylkingen"
• The Elks with Liz Allbee, Marta Zapparoli, Billy Roisz and Kai Fagaschinski on "The Land Of The Electric Ladys"
• We Like We with Katinka Fogh Vindelev, Katrine Graup Elbo, Sara Rosendal and Josephine Opshal  on "A New Age Of Sensibility"
• Selvhenter with Sonja LaBianca, Maria Bertel, Maria Diekmann Jaleh Negari and Anja Jacobsen on "Motion Of Large Bodies", "Frk. B. Fricka" and "12.16.05"
• Spunk with Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje, Hild Sofie Tafjord, Lene Grenager and Kristin Andersen on "Still Eating Ginger Bread For Breakfast" and "Das Wohltemperierte Spunk"
• Femina with Jennifer Choi, Sylvie Courvoisier, Carol Emanuel, Okkyung Lee, Ikue Mori, Shayna Dunkelman and Laurie Anderson on "Femina"
• Hupata with Marta Warelis, Ada Rave & Yung-Tuan Ku on "Microclimates" 
• Pistol Nr 9 with Maria Faust, Maria Bertel, Katrine Amsler, Qarin Wikström and Michala Østergaard-Nielsen on "Fest På Amager". 

This list is partly based on our own reviews, and I may have missed quite a few. Suggestions are welcome. 

Further reading for the interested reader: colleague reviewer's Sammy Stein's insightful book "Women in Jazz" and Renate Da Rin's "Giving Birth To Sound: Women in Creative Music". 

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In Layers - Pliable (FMR, 2020) ****½

By Tom Burris

Portugal's star free music quartet returns with another incredible session of automatic composition. Recorded in Coimbra in front of a pre-pandemic audience, the music within this disc is mesmerizing and often stellar, which the listener is correct to expect. The six tracks that comprise Pliable are basically... I hate to use the word “delightful” in almost any setting; but I'll be damned if that isn't the only word that seems to fit.

“Supple” opens with a mournful tone played by trumpter Luis Vicente, crying over Marcelo Dos Reis' no-wave guitar chiming. Plodding percussion from Onno Govaert and Kristian Martinsson's prepared piano overlap in coaxing the music forward. Amazing what rain drips on empty paint cans can do. Bowed guitar and well placed notes by Martinsson bring an air of meditation to the proceedings directly underneath Vicente's longing howls. The search intensifies but the question of “What is Luis searching for so longingly?” remains unanswered.

A little over a minute into “Malleable,” full group improvisation gives way to Dos Reis' full chordal slabs across the guitar neck, atonal chunks of staccato attack. Govaert and Vicente join in, quickly creating a three-way spar of imperial stomp. This is followed by a few solos from Martinsson's prepared piano, Vicente's balloon squeaks, and Dos Reis' guitar at the beginning of “The Whippy”. It becomes hectic as the drums enter, with Dos Reis approximating Morse code. This quickly subsides as Vicente plays a plaintive melody in some sort of plea. A desperation builds underneath the other players. Dos Reis grumbles like Sonny Sharrock about to explode behind the glissandi speech patterns of Martinsson's piano.

Contemplative water bubble trumpet and guitar slow dance with cymbal and piano ice at the beginning of “Elastic.” This is the sound just under the ice, in that little space between the water and the ice on top of the lake. Subtle feedback tones and the piano's light dancing form a background for the drums as “Ductile” begins taking shape. An intense rumbling builds as storm clouds roll in, hitting strongly when piano and trumpet ignite. Dos Reis brews behind Govaert's drum kit until distorted runs rip out of his amp to end the piece sharply. The title track ends the ride with prepared guitar scribbles, lightly tapped drums and a general tentative feel of bringing you back into a scritch-scratch headspace that will keep you returning again and again.

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Two different (very different) bands that include Susana Santos Silva

By Stuart Broomer

Since emerging a decade ago with the playfully postmodern group Lama on a series of Clean Feed recordings, trumpeter Susana Santos Silva has developed a distinctive musical voice that she has adapted to diverse projects, from the beautiful solo music of All the Rivers, a subtle duet with the reverberant space of Lisbon’s Panteão Nacional, to bands as aggressive as Mats Gustafsson’s Fire! The two quartets considered here, with only Santos Silva’s presence in common, take radically different routes and responses to a certain sense of immediate crisis, a dislocation in time, one perhaps of identity, the other environmental.

Ikizukuri + Susana Santos Silva - Suicide Underground Orchid (Multikulti Project, 2021) ****½

Ikizukuri, based in Porto, Portugal, begins as a power trio of Gonçalo Almeida, on electric bass; Gustavo Costa, playing drums and postproduction electronics; and Julius Gabriel, on soprano saxophone. The band works from a kind of Japanese chaos aesthetic. How visceral is it? “Ikizukuri” is a form of sashimi in which the seafood is still alive when it is prepared. I still recall my surprise when the dinner of a neighboring customer in a Japanese restaurant tried to get off the plate. I doubt the band is endorsing Ikizukuri, rather identifying with the meal.

It’s a brilliant up-date on an established format, the long running dialogical free jazz quartet from those of Coleman and Ayler through the harsher force of Peter Brötzmann and the adoption of heavy amplification. Here Almeida contributes doom metal bass, Costa a mix of thrash and pinpoint-rattle drumming, and the horns an interchange of wail and honk. The expansion to a quartet with Santos Silva’s at-once precise and incandescent trumpet is almost normative, a free jazz front-line less odd than the prior pitch gap between Almeida’s bass and Gabriel’s piping soprano.

The most striking aesthetic expansion here is Costa’s postproduction electronica, strange echoing sounds that violate the “presence of the present”, a beautiful fiction present (it’s inescapable) in every recording of improvised music however “pure” the process. This music is more crazed, more intense than what was first created “live”. Costa’s postproduction emphases range from ambient, abstracted sound to harsh noise: when the band stretches out to nine minutes on “Wealth, to the Poison in the Wash”, it ranges from speed metal aggression to dream-like lyricism. Multiple dislocations echo that grim band name, extending to the wonderfully crazed titles attached to these pieces: the track titles are convulsions, semantic impossibilities that create meaning out of incongruity, conceived with a kind of poetic rage: what linear discourse can possibly add to a piece of music that its makers have already called “In the We Some, No S Can Though” or “The and Flesh His Resources”. “I a an Failures” is as hard to nail down as its title, its echoing mystery surrendering to an accelerating bass assault.

Hearth - Melt (Clean Feed, 2021) ****½

The quartet Hearth, first assembled at Amsterdam’s October Meeting in 2016, possesses the unusual instrumentation of three winds and piano, with Santos Silva joined by alto saxophonist Mette Rasmussen, tenor saxophonist/clarinetist Ada Rave and pianist Kaja Draksler, all of whom contribute vocal elements and small instruments. Melt, from the 2019 Portalegre Jazz Festival, has pointedly environmental themes, from the album name to such track titles as “Fading Icebergs” and “Tidal Phase.

There’s the sense here of the invention of a new kind of music, closely aligned with ideas of distinct sonic environments. Lines are sometimes absent; in their place are series of overlapping long tones, suggestive of environmental processes from slow decay to seeming stillness to sudden growth, figured not by changing tones but by a certain assertiveness of attack, a sudden crescendo, a more insistent sense of layering. At times the group suggests A Contest of Pleasures, the wind trio of John Butcher, Xavier Charles and Axel Dörner that some 20 years ago began to produce music devoted in part to long tones. Here, a similar approach is especially evident on “Oscillations”, though on other pieces these patterns are joined with an explicit set of ecological metaphors. The gradually overlapping tones come to suggest the random tolling of bell-buoys ringing with the lapping of waves. The extended “Diving Bells” is almost an exercise in gradual diminution, moving from the raw-edged, expressionist noise of Rasmussen and Rave's prepared saxophones, expanding with pointillist piano and shifting combinations to include glass chimes, penny whistles and percussive clicks as well as voices variously driven through wind instruments, sometimes suggesting small creatures, stretching towards dense activity conducted at very low volumes, sonic life growing richer as it approaches silence. The cumulative impact grows with each hearing.

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Some more magic from Portugal - Vicente and Dos Reis galore

 By Stef Gijssels

It may be a little much for one review, yet we have to follow the prolific output of some of Europe's strongest talents: Luis Vicente and Marcelo Dos Reis. In ideal circumstances we can review each album separately, but of course many other albums have been released recently, so we thought it best to combine. 

Both musicians managed to create a distinct sound in improvised music: hypnotic, intense and lyrical. The backbone is often the unique approach to guitar by Dos Reis, who - preferably acoustic, but also electric - uses his instrument more as percussive tool than a harmonic one. Playing single chords with relentless insistency generates a trance-inducing atmosphere over which the other musicians improvise. Vicente is a stellar artist too, not only by his trumpet technique, but even more by the sound of his instrument and his natural sense of lyricism and emotional depth. Their combined sound has a unique voice, and even if they find themselves in a variety of different line-ups - and even without each other - their signature sound is there to enjoy. 

In Layers - Pliable (FMR, 2020) ****½

After "In Layers" from 2016, This is the sophomore album by the quartet consisting of Marcelo Dos Reis on guitar, Luis Vicente on trumpet, Onno Govaert on drums and Kristjan Martinsson on piano. The album was recorded live on May 17th, 2018 at Salão Brazil in Coimbra. 

Its sound is constantly switching between the gentle and the abrasive, between flow and counter rhythms, between traditional aesthetic concepts and adventure. 

The six tracks are titled to illustrate the flexibility of their approach and care called "Supple", "Malleable", "The Whippy", "Elastic", "Ductile" and "Pliant". The interaction with Govaert and Martinsson is absolutely stellar. The former is a very intense drummer, and without needing to develop the pulse of the improvisations, he can content himself by adding emphasis or subtle contrasts, while Martinsson adds a freshness to the music by minimal runs on his keyboard or by taking over the hypnotic rhythms. He opens the strong "The Whippy", with very short phrases, full of surprise and intensity, generating a similar response from the other band members, resulting in an impromptu dance of piano, guitar and drums. Halfway the track Vicente joins with slow and moving trumpet sounds contrasting with the ever continuing and intensifying sharp cracking sounds of the rhythm section. 

Despite this, the music remains quite airy, with low density. Vicente's playing is strong, building his sound so carefully, using microtonal timbral shifts and changes of pitch, resulting in melancholy moans, quiet whimpers, bird chatter, angry shouts or jubilant singing. Just listen to his stretched phrases on "Supple" (on the video below) or his rhythmic repetitive patterns on "Ductile". Dos Reis again demonstrates that an acoustic guitar can do more than is generally expected, and possibly because he takes away all the normal roles of a guitar: there are no solos - with the rare exception of a dissonant very unconventional multi-string solo on "Malleable" - or harmonic progression, but he uses a whole array of extended techniques. One of the highlights are his slowly ascending guitar chords on "Elastic", interspersed by heavy rumbling of the drums, pushing both Vicente and Martinsson to a crescendo. 

I think I must have listened more than fifty times to this album over the last months. It keeps surprising me. I hope it will do the same for you. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

João Valinho, Luís Vicente, Marcelo dos Reis, Salvoandrea Lucifora - Light Machina (Multikulti Project, 2021) ****½

A new ensemble creates new perspectives on the common approach. It's not clear who leads the dance for the entire album, but the tone is set by Italian trombonist Salvoandrea Lucifora, who opens the album with the plaintive "Machina Girl", by a stunning show of surprise evolving into sad repetitive phrases. Marcelo Dos Reis' electric guitar offers a drone-like background with Joã Valinho's sparse percussive effects creating a gloomy atmosphere. Vicente joins and his sounds echo the slow trombone. Both horns lean on each other, embracing like soul brothers mourning a deep loss. The almost ten minute long piece is slow, deep and moving. Then suddenly dos Reis plays guitar chords, subtle, fresh, opening up the piece to Vicente's trumpet again, increasing the intensity and expansiveness of the piece, supported by Valinho's arhythmic rumbling on the drums. 

On "Saving Pigs", short organic noise bytes interact, like pigs aimlessly wandering around in their pen. Lucifora slowly grows music out of this, by lengthening his phrases and adding melody, but it's Vicente who comes up with a beautiful lyrical phrase, melancholy and pure, changing the dialogue with the trombone. In the meantime, the guitar and the drums keep stubbornly doing anything but conventional things, wayward and obstinate, adding raw and disruptive sounds forcing the trombone into a paroxysm of anxiety near the middle of the piece, full of agony  ... until almost silence, lightly disturbed by voiceless stutters of the trumpet, rhythmic strumming of the same non-chord on the guitar, drums rumbling, and both horns picking up their slow moaning again. 

"The RainGoat" starts with a funny interaction of short rhythmic bursts by trombone and trumpet, a dialogue of friends, echoing each other and taking the conversation into a different direction, all parlando style. After two minutes the drums start adding intensity, and Vicente starts building up snippets of phrases that will evolve during the improvisation into a theme. There is - believe it or not - even a guitar solo by Dos Reis, raw and angular, as an invitation for both horns to play a warm unison theme, totally unexpected but welcoming before moving the piece back into ferocious space for the intense finale. 

The recipe of Vicente and Dos Reis works well with both Lucifora and Valinho. Lucifora is a wonderful trombone player and it's a shame he is not better known. The interaction of both horns on this album, each with its own timbre and sonic possibilities is stellar, and Lucifora's emotional quality on the trombone also finds a good match with Vicente. Valinho is known from his work with Ernesto Rodrigues on the Creative Sources label. 

All four musicians manage to challenge the conventional approach to ensemble playing without alienating their audience. Its raw ferocity is balanced by its gentle sensitivity. Their music is compelling, infectious and intense throughout. 

The performance was recorded live on March 1, 2020 at Salão Brazil in Coimbra, Portugal. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Luis Vicente Trio - Chanting In The Name Of (Clean Feed, 2021) ****½

The most recent addition to the list is the Luis Vicente Trio, with Gonçalo Almeida on double bass and Pedro Melo Alves on drums. 

The liner notes are by Hamid Drake, explaining some of the titles "Music is much more than an entertaining pastime. It is, in fact, the underlying code of the whole universe", quoting the Sufi mystic Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882-1927). "Music has the potential to give scope, meaning and lightness to our often times congested lives. It can open new portals of our creative imagination and stretch in ways that we never though possible (...) The music echoes of hope, compassion, beauty and understanding that the human spirit cries out for not only in the times we are now living in, but at all times."

The album is stellar. Vicente's compositions are losely structured around core themes, often beautiful meandering lines, allowing the trio to expand and improvise. The album starts with the gentle 'Anahata',  with plucked bass, a wonderful intro for the theme, and evolves into a peak of high intensity, a challenge and a physical effort for bass and drums to keep up with the soaring trumpet. "Keep Looking" is more exploratory, an open invitation to welcome more organic sounds, and the knowledge that the search itself is important, the open attitude of ears and eyes and minds. Vicente integrates subtle rhythmic and tempo changes, culminating in a repetitive theme on the trumpet that gradually and deliberately dissolves into chaos. 

The centerpiece of the album is also the title song, with a fascinating intro of dissonant bowed bass and lyrical, solemn and spiritual trumpet. It is a chant indeed, a bluesy incantation full of melancholy and hope, full of gentleness and decisiveness, gradually guiding the bass into the same spirit, as it does with Melo Alves' percussion. It is a piece that resonates and will continue to resonate long after you've finished listening. Vicente opens all registers, shifting between intensity and the ethereal, without disrupting the coherence of his sound. It is also clear why Vicente asked Gonçalo Almeida and Pedro Melo Alves for this trio: both musicians have ideas and sufficient character to take the music to a higher level. 

"Connecting The Dots" starts with a more angular and jazzy theme, nervous and agitated, a wonderful playground for the rhythm section. The trumpet oscillates between clarity and ferocious shouts. 

The final piece, "May's Flavour", is another quiet and spiritual incantation, in which the initial gentle theme gets deconstructed, modified only to reappear again in its full beauty at the end. 

Vicente's art, like on so many other albums, gets its magic from its inclusive approach, with elegant themes inviting the listeners in, connecting aesthetically and emotionally, and then taking them forward to more exploratory places, increasing the depth of the music and its unversal trancendence, showing them places of unheard beauty, out of their comfort zone, while at the same time keeping a level of humble authenticity and musical honesty. Even if the result is not boundary-shifting musically, the quality of the music is possibly among the best you will hear this year.  

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Listen on Youtube

Marta Warelis, Carlos  Zíngaro, Helena Espvall & Marcelo dos Reis - Turquoise Dream (JACC, 2021) ****½

On "Turquoise Dream", we find Marcelo Dos Reis and his acoustic guitar in a string ensemble, with Marta Warelis on piano, Carlos Zingaro on violin and Helena Espvall on cello and effects. Their approach is minimalistic, with little sonic bits creating shimmering and fragile soundscapes, gently and cautiously. There is no real soloing taking place, nor harmonic or rhythmic development, and that allows the musicians to focus on active listening and tight interaction, and free sonic creativity. The result is as fresh as it is fascinating. The five pieces each have their own character, ranging between nervous interplay and quiet intensity. 

The real discovery in this ensemble is Marta Warelis, who graduated with honours in her native Poland before moving to the Netherlands to attend the Prins Claus Conservatory. She has become an active member of the Amsterdam free improv scene, playing in a dozen ensembles and with now seven albums released. She manages to nicely balance hypnotic runs on the keys with unexpected sounds from the inside of the piano. Swedish cellist Helena Espvall has credits on more than 100 albums, and her career has fluctuated between the genres of rock, folk and the avant-garde. We probably now her best from her collaborations with the Portuguese Creative Sources ecosystem. Carlos Zingaro no longer needs to be introduced, apart from the fact that he manages to keep his playing and improvising young and new. 

Regardless of their backgrounds, age differences ... or maybe because of this diversity, the music moves as one. The respectful co-creation of the music results in fascinating moments, mesmerising and compelling. And like with the other music of Dos Reis, the combination of repetitive elements and completely free notes works. It would be hard to speak of real rhythms, but rather of pulse, a forward-moving dynamic that captures the listener physically, and that offers a backbone for the other musicians to join or escape into wilder territory, knowing they can return to the base. 

This results in gradual movements, minor shifts and changes, lightly touching on the possibility of forms and patterns to be created, but still withdrawing into abstract shapes and colours, and back, in line with the dreamstate suggested by the album's title. The canvas they create is intense, full of fantasy, kaleidoscopic, unpredictable and smart. The result is music that you can listen to endlessly without tiring of it. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Fail Better! - The Fall (JACC, 2021) ****

This the third album by the ensemble, but now with Marco Franco on drums and Albert Cirera on saxophone. José Miguel Pereira remains on double bass next to Vicente and Dos Reis. 

Of all the albums reviewed here, this one is without a doubt the most ferocious and raw. It starts with electric guitar and drums, allowing for wild entries for bass and horns. Dos Reis quickly resorts to a manic rhythm on his guitar, allowing the normal rhythm section to join in the mayhem of the lead instruments. 

The second track, "Rise Up" is built around a sax vamp by Cirera and does diminish the dense and intense interaction. It's only on the long "Falling Stars" that we get some time to breathe, as the density is significantly lowered, allowing the musicians to create a slowly developing soundscape of interacting sonic bits, first loosely, then coalescing in a more rhythmic pattern. It is equally raw and unpredictable, strange and compelling at the same time. 

"Skyfall" starts with a relatively fast rhythm on acoustic guitar, supported by drums and bass, and with both horns playing slow entwining phrases, both with an incredibly strong wailing component to them. It is an impressive piece of being emotionally crushed. The album ends with an organic piece, initiated by Cirera, evolving into intense utter chaos, slowing down halfway, and allowing the guitar to bring a sense of pulse into the improvisation, subduing the horns and rhythm section. It ends with human frailty and sensitivity. 

As mentioned earlier on this blog, the band's name comes from surrealist author Samuel's Becket short piece of prose: Worstward Ho!: 

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. First the body. No. First the place. No. First both. Now either. Now the other. Sick of the either try the other. Sick of it back sick of the either. So on. Somehow on. Till sick of both. Throw up and go. Where neither. Till sick of there. Throw up and back. The body again. Where none. The place again. Where none. Try again. Fail again. Better again. Or better worse. Fail worse again. Still worse again. Till sick for good. Throw up for good. Go for good. Where neither for good. Good and all.”

This short extract encapsulates the physicality, rhythmic pulse and the open-ended risk of the music. It is not a very positive message. 

This will not be for everyone's ears, but keep listening, and repeatedly. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

João Madeira, Mário Rua & Luís Vicente - Trio (Self, 2021) ****

This trio with João Madeira on bass, Mario Rua on drums and Luis Vicente on trumpet was recorded in December 2020. Madeira has released a few albums in the last years with George Haslam, Ernesto Rodrigues and Hernani Faustino. Mario Rua too released two albums with George Haslam. 

The trio offers us four tracks of improvised music. Even if Vicente's familiar trumpet is the lead instrument, the music is really a collective achievement. The first track is called "Amor Supremo", a nice wink to John Coltrane. The third track, "Grão" (grain) is more adventurous, starting with voiceless trumpet, bowed bass and single percussive beats, slowly creating a combined growth of the sound, picking up a voice and rhythm as it expands, drone-like, intense, with stuttering trumpet sounds, manic bass and raw percussion. The long last track is called "Desassossego" (restlessness), as its title suggest, it is nervous, built with granular bits of sound, little sharp beats and bass plucks, over which the trumpet weaves sustained notes in strong contrast with the rhythm section, but the free improv sound gradually shifts into more free jazz territory, with stronger pulse and a more collective approach with the exception of a drums solo in the middle part. 

There is lots to enjoy on this album. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

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Vinny Golia, John Hanrahan, Henry Kaiser, Wayne Peet, Mike Watt - A Love Supreme Electric: A Salvo Inspired by John Coltrane, A Love Supreme and Meditations (Cuneiform, 2020) *****

By Kenneth Blanchard

Some genres are defined in part by the wardrobes and props. If it’s hats, horses, and handguns, it’s a Western. If it’s guys in tuxedos playing stringed instruments, it’s what we call classical music. If the dress code is cool and/or casual, rather than formal, and there is at least one horn, it’s probably jazz. The shot of the band that came with A Love Supreme Electric appears to pin it down a bit more precisely. A guitar, bass, and organ all electrified point in the direction of jazz fusion. It’s more complicated than that.

Another difference between classical music and jazz turns on whether the artist and performance are subordinate to the composer and composition or vice versa. Classical fans scan reviews for the best new recording of Beethoven’s violin concerto. Jazz fans look for new recordings by Ken Vandermark.

Occasionally a jazz composition acquires something of the stature of a great symphony or concerto. John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme might be the example. A quick survey turned up twenty-five interpretations of Trane’s 1964 studio version, within a range that includes Carlos Santana and John McLaughlin (1972) and the David Murray Octet (2000). Drummer John Hanrahan writes the first set of liner notes for A Love Supreme Electric. He tells of a long relationship to the music and a sense of spiritual maturation.

This piece (if you’re open and ready to accept) will open your mind to a blissful place of our love and spirit. I’ve seen, heard, and felt it when this piece is performed. I truly had no idea what I was getting involved with.

Coltrane’s studio recording of ALS explicitly documents his religious experience at this point. It is also the definitive statement of his Great Quartet McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones. His Meditations, recorded not quite a year later, documents his leap into free jazz. It also stands as his last recording with the Quartet. Coltrane brought on a second tenor sax Pharoah Sanders and another drummer Rashied Ali. Flying with an unbalanced load into unexplored territory, Tyner, Garrison, and Jones had had enough.

ALSE covers both the four movements of Trane’s ALS and the compositions from Meditations. If that weren’t enough, it deploys an electric guitar and organ. These jazzmen are lacking neither courage nor imagination.

Their most interesting decision was to reengineer Trane’s ALS according to the blueprint of his Meditations. The former, as brilliant and inventive as it is, is well within the comfort zone of any hard bop fan. The first cut on the latter Father, Son, and Holy Ghost would scare a hard bop stalwart (as once I was) back into his mouse hole. Is it really a coincidence that Ayler’s seminal Spiritual Unity was recorded five months before ALS? The result of this reengineering is a much more edgy version of ALS, with a lot of genuinely free jazz, some of them stretched out, in every section.

If that were all there was to it, it would be a much less interesting document; however, two additional strategies enlarge and refine the final product. One was to anchor the more traditional mood of ALS in Vinny Golia’s saxophone. Even when he is trading licks with Henry Kaiser’s guitar, Golia keeps the marrow of bop narration healthy inside the bone of the music. I have always loved it when avant garde/free jazz compositions become kissing cousins with hard bop. Think of Anthony Braxton’s Six Monk’s Compositions and his Charlie Parker Project.

The third innovation was to present the electric instruments less in the style of jazz fusion and more in the style of sixties acid rock. Try to imagine Trane playing with Jimmy Hendrix at, where else, the Newport Jazz Festival. The third time the guitar went off my old earring hole popped open. This is most explicit in Kaiser’s guitar work, but also so in Wayne Peet’s organ.

Perhaps the most evident difference between ALS and ALSE is the lack of empty auditory space in the latter. Trane’s original leaves lots of room around the sound of each instrument, allowing for more definition. This recording frequently fills up all the available space. This might be my only criticism. I would have liked more passages like the beginning of track 8 'Consequences'. Horn, guitar, and bass drill down in parallel shafts.

This is an amazing album. If I only had one track to keep, it would be the last: 'Acknowledgement reprise'. It seems to tie the strengths of the project into a satisfying tapestry. When you get this and you are going to be sure to listen to the Coltrane originals first. Then fasten your seat belts.

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Guitar - Duos (Part 2): Spontaneous decisions and sinuous backdrops

By Paul Acquaro

Part two in the series of recent guitar duos, before we move onto trios. We begin today with a couple of actual guitar duos and continue from there ...

Rubén Reinaldo & Kely García Guitarra Jazz Dúo - Acuarel (Free Code Jazz Records, 2020) ****

Guitar and Guitar. I've confessed before about my reverence for the guitar duo - and by this I mean simply two guitars playing together. To my simple ears, the musical ground that a pair of guitarists, attuned to their instruments and in tune with each other, is boundless. A sensitive pair can switch from quiet introspection to explosive outpouring effortlessly, leading the listener almost anywhere. The duo of Rubén Reinaldo & Kely García, two accomplished guitarists and educators from the Galician region of Spain, are exemplars of this configuration. Hailing from different generations, the younger Reinaldo and the established Garcia find much common ground in navigating the tunes of Acuarel. With nods to tradition, both musically and culturally, the two weave fluid melodic lines through rich harmonic passages, filling the musical space generously but still leaving plenty of room to not drown the listener. A wonderful example is the track 'Coscovals' - a modern jazz melody pings off a lilting comp, bright, light, but with a depth that invites the listener to dive deep. The title track is rhythmically alluring piece featuring an intricate interlocking melody. The final track, 'Berimar Blues' takes the album out in a blues-tinted flourish.

The duo reminds me, in some ways, of some of the exemplary guitar collaborations festooning my collection - like Bill Frisell and Dale Bruning, or Joe Pass and Herb Ellis, or - one of my evergreens - Vic Juris and Bireli Lagrene (not actually a duo, but good enough), or even Julian Lage and Nels Cline - no, none of these are truly comparable, but they all demonstrate compatibility, tunefulness, and selflessness. Added bonus: for the guitar players out there, the recording (even the download) comes with a book of transcriptions.

Ivar Grydeland & Henry Kaiser - In The Arctic Dreamtime (Rune Grammofon, 2020) ****½

Guitar and Guitar. Apparently the product of a spontaneous decision to record, American guitarist (and arctic explorer) Henry Kaiser met up with Norwegian guitarist Ivar Grydeland in Oslo and made a soundtrack to the documentary Ellsworths flyveekspedition 1925, an early silent film about arctic explorer Roald Amundsen’s second attempt to reach the North Pole. Less than two hours after starting, they were done, notably more successful than Amundsen in fulfilling their mission. 

 

The opening track already signals that it will be an atmospheric journey, 'Roald Amundsen 1925' opens with an evocative drone and blips of electric guitar. Over a sinuous backdrop, melodic intentions build, reaching a searing altitude around half way trough the 17+ minute track. Projected against bleakness, the guitar's distorted buzz is electrifying and lonely, it feels very much like we're soaring over a endless cracked icy white landscape, listening to the fears in our heads. It is, in a sense, frighteningly gorgeous. The track 'Spitsbergen' is different, arpeggios with a touch of blues, a little Morricone, and a little bit of the musical language from Grydeland's group Huntsville. It feels open ended, somewhat jagged, and tempting. Each track seems to capture a similar mood just a little differently, 'To the North Pole' seems a bit hopeful, 'N-25' a bit forlorn, and Into the Arctic Dreamtime, somewhat terrifying. Quite an evocative recording!

Csaba Palotai, Steve Argüelles - Cabane Perchée (BMC, 2021) ***½

Guitar and Percussion. This recording, from a Hungarian guitarist Csaba Palotai and British drummer Steve Argüelles was a pleasant and unexpected surprise. The two musicians, collaborators living in France, have certainly built their Cabane Perchée - tree house, or as DeepL will have it, 'perched cabin' on some strong branches of rhythm and repetition. Through the crisp, lively recording comes clear, developed ideas that build-up thir energy through circular motifs and strong grooves. 'Bulgarian Rhythm 1' opens the album with a swiftly moving cluster of chords and bare bones percussion accompaniment. The full sound is somewhat surprising given the instrumentation, but it is no exception, as the second track 'Phosphore' shows. Again a repetitive figure from the guitar and a laser focused set of percussive devices keeps the music lively and when Palotai breaks up the figure with short melodic runs the contrast is alluring. However, just as soon as one thinks there is a pattern forming, 'In Tents', the third track, shakes things up. Argüelles plays a prepared acoustic guitar, giving Palotai's acoustic guitar a much different rhythmic base to build on, which he does with slowly expanding chordal voicings, ending with an emotive solo passage. A very nice, composed, acoustic recording.

Álvaro Domene & Killick Hinds - Hocket Pulsar (Iluso, 2021) ***½

Guitar and String Instruments (and some electronics). According to the liner notes, it was Henry Kaiser who introduced the Georgia (USA) based Killick Hinds and New York based Álvaro Domene based on a feeling that they were musically compatible. His hunch proved correct as the duo quickly set forth to create Hocket Pulsar. On first listen, one could be forgiven thinking there is a glitch in their Bluetooth speaker connection. The opening title track is a long, patient expansion of sound. There are glitchy pops and fizzes of electronics over a drone for half of the track, while a more traditional electric guitar appears now and then in the mix. As the track evolves, the guitar takes over with rhythmic plucking of the lower strings and other elongated tones. It takes patience, but the effect is a rewarding experience. The next track 'Voces Magicae' offers a contrast, less electronic sounds and more percussive used of stringed instruments provide the setting. The other guitar strikes a minimalist melody, for a bit, until it becomes goopier both acoustically and electronically. 'Kinesis in Unlimited Dimensions' explores other sounds, growls from the guitar mesh with digital spouts, while 'Meditation on Mediation' takes a quieter but still very active approach, seemingly processing the sounds of the guitar other instruments into an effective blend. Overall a successfully experimental mélange of acoustic/electronic/digital sounds.

Lars Larsson and Gunnar Backman - A Love Supreme (Simlas, 2021) ***½

Guitar and Saxophone. Before we veer out of the electronics, let's talk about (virtual) guitarist Gunnar Brakeman and saxophonist Lars Larsson's A Love Supreme. I suspect naming a recording as such could quickly set up opposing sides: there will be those who hear the music through the lens of John Coltrane and only hear it in comparison to the original, and others who hear the music filtered through the influence of the original. It is best to do the latter here, and in fact, one could be tempted to do the same with Backman's instrument. He pays the virtual fretted guitar, which I would be hard pressed to describe except that the duo used Abelton Live to create an actual musical environment that sounds more like a full band than a duo. The opening track, 'Acknowledgement' evolves into a thick groove with a shredding virtual guitar, which is where the second track 'Resolution' also goes. It seems like Larsson's role is often to provide a connection to the original, whereas Backman takes us deep into a sonic epiphany. There is a lot of incidental sound as well, misty shrouds wafting through underground tech-dystopias, like on the intro 'Pursuance.' In the middle of the track, after a long attractively abrasive guitar heavy sound collage, the saxophonist takes a lengthy, melodic solo, his tone refined. The wisdom of calling your album 'A Love Supreme' is debatable, but the concept employed here, seeing each movement of the original as a stand alone piece to then reshape acknowledges the sincere indebtedness the world has to Coltrane's masterwork, as well its enduring malleability as a source of inspiration.

Chris Alford & Justin Peake - Turning On Our Own Time (2021) ****

Guitar and Bass. The duo of New Orleans based guitarist Chris Alford and bassist Justin Peake have created an excellent free-jazz/folk recording that pulls the listener deep into a place where the surreal feels visceral. Cleanly plucked notes and lingering reverberation of strings stand on equal footing as the two instruments converse. Bursts of ideas follow long expositions, and as busy as it may get, the two never get in each others way. The opener 'Mullerian Mimicry' features a pointy, abstract melody led by the guitar and supported by an insistent bassline that adds percussive elements and counter melodies. The title track takes a more atmospheric turn, the reverb is turned up and the echoing instruments cast a chanting-like pallor over the track. "Ancestral Murmurs' goes even deeper into reverie, this time with less echo, but with similar determination. 'A Course in Water' is a flowing solo finger-picked chord melody and 'Issaquena' features a somewhat indistinct bass thrumming overlaid by a lightly picked single note melody that dips generously into American folk. 'Turning On Own Own Time' is a spare, but generous album that over the course of 14 tracks stays fresh and engaging.

Ross Hammond and ... (s/r, 2020 - 2021) ****

Guitar and Drums, Vocals, Table. At the start of the pandemic California based, Kentucky born, guitarist Ross Hammond released a couple of EPs on his Bandcamp page. They were a diverse lot, an engagement with drummers' Mike Pride and Calvin Weston, one with vocalist Jay Nair, and another with tabla player Sameer Gupta. A strong connecting theme across these diverse duos is Hammond's deep plunge into Appalachian, blues, folk and the hard to describe but you-know-it-when-you-hear-it twang of Americana.  

 

Earth Music, his duo with Mike Pride, begins with a gentle finger picked melody claw-hammer style on the banjo over a solid pulsating drum beat. 'Waiting' drinks deep the country blues, and 'Walking Through' features Hammond's slide playing over a folksy, earthy drone. On Root, with Calvin Weston, Hammond strikes out with a more forceful blues on his slide guitar, employing a lowered tuning to get some gut grabbing tones. 'Snakeline' is swampy and mysterious, while 'Blue Eye' is bright and nearly pop music in comparison! Weston's drumming is groove based, giving Hammond propulsion. 

 

With table player Sameer Gupta on Live at Gold Lion Arts, Hammond's playing is lighter and a touch more open ended. On the beautiful opener 'Misdirection,' Hammond plays open chords, with gentle, bright leading tones weaving around the sound of Gupta's gulping percussion. 'Gone National' must refer to the National Steel guitar, as the sound is different, more muffled and metallic, than the previous track. Here Gupta's rhythmic prowess is a main feature. The tabla and acoustic guitar combination feels timeless and this is expressed nowhere better than on the hopeful sounds of the last track 'Happily Outnumbered.' The final collaboration with vocalist Jay Nair, Hope (a full length album), adds a entirely new dimension to Hammond's work. Dark and expectant, the opening track 'Mother of Compassion' finds a deep and ready connection between Indian musical stylings (the labels Carnatic and Hindustani come from the Bandcamp page) and American blues/folk. The track 'Ocean of Bliss' feels like it pulls to closer to American folk side with open and hopeful sounding chord-melody. Nair's complex melody graces the outlines of Hammond's guitar work elegantly.

Kevin Kastning & Mark Wingfield - Rubicon I (Greydisc, 2021) **** 

Guitar and Guitar (and a little Piano). The album came with the following genre labels: Jazz, New Age, Ambient, Avant-garde, Progressive rock. Rubicon I, the 9th album of the duo of guitarists Kevin Kastning and Mark Wingfield fits - but never entirely - under all of these labels. Throughout the tracks, there is a gradual accumulation of intent and tension as layers of foundational ambiance build, while injections of clean, incisive lines of electric guitar cut and the buzz of acoustic guitar strings add texture. There are also the unusual timbres and tones to consider, as Kastning uses his self-invented 36-string Double Contraguitar and a 17-string Hybrid Extended classical guitar to contrast against Wingfield's electric guitar and live-electronics. Together the two cover a wide swath of sonic territory that is sometimes familiar, sometimes treacherous (listen to the intro of 'Comoving Distance,' imagine yourself lost and floating between perceptual dimensions, it could get potentially pretty bewildering, no?) and generally fascinating. The tracks are very textural and fraught with possibilities - it seems at any moment something may develop. On 'Dynamic Horizon' an electronic ring can be heard throughout the track, while Kastning switches to the piano and provides a sparse melodic framework that Wingfield soars around with a frazzled guitar tone. 'The Lensing' continues with Kastning's piano and works off a somewhat more traditional musical interaction - Kastning provides deliberative melodic statements and punctuating chords to Wingfield's swooshing lines. The album ends with the 20 minute 'Particle Horizon', which finds Kastning back on guitar, likely the 36 string one. The track begins with atmospheric fill and a clean toned, staggered melody and expands patiently, layering in new sounds, but still keeping a threads of ideas stretching to a climatic moment three-quarters of the way through.

Kevin Kastning & Soheil Peyghambari -- The First Realm (Greydisc, 2021) ***½

Guitar and Bb & Bass Clarinet. My two favorite instruments: guitar and bass clarinet. Maine based guitarist Kevin Kastning's is paired up here with Iran/France based Soheil Peyghambari on their first recorded collaboration The First Realm. Like the previous album, it features Kastning on an assortment of unusual guitars that he has invented, which extend the standard range of the instrument in multiple directions. Peyghambari's clarinet meanwhile adds its own expressive range to the mix. Opening track 'Sleep Memory Walking' starts off in the lower registers of one of Kastning's extended guitars, shortly thereafter joined by soft, low tones from Peyghambari. The two engage deliberately and offer gently unfolding counter melodies, extending each other's melodic ideas. The next track 'As stranded declination tendrils' plays out differently. Kastning creates an ephemeral atmosphere for Peyghambari, who adds tentative, short flowing passages. Each of the tracks evolve with their own unique approaches, for example the closing track 'Perduring toward obsidian transferal' offers moments where the guitar provides a moving base-line low-end (I'd write bassline, but it would not be quite correct) under wisps of Bb clarinet, while the track 'Beside shadows calling forward' is grounded by harp-like arpeggios for the clarinetist to react to. The general mood is subdued and dreamlike, the dynamics are hushed and little changes make for big differences.

Aron Namenwirth & Eric Plaks - Shape Storm (Culture of Waste, 2020) ***½

Guitar and Piano. Aron Namenwirth is a Brooklyn based guitarist who seems to be getting more active lately - he's a part of the group Playfield with Daniel Carter, which has released two recordings on the label Orbit577 and he has released a few albums under his own aegis via Bandcamp. This duo recording from 2020 is a grower. Namenwirth uses a slightly effected sound, I am assuming a wah-wah peddle, to add a bit of texture to his otherwise clean tone. The approach adds extra propulsion to the interactions with the piano - it is slightly goopy sounding, and when applied to repetitive motifs, offers a contrast to the more precise melodic lines. The tightness between Namenwirth and pianist Eric Plaks reveal a long developed musical relationship, they are able to compliment, anticipate, and react to each other seemingly effortlessly. This is a nice duo setting, the two are on equal standing, and as Plaks at times takes the reigns and moves the improvisation into more frenetic territory, Namenwirth kicks in bit of crunch. The track 'Feedback Square' is a great example of this, while a track like 'Seven Sides' indeed shows a more textural and exploratory side of Namenwirth's playing. 

 

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Jack Wright and Michael Taylor - Kryptischgasse (Right Brain Records, 2020) ****

By Gregg Miller

From the archives. Philadelphia, 2001. Jack Wright (alto & soprano saxophones) and Michael Taylor (upright bass). A chance meeting. In fact, their only meeting. No rehearsal, no plan.

What have we got here? From the first note to the last, an acoustic funbox for the free jazz fan. The range of tones, attacks, pacings, timbres, feelings, is extraordinary. (No electronics, no studio effects, just a really nice recording.) All improvised, the pieces never repeat themselves, just 23 minutes of playful goodness. From phrase to phrase, there are no themes, no motifs, nothing to hang your hat on. Just a spirited conversation in sound. Somehow it resists meandering. If there is a recognizable tic, sometimes Taylor’s bass echoes back Wright’s phrasing. What does it bring to mind besides Jack Wright’s own inimitable playing? It’s a tiny bit like a less grand, very stripped down, acoustic version of the scritch-scraw excitement of Evan Parker’s Electro-Acoustic Ensemble (see: The Moment’s Energy (ECM 2009)).

Kryptischgasse ( “cryptic road”) is an assertive but still gentle statement by both musicians. There is not an aggressive or angry bone in this body (maybe track 5's opening is on the brasher side, but that’s it). Nor is it weak-willed. Particularly the bass just sounds so good, like it should. Throughout is Jack Wright’s now familiar repertoire of bird-calls, partial lines, swinging, hesitations, flutters, tasteful squawking, altissimo singing, microtonal trilling, whimpering, quick soprano runs. If I had to pick a moment to emphasize, the arco bass against the punctuated mouth plucking on sax (track 3) is particularly affecting—but the main message is: The world of sound is so vibrant and so right there at your finger tips, let’s do it all, let abundance appear in its infinitude.

Philadelphia-based bassist Michael Taylor is perhaps less well- known than Wright. Some of his story in and out of music can be heard here.

Taylor is not strictly a free player (as evidenced here). He’s got chops, sensitivity and is able to communicate on the fly.

Jack Wright has been playing free for roughly 40 years, and has written a book (2017) that should be on everybody’s list, The Free Musics (available here). Free playing, in Wright’s words, arises from “the excess of desire that doesn’t know where to turn....It’s why no conditions can be given for its achievement, no idiomatic or aesthetic code can fulfill it, why it is the infinite game and the open field and cannot inform the world where it is going” (The Free Musics, 193). For Wright, music is principally a live event (which means ritually an aspect of humans gathering together in a place at a time; it is non-careerist, non-entrepreneurial, unpredictive and unpredictable (and also the opposite in just the way that humans are in every way trapped between past and future). This musical moment from 2001 is a message in a bottle we didn’t know we needed. It’s an enthralling recording.

For more on Wright’s views, check out the brief interview with Fotis Nikolakopoulos here.

Scott Shaeffer who now runs Right Brain Records and recorded the original session back in 2001 introduces Kryptischgasse here.

Available on Bandcamp for download here:

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Joshua Abrams’ Cloud Script – Cloud Script (RogueArt, 2020) ****½

By Anthony Simon

Warm, soulful, a titanic sense of balance—such qualities radiate from this album of bassist Joshua Abrams’ compositions. In addition to Abrams on double bass, the performing ensemble is comprised of saxophonist Ari Brown, guitarist Jeff Parker, and drummer Gerald Cleaver.

The individual resume of each member of this quartet boasts umpteen contributions to the works of other musicians, spanning musical genres and styles of encyclopedic proportions. Given the great talent documented over the decades-long careers of each artist on Cloud Script, it strikes me that their discographies are so heavily weighted toward appearances on recordings lead by other artists. Comparatively, each of them has only a handful of recordings where their name occurs as “lead artist,” and this to me communicates a shared character of generosity and mutual support that can be readily heard on Cloud Script.

Each artist absolutely shines on this recording—but none outshines, and their equipoise is simply striking. The group can build warm, sunny grooves just as well as they can plunge headlong into a lively, amorphous cloud of sound. Brown’s tenor sax voice is luxurious and bluesy, whether blending with Parker’s clean electric tone on the bright melody of “In Place of Memory,” or exploring a soulful improvision against the driving polyrhythms of Cleaver and Abrams during “Echo Tracer.” The latter tune, one of the album’s most boisterous, features Cleaver at a rolling boil throughout, yet with such sensitivity of dynamics that he’s always supporting group interplay and never drowning it. His performance in “Collapsing Novelty” similarly burns without incinerating, with Abrams offering inspired freneticism on both arco and pizzicato, and Parker becoming unhinged in a sumptuous sonic slurry.

Giving balance to the aforementioned vigor, the album also showcases a pair of gorgeously hushed tunes. “Duke Hill” begins and ends with a sweet melancholy full of open space, and a more tense middle part where all four explore fleeting strings and shards of sound. The album’s final tune, “Coniunctio,” first whispers and then gushes with slow-moving heartache. Brown offers a lovely solo full of emotion, and Abrams follows with a tenderly spirited statement of his own.

Abrams’ work in Natural Information Society is echoed in the track “Harbor.” It features a memorable melody which Abrams and Parker play in unison, circling and circling, while Cleaver and Brown occasionally venture out into inspired flourishes that color and shape the piece. The song casts an aura of wonderment, mirroring the impression left by the album as a whole. Across stylistically diverse narratives, the ensemble is beautifully balanced. Rarely does a single musician feel in the foreground. This degree of balance encourages the listener’s attention to distribute across each players’ performance, reveling in their combined creation.

RogueArt · Echo Tracer - Cloud Script Excerpt

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Magda Mayas' Filamental - Confluence (Relative Pitch, 2021) ****

By Eyal Hareuveni

In 2019, German pianist Magda Mayas was appointed as one of the curators of the Music Unlimited Festival 33 in Wels, Austria (alongside Joe McPhee and Kazuhisa Uchihashi). She seized this opportunity to fulfill a long-time dream, putting together a large string ensemble, Filamental, referring to a filigree fiber, or a thread, a texture that is playfully explored, a psychologically embodied state and approach.

Confluence refers to the two rivers that meet and merge in Geneva - the Rhode and the Arve. These rivers have different temperatures and colors. They travel in different terrains, they carry different volumes of water and have different depths. The score for Confluence consists of 12 photos, observing the merging waters, the artificial wall dividing them, the earthy, blue and green colors blending. The score offers the possibility to focus on tiny details, transitional areas, or to stay in one area for a long time over the course of the performance. Confluence is a frame for exploring minute changes collectively, Confluence is also an entrance into a certain mindset, a state of being, with which to carry through the performance.

Magda Mayas’ Filament consists of like-minded, experimental improvisers - violinist Angharad Davies, cellists Anthea Caddy and Aimée Theriot, harpists Rhodri Davies and Zeena Parkins, clarinetist Michael Thieke and alto sax player Christine Abdelnour. Fortunately, I experienced Filament opening the Music Unlimited Festival and the recording of Confluence assured me again that this masterful performance was one of the highlights of the festival. Mayas created a dream-like sonic space where delicate and almost transparent threads and colors are interwoven, disintegrate and then are attached and resonate together again, patiently, organically and almost seamlessly. This kind of suggestive and collective dream state dynamics slowly gains more nuance, volume and power with a few brief intense and dissonant eruptions that cement its profound emotional power and exquisite aesthetics.

During the live performance, I was fixed to the inventive sonic palette of Davies and Parkins. But the recording allows the listener to focus on the idiosyncratic vocabularies of all the octet musicians, each one with his own personal language and his own extended techniques, and all unite into a mysterious sonic entity. Moreover, to experience again and again how all the musical threads and colors keep flowing and shifting and eventually accumulate into inspiring and intriguing texture.

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