Bruce Gallanter - Sunday Interview

Bruce Gallanter. Photo by John Rogers

 

We take a slight detour this weekend with the Sunday Interview. Instead of a musician, we asked Bruce Gallanter, proprietor of the indefatigable Downtown Music Gallery in New York City, to answer a slightly modified set of the questions. Please see an interview about the store itself here and we promise to be back next week with our regular programming. 

1. What is your greatest joy in improvised music?

Improvised music has its own language which crosses many borders. It is one of the few examples of what freedom is really about. Every in-store concert of live music has moments of magic and transcendence. The weekly sets at DMG are often the highlight of my week and I look forward to giving the musicians a chance to express themselves and the audience some inspiration or food for thought. Something amazing happens almost every week at the store and I am proud to create a space for this.

2. Which historical musician/composer do you admire the most?

Actually it is a tie between Frank Zappa and John Zorn. I bought the Mothers of Inventions’ Freak-Out! album in the summer of 1967 at the age of 13. It changed my life . Although the Mothers were considered to be a “comedy band”, they took themselves seriously. I realized that I didn’t fit in with what most of my peers cared about and the Mothers often made fun of all of the hypocrisy of our so-called Great Society. This is also the beginning of what would be called progressive rock and jazz/rock, as well as adding dada humor, modern classical, progressive philosophy and many avant-garde influences like music concrete. I started to buy classical records like Varese, Stravinsky, Bartok, John Cage & Stockhausen, thanks to interviews with Mr. Zappa when I was still pretty young. Uncle Meat (1968) remains a favorite of mine.

I met John Zorn in December of 1979 thanks to Fred Frith who had just moved to NY as Henry Cow had just broken up. Although it took some time to figure out where Mr. Zorn was coming from. He became my favorite alto saxist, avant composer, game-piece inventor and multi-bandleader. He remains a longtime inspiration today, 44 years later. He is also the most prolific composer/musician that I know and I admire him deeply. I feel honored to be a friend of his as well.


3. If you could resurrect a musician so that they could release more music, who would it be?

Thomas Chapin. Died too young at 39 in the middle of his ever ascending career, from leukemia. He was one the greatest alto saxists I’ve ever heard. He could play both completely inside and swing his tush off and he could play completely outside, as ferocious as any ‘Free Jazz’ giant that anyone could mention. When he died in 1998, I was devastated. We were good friends and I helped promote him in different ways. I still miss him dearly and smile when I hear his music. There is a large picture of him at the store which was given to me by his widow after we organized a tribute gig for him. He is DMG's patron saint.


4. What was the album that surprised you the most both as to music and as to sales?

Good question. King Strut by Peter Blegvad. I’ve also felt that Peter Blegvad (from Slapp Happy, Henry Cow & Golden Palominos) was one of the greatest songwriters ever, both musically and especially lyrically. Considering that Mr. Blegvad was a member of Henry Cow, he is often considered to be a “prog guy”. Yet, his melodies are pretty normal rock songs with brilliant lyrics. This record came out in the UK, wasn’t really promoted and sank without a trace. The title track itself, “King Strut” is a perfect song that still sweeps me away whenever I hear it.

Another fave is Van Dyke Parks' Song Cycle album from 1967. I think it is brilliant but was completely ignored at the time. I could give you a long list of buried treasures which still don't get the recognition they rightly deserve.


5. Do you think the CD will have a comeback similar to the one vinyl has had?

I certainly hope so. As much as I love the way early analog vinyl sounds on a good system, I appreciate all music formats and each one has good things about it. I own more CD’s (50,000) than LP’s (20,000) and still listen mostly CD’s at home & in the store. CD sales continue to become less, especially over the past few months (November of 2023 at present). My store is one of the few left in NYC that still carries more CDs than any other format.

6. Are you interested in popular music and - if yes - what music/artist do you particularly like?

I grew up listening to popular rock music in the 1960’s so it is always close to my heart. Many folks think that I only listen to avant-garde, progressive rock & jazz, etc. Here’s a list of some of the more popular musicians/bands that I still like: Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Grateful Dead, Wilco, Radiohead, Spiritualized, Jesse Sykes, Fela Kuti, Rolling Stones (60’s) and Little Feat. I stopped listening to the radio many years ago so I rarely hear any contemporary pop music except for my Seniors dance/exercise class where I heard a song from Taylor Swift that I like called "Shake it Off".

7. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

Just take better care of myself, better diet, more sleep, more exercise and find someone to love.

8. Are you proud of the fact that you have managed to run a record store that only sells avant-garde music for such a long time and (if yes) why?

Very proud! I have long been committed to promoting the many types of music that I cherish, some very avant-garde and obscure and some relatively popular. I thrive at knowing about more bands and musicians than anyone else that I’ve met and still go to live concerts very often. I try to listen to at least one CD or LP every day (night) that I’ve never heard before. Every disc is like a letter or story from someone, somewhere who is showing me their story or view.

9. Which album (from any musician) have you listened to the most in your life?

When I was at college (1972-1976), I had a few roommates and we listened to around a dozen albums each night: Robert Wyatt, the Mothers of Invention, Soft Machine, Henry Cow, Hatfield & the North… Robert Wyatt’s ‘Rock Bottom’ I’ve listened to more than any other album and it remains my favorite ever. I often weep when I hear it since I know that Wyatt wrote it while recovering from his famous accident, falling out of a window and breaking his back. There is quite a bit of pain in his voice.
I also have favorite songs that I’ve listened to over & over: one summer I listened to “Cortez the Killer” by Neil Young & Crazy Horse every night. There is something about this song that really touches me, Neil has a way of combining personal mythology with the tale of pyramids in Mexico. “They built up with their bare hands what we still can’t do today”.

I got a promo CD in 2002 from Jesse Sykes & the Sweet Thereafter called Reckless Burning. Something about it, so depressing yet so real, really touched me. I listened to it every night for a year or so. It helped me to unwind after a day working at the store. I became a big fan and caught Ms. Sykes & her band a handful of times. Four records in 10 years, all great, each one heavier than the last one. The last one is called Marble Son from 2011 and she rocks hard, it is one of the greatest roots rock/psych albums of the 2000’s. She broke up with her boyfriend/lead guitarist/song collaborator after that record and quit music. Jeez, what a loss! I just found out this week that she is in a new band called Third Mind with Dave Alvin & two members of Camper Van Beethoven. Hooray!!! Can't wait to hear these!

10. What are you listening to at the moment?

Aside from reviewing 5-10 discs every week for the DMG newsletter, I keep pushing myself to try many types of music: dark metal, country, folk, modern classical, reggae & dub, psych - old and new, lots of different guitar music: Duck Baker, John Fahey, Richard Thompson, Fred Frith, Henry Kaiser, Mary Halvorson, Ava Mendoza, Tisziji Munoz… 

Starting during the pandemic, I needed to find something to make me feel better, less alone and isolated. As a longtime Grateful Dead fan, I discovered a website called “Archive.Org” which fans donate concerts tapes to. A guy named Matt Vernon set up the Grateful Dead section of this site which now has 2,000 Dead gigs which anyone can stream! During the pandemic, I went back to the beginning (Dec of 1965) and I listened to every Dead gig in chronological order, usually one hour a night. I sing along and dance to the Dead every night and it makes me feel good to be alive. I met Matt Vernon sitting next to me at The Stone a few years ago so we are now good friends. He is very open minded like me so we go to gigs often as well. I am currently listening to the Europe '72 tour (22 gigs in April & May of 1972) for the third time since I really long the way the Dead keep evolving every night!

11. What artist outside music inspires you?

I appreciate many of the arts. I still read poetry as often as I can: Dylan Thomas, Captain Beefheart, Bob Dylan are my faves. I also go to museums from time to time and remember watching Milford Graves & John Zorn playing in front of a large painting by Jackson Pollock. The free/form improv and painting fit together like a hand in glove. If I had more time, I would check out more of the different arts since it takes time to understand each piece.

12. Have you ever considered being a musician yourself? 

I took some lessons and played rock drums in high school in a few bands mostly for fun. I didn’t practice enough, so some of my friends ended up as good musicians. I’ve played hand percussion ever since and have been to many jam sessions with different friends. I also used to write poetry more often and have read at poetry readings on occasion. I had a band in the 1980’s called Suburban Bohemia in which I read poetry and played hubcaps with different musicians all playing freely. We still play once every 5 years or so when I am inspired to come up with a concept or story.

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Downtown Music Gallery - Keeping the Music Alive

Entrance to the Downtown Music Gallery, June 2023

By Paul Acquaro with Bruce Gallanter

In the early 2000s as I was fumbling my way into ever more challenging music, I somehow 'discovered' the Downtown Music Gallery in its incarnation on the Bowery in downtown New York City. I was innocently walking up the street and in a somewhat opaque window noticed Dave Douglas' Strange Liberation, and went in. I ended up instead buying Nucleus' Live in Bremen, which was playing in the store at the time, I also had taken the first steps through a gateway to whole other world. 

I returned again and again, following the store to their current location in a basement in the Two Bridges neighborhood, which is about as downtown as one can go in Manhattan. As my listening habits grew more adventurous, I dug ever deeper in the subterranean treasure trove, often making the long trek from the comforts of suburban N.J. to the store to catch the free shows - featuring a everyone from Raoul Bjorkenheim to Vinny Golia to jamie branch and so many more - on Sunday evenings. These days, though I'm no longer in NYC, I still visit DMG online and try to pay a real visit whenever possible.

The record store is now an impressive 32 years old (that's pretty old in record-store years) and still keeping the downtown scene music alive with live sets every week and a mind boggling array of CDs, LPs, books and more for sale. Today, we pay a visit to Bruce Gallanter to learn about the history of DMG as well as the challenges it faces, and tomorrow Bruce answers the "Sunday Interview" questions (though modified slightly for a record store proprietor).

The Downtown Music Gallery

Bruce Gallanter. June 2023.

Paul Acquaro: Can you tell us the history of DMG? How did it start, the different locations, how it has developed over time...

Bruce Gallanter: I’ve been working in record stores ever since graduating college in 1976. Starting with Pepperment Platters in Woodbridge, NJ (1977), Record Hunter, NYC (42nd & 5th Ave, 1978=1979), Vinyl Mania Jazz Store (Carmine St, west Village - 1977) and Lunch for Yor Ears (Prince St, around the corner from the original Knitting Factory - 1988-89. I also worked for a couple of record distributor - Rainbow Distribution (1977) and JEM Import Distribution (Piscataway, NJ - 1976). While working for JEM, I was a salesperson and met Manny Maris whose store was called Lunch (For Your Ears). I worked for Lunch for two years, 1988-1989. Lunch specialized in progressive & Downtown, as well as avant jazz and anything Manny or myself would recommend. Since Lunch was around the corner from the Knitting Factory, we ended up specializing in all of the Downtown bands & musicians: Material, Massacre, Golden Palominos, the President, Curlew, Skeleton Crew… We also became friends with all of the Downtown musicians who eventually started to play weekly free sets at Lunch every Friday. Manny ended up with a problem and Lunch closed in 1990. I left before it closed.

Two friends of mine approached me while I was looking for another record store gig, David Yamner (corporate lawyer) and Steve Popkin (DJ & music fan addict like myself). They wanted to start a new store which specialized in used & new CD’s & LP’s which was quickly growing market. They asked me to run the store and I was supposed to be a partner with them. I couldn’t come up with the funds needed to be a partner so I ended up working for them. We specialized in progressive, Canterbury, Downtown & avant jazz, as well as the many different types of music that I dug: modern classical, hardcore punk, psych, folk, country, world music… After a year of searching for an affordable place, we opened in May of 1991, at 211 East 5th St, between 3rd & 2nd Aves, around the corner from Cooper Union. I was working 6 days a week and Popkin worked Saturday night & Sundays. After a year or so, Popkin left his job in the garment industry so both of us worked at DMG full time.  

When we opened in 1991, there were around 100 record stores in Manhattan, now there are around ten. We were two blocks from Tower Records and three blocks from St. Marks Place, which had several stores like Kim’s Underground and Sounds. Many record freaks would come in every weekend and go to all the stores in our area since we each would specialize in different things. Being a big progressive/Downtown/avant jazz music fan myself, I went to concerts upwards of 5 or 6 nights a week and spent most night at the Knitting Factory, as well as jazz clubs, rock clubs, etc. We started to have weekly gigs at our store but then Tower threw out a large LP bin which Popkin & I wheeled over to the store and placed in the middle of the store, which meant that there was no more room for the weekly in-stores. This upset me but since I wasn’t one of the owners, there was not much that I could do. Popkin eventually open another DMG in the West Village, which specialized in disco, funk & other dance floor music which I was not into. The store wasn’t doing so well financially and I grew frustrated with the direction and missed the in-store sets. Yamner called me asked if I could come up with a solution to make the store more successful. I said to get rid of his partner and make me the manager, which he did.  

This was in 1997 and I decided to make some changes. We got ride of the LP bin in the center of the floor and started to have weekly in-store sets again. I have always befriended the many musicians that I’ve admired since I believe the creative musicians continue to inspire us. In the first few years that we were open I did a few great concerts in the store: Derek Bailey, Peter Kowald, Joelle Leandre, Elton Dean, Lol Coxhill… When we started to have weekly concerts again in 1997, I would ask many musicians to come play: Annette Peacock, Marc Ribot, Nels Cline, Thomas Chapin, Gary Lucas… We also started to anniversary celebrations every year, many at the Knitting Factory and later at Tonic. 

About a year after I became the manager, Yamner called and said that I had done a good job and decided to sell me the store. He said that he just wanted his initial investment of $65,000, which I didn’t have but agreed to pay off at $20 a day / $140 per week. It took around 7 years, but I did pay it off. During the first couple of years, it was just me and Emperor Mike, who dug dark metal and was an easy person to work with. He worked with me on & off for more than a decade. Around the same time John Zorn & his business partner Kazunori Sugiyama asked if we wanted to take over the mailorder/fulfillment for Tzadik records. I was happy to do this as I was close to Mr. Zorn and respected the amount of work he put into every release, every concert and anything else he chose to do. It was around this time that my old boss Manny Maris appeared back in NYC and I asked him to help out at the store working one day a week. We started to get regular weekly customers in the store who wanted to know about every release from Downtown, progressive and Canterbury musicians so started a monthly printed newsletter which we gave out to help stimulate sales. Eventually it became every two weeks and then weekly. We also started out our website around 1995 and started to send out the DMG weekly newsletter in 1997 or 1998, which still continues today. The current number of subscribers is around 7,000.

They kept raising our rent every year. When it went beyond $2,000, I decided it was time to move. We lucked out and found a place at 342 Bowery, just a few blocks away, between Great Jones & Bond Sts. We were down the block from CBGB’s and even closer to Tower, as well as Other Music. The Bowery was a well traveled avenue and was just starting to become gentrified. We had a double basement space so we subleased one side to Mothers Messenger Service which was co-ran by Dee Pop, former drummer for the Bush Tetras, a big jazz fan and good friend. Manny and I became partners right before we moved. Originally on Friday nights, we moved the in-store gigs to Sunday nights, every week. Since we were more highly visible, more people would come to visit, our in-store and mail-order traffic increased quite a bit. Dee Pop started to book weekly shows in the basement CBGB’s canteen also on Sunday nights so we coordinated and had our sets at 6pm (1 band, usually) and Dee Pop’s sets started at 7pm. A number of regulars would go to both sets here and at CB’s. When Emperor Mike left, he was replaced by Mikey “IQ” Jones, another swell younger guy who new quite a bit about the music that we sell. At this point, our mail-order (mostly CD’s) had increased until we had a mail-order person working here 7 days a week! 

John Zorn had started a performance place in 2005 called The Stone which was located at the corner of 2nd St & Avenue C. It was named after Irving Stone, who was married to Stephanie, an older couple that were already John Zorn/Downtown music fans when I met them in 1980. The Stone was a funky, no-nonsense room where you had to want across the band stand in order to get to the bathroom, wait on line outside no matter the weather and placed no music on the PA before or after the performance. Both Manny and I became unpaid volunteers at The Stone, which we were proud to do. In December of 2006, Manny and I were asked to curate The Stone for a month, six nights a week, two sets per night. We put together an incredible month and asked some 25 musicians from around the world to play, paying them $1,000 each cash from a piggy bank underneath my bed (no joke). I asked three members of Henry Cow (my favorite progressive band), Fred Frith, Tim Hodgkinson & Chris Cutler, to play that month and they said yes! Folks came from around the world to attend these shows! 

Anyway, eventually the rent kept going up at the Bowery location, and went from $4,000 (which we could barely afford) until $10,000 a month, so had to move again in December of 2009. 

 In store performance: Sandy Ewen /Seth Andrew Davis / Kyle Hutchins

PA: Where the store is located now, it requires a real effort to get to, but people do - it's almost a pilgrimage for some visitors. Why is this? What do you think makes it such a destination?

BG: We moved to 13 Monroe St in Chinatown in January of 2020. I had never heard of Monroe Street, which is in the two bridges section, between the Manhattan & Brooklyn bridges. We are between Catherine and Market Streets, about two blocks from the river with Brooklyn on the other side. When we moved there were no stores on the block, just several Chinese/Buddhist temples, a couple of beauty salons, a grocery store and small drug store. Our manager at the time was Chuck Bettis, a good electronic musician and a nice person work with. 

We’ve been here now almost 13 years and it is a struggle to survive. Walk-in traffic is mostly minimal yet steady and our mail-order business has consistently decreased as less folks buy CD’s and many folks just download their music to listen to on their phones. We still carry CD’s, LP’s, cassettes, t-shirts and books, although CD’s sell less than ever, especially used CD’s. We are now mostly a destination place and many folks complain that we are hard to get to. Still we still get some diehards who are looking for some of the types of music we still specialize in. We have around 60% CD’s, 35% LP’s plus t-shirts, books and cassettes. For fans of John Zorn, Bill Laswell & the rest of the Downtown elders and youngers, Canterbury (Soft Machine, Robert Wyatt, Henry Cow…), Free/Jazz, modern classical, world music, 60’s & 70’s rock, soul & dub, we are still the pace to find these discs. We’ve had a number of musicians work here through the years: Chris Pitsiokos, Dave Miller, Frank Meadows, Kevin Murray. Charmaine Lee, John Mori and James Paul Nadien. 

Everyone who works here is friendly and informative. Although we closed down for three months during the pandemic, we continued to do mail-order and ran concerts outside, around the corner at Oliver Coffee for the entire summer of 2020. We are now closed on Sundays so we’ve moved the in-stores to Tuesdays and they’ve continued to be a source of inspiration to those in attendance as well as myself.

PA: You mentioned in a recent email blast that the store was facing some challenges - could you elaborate?

BG: We seem to attract some big-time die-hard music fanatics, so we’ve had a handful of them throughout our long journey. Over the past couple of years, we had two customers who often bought $500-$1,000 per month. There two folks were integral to our survival and both have abandoned us in recent months for different reasons which have nothing to do with our service. We still have a handful of regular customers who do keep us afloat. The one label which we still sell in some quantity is John Zorn Tzadik label. Since we do their mail-order, this keeps us busy whenever that order arrives. There are number of other challenges like the dust in the store, occasional flooding and trying to keep our inventory organized.
 

PA: Are there any "trends" that are you seeing from your customers? For example, do you see younger generations buying music? If so, what are they looking for?

BG: Over the past decade, many record stores have closed in NYC due to increasing unfair rents, plus a number of distributors and labels have closed down due to decrease of CD sales. They say that vinyl has come back and I can see that some distributors (like Forced Exposure) sell mostly (75-90%) vinyl nowadays. We do sell some vinyl and I do stock as much Downtown and progressive vinyl as I can. Some of it does sell. When tourists or regular customers come in, they are often looking for classic rock & soul from the 60’s and 70’s. Hence, I have been ordering more reissue vinyl over the past few years. We now have a full row of classic rock, folk, country, reggae & soul LP’s. We are running out of used LP’s and need to buy another collection to fill our bins. We did get a nice collection of around 1,500 pieces last year, 1/2 CD’s and 1/2 LP’s from an old DJ. We’ve done well with these. 

A trend for us is that we sell more items through Discogs now than we do through the weekly newsletters. We have around 4,600 items up on Discogs, LP’s, CD’s & cassettes. Discogs only works for us if we have the best price or we are one of the only sources of certain items. We do get some young folks in here and many of them are also musicians. We do sell quite a bit of reissues of things that’ve been out of print for a while. Both John Mori and myself, consistently look through the shelves, in drawers and in boxes in the back of the store and find items to list on Discogs, occasionally we find some rarities.  

***

Visit the Downtown Music Gallery, if not in person, then online at: https://downtownmusicgallery.com/

Also, check out the weekly gigs at the store via Instagram (and then go!): https://www.instagram.com/downtownmusicgallery/

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Suspensão - Teufelmusik (Creative Sources, 2023)

By Stef Gijssels

"Teufelmusik" is one of the five albums relased by the band this year, covering a period of performance between 2015 and 2023. The ensemble consists of Ernesto Rodrigues on viola and crackle box, Nuno Torres on alto saxophone, João Gato on soprano saxophone, Luisa Gonçalves on piano, Flak on electric guitar, João Madeira on double bass, Carlos Santos on analog synthesiser, and José Oliveira on percussion. 

The album covers a live performance on May 27th of this year, and consists of one, long fourty minute track. In the best tradition of the label, the music is a carefully forward-moving electroacoustic improvisation, on which all instruments create a dense, dark collective sound, that oscillates and shimmers in many layers around a central focal point. Even if all instruments move freely in and out of the total sound, a core is maintained, like an implicit solidity resulting from its fleeting parts, almost like a auditory reflection of moving atoms creating the illusion of a fixed reality. 

The dissonance could explain the album's title: "the devil's music", banned through history by the catholic church and reflecting the position of the establishment for any music that breaks the boundaries of the conventional. Think also of jazz, rock 'n' roll and metal. In contrast to these genres, this music is anything but loud or exuberant, this music here is in a category of its own. It is eery, compelling, strange at times, disconcerting, appealing, captivating and intense. It requires equally intense listening to capture all the ungoing shifts in sound colour, the creative subtleties and nuances, the various ephemeral threads and barely audible unattributable instrumental voices. 

A collective 'tour de force', the kind of achievement that can only mean that somehow the devil's involved. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Suspensão – Frottage (Creative Sources, 2023)

One of the other albums released by the ensemble this year is "Frottage", recorded live on May 20 of this year, so a week earlier than "Teufelmusik", at O'Culto da Ajuda, in Lisbon, Portugal. I do not have the music (yet), but the video below of the concert gives a good idea of the band's collective sound. 

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Three from Jean-Marc Foussat

By Stuart Broomer

Jean-Marc Foussat is one of the crucial workers who have made possible the spread of free music in all its rich and varied manifestations, as a unique musician and composer, as a recorder of concerts and as the creator of the label Fou, dedicated to releasing his tapes of significant vintage concerts, to contemporary ensembles, to his own collaborations and solo recordings employing vintage synthesizers, voice, little instruments and vérité recordings. Among the musicians presented on Fou are Derek Bailey, Daunik Lazro, Joelle Leandre, George Lewis, Evan Parker and Carlos “Zingaro”. Foussat is himself a distinctive artist, sonic and otherwise, made amply apparent by the three discs discussed here. 

 

Jean-Marc Foussat - Rêve (LP) (FOU Records, 2023) 

Here I begin a batch review, absurdly, with the singularity that is Rêve. It might be at least notorious for its remarkable packaging and presentation, but it is an essential gesture to alert us to an essential musical act, a musical dream that Foussat has taken pains to distinguish immediately and completely from the current, almost anonymous, near-endless flow of downloadable material. Rêve restores the traditional and sometimes sacred dimension to the presentation of recorded music. It takes a while to unwrap it. There is a beautiful image on a dark field, the embodiment of transcendent light, on a larger than usual sleeve to accommodate two LPs housed in inner sleeves, though there aren’t really two LPs. One is a 12” cardboard disc with a photograph of flowers on one side, the other side a naked cardboard disc with a label signed by Foussat, a kind of bouquet with the creator’s signature. There is also a sheet of heavy paper, each side a tracing of a hand in different colours (The visual splendour can be glimpsed here).

The work Rêve itself, housed in another beautiful inner sleeve, occupies one side of an LP, the other side is a shiny black vinyl surface without grooves, perhaps a symbol of the record as eternal potential, here symbolically trapped in the perfection of silence. The temptation to talk about the packaging is irresistible, but it’s the music that counts, that warrants this packaging. It’s a sequence, a journey through a series of distinct sonic fields: it begins with a short, high-pitched, recycling loop, almost a chance ostinato accompanied by intermittent whistling highs, suddenly expanding to include random noises -- junk percussion, hammering, almost random piano clusters and runs, snatches of nearby conversations – these complex sounds subtly mixed to create a kind of orchestra, a sequence of compound voices and textures in which piano and certain percussive sounds are foregrounded, but the scale and limits of the “orchestra” – shifting, complex – cannot be clearly delineated, cannot be known. It is in this mystery that the individual elements achieve their significance. Things begin to shift, the foregrounded instruments withdraw, the texture thins to electronic hues, a near silence of lightly tapped metal, a cymbal, bell or Tibetan bowl with some feedback, then it is lightly stretched until silence itself ensues. Nothing is rushed. The spirit of improvisation is everywhere in this assemblage, in the spontaneity of the piano and percussion, in the random sound of workplace percussion, in the mystery of the mix. The whole process becomes a singular coherent act, the work itself.

Rêve is irreducible, beyond critique, a double of ear life itself, worthy of its unusual catalogue number, 8 ½. Listened to repeatedly, it becomes the listener’s own Rêve. Where might one put it? In its very presence as symbol of record, it might assume an exalted place, at the oneiric end of an ancient and drifting record collection. Perhaps the excess and madness of The Anarchist Republic of Bzzz (Important Records) is appropriate neighbour, dayglo psychedelic terrorist graphics with each LP side at a different speed on red vinyl. To what else might one compare it? With what else might one keep it in a mental cabinet of auditory fetishes? Albert Ayler’s one-sided Bells, pressed on transparent white vinyl, the title silkscreened in red on the other side, in a matte black jacket with yellow silkscreened data? Or, more exotic still, a few shards of 78 rpm records, a Gennett among them, now pressed between glass plates, smashed at the end of a Victoriaville FIMAV performance by turntablist Christian Marclay, collected by writer Joe Woodard and presented to fellow critics?

Simply Rêve, its insistent presence is a clear sign of the value that its maker assigns it, physicality’s interruption of the flow of quotidian, near-anonymous music, an insistence that it be heard, though evidently not in download or sample.

Jean Marc Foussat - Ombres Onctueuses (Fou Records, 2023)

Ombres onctueuses, subject to numerous translations, but “harmonious shadows” is one possibility, as is “unctuous shadows”, continues the pattern of a long, dream-like collage of both musical and documentary elements, some altered, some not. It is more conventional. It’s a two-sided LP, each side devoted to a singular track running over 23 minutes, 'le sang du plaisir' and 'un jardin délicieux'. Foussat lists his instruments and materials as “AKS synth, piano, voice, jaw harps & toys, as well as various and varied effects, in Thoronet” the town in South-Eastern France where he resides. As with Rêve, each piece is a kind of sonic collage, a shifting travelogue of different instruments and techniques and social sounds, edited with an uncanny sense of form and otherness, instilling the work with an essential and ineluctable significance that cannot be named, but which creates relations among disparate elements that are sometimes minutes apart in time. Since the pieces can be heard on Bandcamp, I’ll forego attempting description, but recommend listening. 

J-M. Foussat, U. Leimgruber & C. “Zingaro” - l'Aile d'Icare (Fou, 2022) 

Foussat also improvises in groups, has done so for decades in distinguished company, including Evan Parker, Daunik Lazro, Paul Lovens, Joe McPhee and Ramón López, many available on Fou. The most recent, l'Aile d'Icare (The Wing of Icarus), released on CD, is a trio recording with violinist Carlos “Zingaro” and soprano saxophonist Urs Leimgruber and Foussat limited to AKS synthesizer and voice. Foussat’s extended introduction is fundamentally an environment, a web of electronic frequencies creating a profoundly internalized nowhere, including light bass blasts, here not a seeming impossibility. A certain pecking monotone may serve as Leimgruber’s entry or an instant of potentially blurred identity.

Both Leimgruber and “Zingaro” are brightly amplified, with high frequencies in their timbres expanded sufficiently to even the terrain between them and Foussat’s synth. There’s also a degree of electronic alteration going on, with Leimgruber and “Zingaro” at times echoplexed into Foussat’s universe. Working a maze of sounds, his fractured upper-register synth runs will suddenly combine with those of the violinist. It’s a work of constantly shifting textures and identities, spitting with vitality and breathing deeply to create meaningful layers so fresh that even the components are novel (a sudden street conversation arises), fusing in an extended collective improvisation that honours the practice, one of the highlights of the year. 

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gabby fluke-mogul & Dave Rempis – LIP (Catalytic Sound, 2023)

By Matty Bannond

Not much beats the furtive joyride of an overheard conversation – especially if it serves up juicy gossip, spicy details and boiling tempers. Listeners get that buzz from LIP. It’s a colorful and flavorsome dishing session with two high-profile improvisers. Their intimate back-and-forth at The Beat Kitchen in Chicago during August 2022 was picked up by microphones. Now, we can all listen…

gabby fluke-mogul’s violin voices the record’s most melodic phrases. Dave Rempis takes a more percussive tone with his saxophone. The album features just one track and is available as a members-only download from Catalytic Sound. Membership provides a regular income for a collective of thirty artists, with the aim of helping modern musicians to overcome financial challenges.

The violin sound frequently reverberates like a saxophone, while the saxophone often adopts a trembling and violin-like character. This allows the two improvisers to overlap and underlap throughout the half-hour set. Listeners are given a clear sense of the experimental nature of the performance, with the artists taking turns to try things out or drop new ideas into the mixing bowl.

Passages of rising and falling tension suggest a collective respiration. Microphones catch a few grunts and groans from the performers as they strain to keep pushing deeper and further into the moment. The live show probably generated textures and tactile experiences for the people in the room. Those experiences do still carry weight in the recording, but with the sonic substrates sanded-down.

LIP is an intriguing dialog between two strong personalities. The dexterous and inventive interactions take unexpected turns that will keep listeners leaning forward. And there is plenty of juicy gossip, spicy details and boiling tempers too.

The album is available as a members-only digital download from Catalytic Sound here. It is listed as Catalytic Artist Album 056.

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Frode Gjerstad Trio - Live At The Empty Bottle Vol.1 & Vol.2

By Ferruccio Martinotti

Frode Gjerstad is certainly one of a kind and one of the usual suspects in our beloved music playground. Born in Stavanger in 1948, the multi-reeds Norwegian ace started playing within a band called Detail along with british drummer John Stevens, pianist Eivin Pedersen and bassist Kent Carter, releasing some pretty interesting albums along the 80’s (should it be of any interest for you, don’t miss First Detail, issued in 2015 by Rune Grammofon where you can catch them live in 1982 and Last Detail Live at Cafè Sting that seems to be their very last gig). 

In 1987 Gjerstad formed an open large ensemble called Circulasione Totale Orchestra, where young local talented musicians had the chance to play with, among many others, trumpeter Bobby Bradford, drummers Hamid Drake and Paal Nilssen-Love, bassists Ingebrigt Haker Flaten and Nick Stevens, percussionists Kevin Norton and Louis Moholo, reedist Sabeer Mateen. Soon later Circulasione Totale became the name of his own proper label. The project Calling Signals saw the man inflating the reeds along with Hasse Poulsen (guitar), Louise Moholo-Moholo, Paal Nilssen-Love, Tony Marsh (drums), Nick Stevens (bass), Lol Coxhill (soprano sax), John Corbett (trumpet, trombone). As a quartet he got the collaboration of drummer Pheeroan Ak Laff, pianist Borah Bergman, trumpeter Bobby Bradford and cellists Fred Lonberg-Holm and Amit Se. 

But Frode's favorite cup of tea is without any doubts the trio. We know several stellar line-ups (along with Wilber Morris, Rashid Bakr, William Parker, Hamid Drake, Rune Strom, Steve Swell) but the incarnation we are taking care of here is the one with the compadres Paal Nilssen-love and Oyvind Soresund as rhythm section, caught in action at Empty Bottle in Chicago in 2019, graced with the presence of the god himself, Peter Brotzmann, recorded and issued as vol.1 and vol.2, each one of them shared in two parts (1-2/3-4). 

The first volume is a pedal to metal, brutal, fierce assault that in his magmatic sound shows the ensemble delivering free music in its purest form: an Eric Dolphy would surely grant his blessing. On volume 2 the furious pace is slowing a bit (just a bit, keep the seat belt fastened), the interplay among the musicians is amazing and it is tremendously clear why there is a one and only Paal Nilssen-Love around. The last part (4) is in our humble opinion the most intriguing. For the first half, the sonic mood depict a sort of "bucolic" landscape, reminding us some of Mats Gustaffson's lateral projects, but we, old mangy alley cats, do clearly feel that the picture is misleading: the birds chirping in a strange way, the shadows are long, cold, sinister and in fact the "cruel music for cruel times" (god Peter dixit) starts erupting again, closing the circle in the way it has begun. 

For an uber complete list of what must be heard from Gjerstad, check an old unbeatable post by Stef, not for nothing called "Frode Gjerstad Galore": it is definitely thanks to musicians like him that the sonic sun keep on shining on the free Scandinavian skies.

 

 

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Olaf Rupp - Sunday Interview

Olaf Rupp Photo (c) Bogdan Edi Dimitriu

What is your greatest joy in improvised music?

I like the ephemeral character of improvisation. That means when it is happening it is really living music, really alive with all the marvels and pitfalls of the human mind. It is like talking with the others but without the talking. And when it is over, it is gone. There is silence and the room is not filled with stones that I have chiselled.

What quality do you most admire in the musicians you perform with?

Rudi Fischerlehner has found a wonderful way to bridge the gap between regular looping beats and free flowing pulse. It reminds me of the orbiting grooves that Björk once had on an App she published. Like multiple, circular layers of polymetric patterns. This gives the other players a lot of freedom to choose without breaking up the connection.

Ulrike Brand was the first (and only) classical player who came to me and asked me explicitly to play the electric guitar in duo with her on cello. Many are blinded by the cliché connotations of the Stratocaster (loud, wild, aggressive) and forget how wonderful these electric sounds go together especially with the cello.

Rudi Mahall has incredibly sharp ears and swift reaction. And I especially like his open mind. He is very much rooted in the Jazz-language, but we played for decades now in many different settings that were stylistically sometimes very far away from that and he always finds a natural way to contribute.

Which historical musician/composer do you admire the most? If you could resurrect a musician to perform with, who would it be?

Never ever in my life, not a single moment have I ever been bored. I don’t know what boredom is. When there is a moment with nothing to do, I just direct my mind to the music. It works like switching on a radio in my head. And this music is so wonderful! If only I could play this on my guitar!! Well, I do my best. But there is no time to look back too much. I am not a music-historian. I look forward and follow my vision. And I like very much to play with musicians younger than me. Because they very often also have a strong vision. Older musicians have a plan, a strategy, youngers have visions. My plans never work.

What would you still like to achieve musically in your life?

I would like to keep my music alive as long as possible.

Are you interested in popular music and - if yes - what music/artist do you particularly like

David Bowie, Björk, Double Nelson, This Mortal Coil, Sisters Of Mercy, Legendary Pink Dots, Blind Idiot God, Swans, Neu, Leonard Cohen, Jacques Brel, Lee Perry

You see I stopped buying records somewhere end of the eighties, when life got really, really tough. In recent popular music there are certainly interesting things, but I could not tell you names. I never was good at namedropping.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

My “self” is not the part of me that I am worried about. Of course, it belongs to me like my bones and my veins and my fingernails. I have to deal with it every day. I wake up with it. Cannot help.  But it is a complex system. If you change one thing, you just move the balance on a boat and tilt it to the other side. Of course we all want to be stronger, more beautiful, more resilient, more whatever. But it is important to step back and take a wider and calmer look. Then it is not about change myself but rather change how I deal with myself. How I get along. Actually I'm not a big fan of the Stones, but there is some truth in “you get what you need”!

Which of your albums are you most proud of?

I am not proud of any of my albums. They were produced under very poor conditions. Often me doing the recording, mixing, mastering, layout and promotion all as well. And I am a very bad promoter. Once I am gone, nobody will find my albums. Maybe the Youtube-videos will keep crawling the internet on a dystopian planet.

LIFE SCIENCE was a big step ahead, with a real, helping label FMP. But I recorded it in one day in an abandoned building at Oranienburger Straße with a microphone directly into a CDr-recorder. All very rough and free falling.

MYOTIS MYOTIS is a wonderful album, but it is now completely ghosted by the curators. Well, not completely: SERIOUS SERIES have invited us to perform in December!

Once an album of yours is released, do you still listen to it? And how often?

Not often but sometimes it’s good to check again how it changes in time. Well, the album does not change but I do change.

Which album (from any musician) have you listened to the most in your life?

Joe Williamson, HOARD

David Sylvian, SECRETS OF THE BEEHIVE

György Ligeti, ATMOSPHERES

Cecil Taylor, ERZULIE MAKETH SCENT

What are you listening to at the moment?

Arvo Pärt, DA PACEM

 

Olaf Rupp reviewed on the Free Jazz Blog

• Xenofox - The Garden Was Empty (audio semantics, 2023)
• Ulrike Brand & Olaf Rupp - Myotis Myotis (Creative Sources, 2022)
• Rudi Mahall / Jan Roder / Olaf Rupp - Skyhook (Audiosemantics, 2022)
• Potentiale Festival: Shhh ... It's a Secret
• Echtzeit@30: Q&A with Olaf Rupp
• Guitar - Solo Part 1: Unexpected arpeggios and surprising onomatopoetics
• Olaf Rupp - NOBEACH (Audiosemantics, 2020)
• Two new releases by guitarist Olaf Rupp
• Olaf Rupp - Fuzzy Logic (Audiosemantics, 2020)
• Rudi Mahall Olaf Rupp Kasper Tom - s/t (Barefoot Records, 2019)
• Olaf Rupp's World of Guitar
• FMP. The Living Music; Berlin 3/14/18 - 3/21/18; The Concerts
• JR3 - Happy Jazz (Relative Pitch, 2017)
• Two by Olaf Rupp
• Olaf Rupp, Marino Pliakas & Michael Wertmüller - Toomuchisnotenough (FMP, 2009)

 

 

 

 

 

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Marcelo dos Reis & Luís Vicente - (Un)Prepared Pieces for Guitar and Trumpet (Cipsela, 2023)

By Stef Gijssels

The risk of getting to know musicians too well, is that you come to appreciate their music differently, possibly with less distance and with less sense of criticism. I've watched both Luis Vicente (trumpet) and Marcelo Dos Reis (guitar) perform several times in various ensembles and talked to them about their music, their tours, their concerts. 

I do not believe that this will hamper my judgment in saying that this record is exceptionally good. In the liner notes, Marcelo Dos Reis explains their long journey together in many ensembles - of which Chamber 4 is one of my favorites - and performed hundreds of concerts. 

This album showcases the result of a few days of residency in Coimbra, Portugal, resulting in new material, as well as spontaneous recordings. The result is a very intense, intimate and creative album, on which Dos Reis' singular guitar style - rhythmic, arpeggio-ed, with extended techniques - is perfectly matched with Vicente's deep and sad sound, exemplified in the gentle "Cornelia", in the video below. 

Other tracks are more adventurous and boundary-shifting, but always in a friendly and inventive way. This is something you have not heard before, yet it works, and it works well. The duo truly find their voice, with the guitar creating the more contextual setting of the piece, its repetitive nature, its hypnotic progress and the level of raw directness, while the trumpet adds the perfect counterbalance, with disciplined and lyrical phrasing, even in the more brutal moments of the music. Some pieces, such as "The Grey Car", are almost experimental, with an intro in which Vicente conjures up unheard sounds out of his trumpet, multiphonic with superpressured lips, gradually accompanied by fragmented bits of muted guitar strings, the tension is such that you - as the listener - keep being impressed by their mutual understanding and control. 

My favourite track is the one that bookends the album, "Climbing Up The Mountain", built around a single drone-like tone that serves as the backbone for the piece, and that thanks to its length also evolves into different sonic universes. 

Guitar and trumpet duos are relatively rare. We have reviewed only eighteen in the last sixteen years (Mazurek/Parker, Wooley/Morris, Tiner/Bagetta, Susana Santos Silva/Frith, Sei Miguel/Gomes, Robertson/Solborg, ...), and somehow the combination usually works, even if probably not an easy one. 

Both musicians on this album demonstrate their deep understanding of each other's musical power and artistic possibilities, resulting in improvisational power that is stunning, delivering something that is their very own personal sound, and the magic that was already present in several of their albums is even more strongly present here, from the first note to the last. 

Technical skills combined with solid interplay, fascinating musical ideas and explorations, a strong esthetic unity and deep feelings ... what more do you want? 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

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Peter Brötzmann / Sabu Toyozumi - Triangle - Live at OHM, 1987 (NoBusiness, 2023)

By Martin Schray

The 1980s were a time of searching for Peter Brötzmann. After his legendary trio with Fred Van Hove and Han Bennink broke up in the mid 1970s, he tried new players (his promising trio with Harry Miller and Louis Moholo came to an abrupt end due to Miller’s unfortunate death in a car crash) and new large and small formations. What should remain a constant in his work were sax/drum duos - pure rhythm and sound. He started with his long-term partner Han Bennink in 1977 (Schwarzwaldfahrt and Ein halber Hund kann nicht pinkeln), then he released an album with Andrew Cyrille (Andrew Cyrille Meets Brötzmann In Berlin) in 1983. In the same year he turned to the Japanese scene (with which he was to remain connected for the rest of his life) and was playing with Sabu Toyozumi, at that time quite an established drummer in Japanese free jazz.

The attraction that Brötzmann obviously felt for this cultural clash quickly becomes clear on the recordings from 1987 that are presented here on NoBusiness’s newest gem. Toyozumi contrasts the quite typical Brötzmann style with dark tom sounds and military rhythms on the snare. His intoxicatingly thunderous rhythms are characterized by a powerful and rousing sound in which the player’s entire body seems to be put to use; one literally senses his roots in Japanese drumming traditions. The result is that Brötzmann’s playing is very lean in contrast to the force from the European duets of the 1970s. Still, he keeps over-blowing the notes, but only to intersperse almost tenderly twisted garlands shortly thereafter, which Toyozumi keeps trying to chop up, as in the opener “Spiral Column“. Brötzmann’s tenor winds its way out of these attacks here and counters Toyozumi’s rhythms directly. Anyone who believed at the time that no one could cope with Brötzmann’s aggressive playing as well as the great Dutchman, whose innate sense of rhythm is a match for the Wuppertal saxophonist’s rough tones at any tempo and volume, was taught better here. On this recording, too, one can hear how Brötzmann had to constantly reassure himself in the face of a new challenge from a new drummer, whose background is completely different from that of a Han Bennink, a Sven-Åke Johansson, a Louis Moholo or a Ronald Shannon Jackson. This can be seen especially in the pieces on which Brötzmann plays tenor, for example in “Yuh-ru Yuru“. Here, the trial of strength between Toyozumi and him results in a recourse to a few set pieces that he used again and again in his late work. In this track it’s the “Master of a Small House“ theme.

In the more restrained clarinet pieces, however, Brötzmann already shows his softer side and proves that he wanted both: the shattering of classical harmonic structures and the ballad, the blues, the graceful and the sincerely painful. From this tension emerged his tone, his voice, his sound, as the German critic Felix Klopotek said in his obituary of him. Especially in the interplay with Sabu Toyozumi this is clearly brought out.

Triangle - Live at OHM, 1987 is available as a CD and as a download.

You can buy and listen to the album here.

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Skoric/Jacquemyn/Tirtiaux/Stokart – gpaq (Qeerecords, 2023)

 

By Fotis Nikolakopoulos

Slowly, without any hurry or plan, Qeerecords, run by guitarist Qunetin Stokart, is building a strong catalogue of very interesting and challenging improv recordings, housed in DIY handmade sleeves with unique artwork. With totally decent prices, the label’s bandcamp page is worth checking out.

All of the label’s recordings are impromptu, one-off meetings by the artists. A never revealed openly, but always on the forefront improvisational ethos runs through each release. Like this CD, one of the latest, gpaq, a quartet by Gregoire Tirtiaux on saxophone, Peter Jacquemyn on double bass, Aleksandar Skoric on drums and Quentin Stokart on guitar.

Consisting of two tracks, with the first, clocking on over half an hour, being the core of the CD, gpaq feels like a journey. Named, with an absolute lack of willingness to find any titles, part 1, this live recording from February 2023 brings the non verbal language of improvisation at the forefront. Egoless as their playing is, they start, continue and finish in unison with any solo voices being present. You will find no other info on the bandcamp page than just the basic. When was it recorded and who plays what. But it is the concept of the music: right here, right now, that takes hold of the listener.

Without reserving to blowouts, the musicians provide a constant flow of ideas and energy. There’s always the danger, for the untrained to the peculiarities of improvisation ear, of judging the music as an event that “nothing” ever happens or that “everything” sounds the same –when the solo voices are missing. But this exactly is the big advantage of gpaq. The solo voices, the virtuosity of the individual player with the hierarchy that brings along, is replaced by the collective imaginings of what music could or should be. The musical answers the four artists provide, are strong and very convincing.

Listen and buy here: https://quentinstokart.bandcamp.com/album/gpaq

@koultouranafigo

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