Ignaz Schick - City Sounds

Seven Calcutta-based musicians joined Berlin's Ignaz Schick to explore the city's rich soundscape in a unique project called "City Sounds." Blending field recordings, electro-acoustics, and improvisation, their two-week collaboration culminated in a four-hour audio-visual concert at "Goethe-Institut Kolkata" — offering a uniquely expressive portrait of the city through sound and image. The collaboration has been released in a series of recordings, linked below. 

 

Discover more, hear and download the recordings here.

• City Sound Kolkata Vol.1 
• City Sound Kolkata Vol.2 
• City Sound Kolkata Vol.3 
• City Sound Kolkata Vol.4 
• City Sound Kolkata Vol.5

 

 

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Chris Icasiano - All of it, Derailed (Ghost Mountain Records, 2025)

By Gregg Miller

Solo percussion, this record has an energy, an intensity. Icasiano pursues patterns intently, decisively, relentlessly. Secondary and tertiary vibrations form their own emergent patterns, depth building up on its own. The gathering of drum sticks, throwing them to scatter on the concrete floor. Scratch the snare heads; a low drone from a deep gong (or is that a cymbal heavily dampened?). Bass drum vibrates and shakes. Heavy mallets rumbles. The confident snare turns off-kilter, dizzying. The materiality of sound-making integral to the musicianship—without ever losing forward momentum. The world coming undone and reborn. A rhythm maze. An impossible logic presents itself, slowly building in complexity.

The second of two tunes, “, Derailed,” opens in a tribal, circular manner. Deliberate, primal, emphatic. About the 2:20 mark, the upper partials are carved off and we get a multiplication of tom patterns and rim hits which morph slowly into heavier and then lighter feels. Pulse, pulse, pulse, pulse. Icasiano is a patient tunesmith, letting the impression develop and deepen. At 6:30, Icasiano starts shaping frequencies with the eq knob, shifting us from acoustic to digital and back, and then layering them. By 11 minutes we are in the midst of some high-energy theatrics. Shifting to ride cymbal tapping which likewise gets the eq treatment, squashing and filtering the tone to give us a bottom layer over which new cymbal washes play. Lovely and sonically intriguing, still in the story-telling genre. I couldn’t repeat the story to you, but the experimentalism is more than the serial use of techniques. There is an overarching intelligence at work. The track and the recording closes with another repeated motif, oceans upon oceans. A beautiful work.

Based in Seattle, I have been lucky enough to have seen/heard Chris Icasiano play live in many situations: solo, duo, chamber ensemble, big band. Icasiano is a co-founding member of the now defunct Racer Sessions (for14 years it was the premier incubator and gathering space for experimental musicians in Seattle, long live Racer Sessions), on the Board of Directors of Earshot Jazz (the principle organization bringing top flight international avant jazz to Seattle, plus nurturing local talent), a touring drummer with the Fleet Foxes, and in the drum chair of the sax/drum/effects duo Bad Luck. It’s a beautiful thing to hear Icasiano solo in this recording, and because it comes 5 years after the astonishing Provinces, to compare them.

Icasiano told me that All of it, Derailed is the record he wanted Provinces (Origin Records, 2020) to be (reviewed here) Listening again to that record and trying to make sense of his comment, can I hear what he means? First off, the sound of Provinces has more clarity, but somewhat less feeling than All of it, Derailed. For an avant-experimental solo percussion record, Provinces is somehow poppy, as if the production values came out of the 1980s rather than the 1970s. There is a much greater use of synthetic production: shifting sound blocks produced through electronic manipulation, the playing of electronic drums (though of course not exclusively), and the addition of a wide array of synth textures (listen to “Provinces IV” to get my drift). When acoustic drums are featured on Provinces, they interact with the synths, such that the pitches and percussion organize the listening experience into a typical sonic hierarchy: melody above and percussion as support. To the contrary, All of it, Derailed is something like a liberation of the drums, where the drums are the story they are telling at every level. The pitches they provide are enough, more than enough. The singular unity of rhythm.

It would appear that the cassettes are sold out (though possibly available at live performances), but the digital download is available at Bandcamp:

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Sam Weinberg Trio - Of Peeling Passage: Live at Sisters (Self Released, 2025)

By Don Phipps

Recorded at Sisters in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, alto saxophonist and composer Sam Weinberg’s trio performance “Of Peeling Passage: Live at Sisters” is a fascinating combination of odd syncopation, angular phrasing, and dervish ripping - whipping notes that crash and clash like waves against rocky shores. His effort here is bolstered by a top-notch rhythm section of Henry Fraser (bass) and Jason Nazary (drums).

The opening, “Arunthru,” starts up things with a collaborative bang. Blowing full and floppy, complete with dit-dot exclamations and circular breathing, Weinberg creates controlled and purposeful lines. And in head nodding fashion, Nazary’s drum retorts and Fraser’s solid bass provide a strong anchor for Weinberg’s sonic explorations. In similar fashion, “Hurry Carry” is a wild ride. Weinberg again leaps about and is not shy about repetition that adds a slight element of formalism. The rhythm section adds an additional dimension, with play that sounds at once disjointed yet in sync.

On “Yakker,” Weinberg demonstrates why his sax style is unique. His playing never screams but instead works its magic through precision and unexpected leaps. It’s clear that for each number, Weinberg has a vision on where he will go, but cleverly, he retains a freshness that implies directed spontaneous improvisation. You can hear a bit of Roscoe Mitchell in his work too. Weinberg grows more intense towards the end of “Yakker,” with slurring phrases before an abrupt ending.

Fraser’s bass effort offers up more surprises. Take his fog-distorted bowing to open “Improvisation” or his modern baroque line to kick off “Back Matter.” Or the Hitchcockian menace his anxious rapid walking notes imply in “Freda.” Or his pointillism on “Suffocant Roses Here.” Or even his solo on “Write Whim,” introspective and intimate; even with light strumming and pinched plucking, his rolling effort retains a somber quality.

Nazary too adds splashes that create interest and colorful expressions. Even when laying low, as he does on “Suffocant Roses Here,” his snare rolls and cymbal work shift constantly. And on “Stanek Sections,” Nazary uses the drum kit to create a controlled maelstrom – his manipulation of the bass pedal, toms, snare, and light work on the cymbals, to employ a chess expression, bring all the pieces together.

Throughout the performance, Weinberg demonstrates unusual voicings – abstract and yet alive, bounding about like ten lords a leaping or wailing like some howling creature. On “For Jocky Wilson” and towards the end of “Improvisation,” where the rhythm section supports Weinberg with swashbuckling parries and thrusts, the trio TOGETHER create a rolling contemplation, a frenetic gathering of the synapses. An irregular wall at a distance may seem uniform, but, when examined more closely, the texture is varied, the blocks different dimensions. Yet it all fits together. So it is with the music of Weinberg’s “Of Peeling Passage – Live at Sisters.” Enjoy!

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The Sleep Of Reason Produces Monsters - self-titled (Corbett vs. Dempsey, 2025)

By Martin Schray

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (TSORPM) is one of the most interesting projects around at the moment, as it’s one of the most consistent in its attempts to look beyond the boundaries of free jazz and connect its music to New York’s No Wave scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s (feel free to compare their music to bands like Mars or DNA) or noisecore acts like Anal Cunt or the Boredoms. The project was founded by British turntablist Mariam Rezaei, who is always looking for exciting new ways to use her instrument and who has become one of the most original musicians in improvised music. The ensemble also includes Italian trumpeter Gabriele Mitelli - part of the trumpet duo Star Splitter with Rob Mazurek, Austrian rhythm machine Lukas König from Mopcut and Danish saxophonist Mette Rasmussen. The latter is currently probably the most daring and exciting musician in the free jazz scene, as TSORPM is really just continuing what she started with ØKSE last year. There it was conscious hip hop, here it’s alternative art rock with which she is expanding her style.

TSORPM’s music combines energetic brass sounds and dense textures, driven by stormy, mostly electronic beats. It’s radical, however especially the horn section knows how to shift down a gear despite all its power. They also know how to open up space for Rezaei’s kaleidoscopic electronic layers, which are often reminiscent of Sun Ra. Rezaei unleashes heavily distorted samples that oscillate between computer game sounds and pure noise. But instead of wildly fragmenting everything, her playing fulfills several functions: She amplifies and directs the rhythmic flow and acts like a pianist, providing the structural framework for the project. In doing so, she manages not only to use the sampled material in a brutal way, but also to add subtle pointillistic touches.

The most powerful tracks are “In the silence of trouble, we find each other on common ground“ and “I said no“. The former impresses with its rockist approach, sluggish heavy metal beats, forward momentum, and the raw power of the drums, over which Rasmussen and Mitelli lay down their wild free jazz lines as if Peter Brötzmann and Toshinori Kondo were jamming with Napalm Death. “I said no” is an industrial monster that could also be played in a dark wave club. The beats are missing, a mega-sombre background noise dominates and the heaviness of the sound is hard to bear, but the delicate synthesizer lines, which can hardly assert themselves, symbolize a little hope.

Finally, one must not ignore the title of the project. It’s taken from an etching by Francisco Goya entitled “El sueño de la razón produce monstruos.” When Goya used this title, he probably meant that during his own sleep or dreams, when his rational mind was switched off, he was plagued by monsters - hallucinations, terrors, nightmares. However, his rational mind when awake was able to prevent these things from coming to the surface. Nowadays, however, a different interpretation has gained acceptance - one that is more general and more critical of society. When a society itself ceases to act rationally, especially when it elects its leaders on the basis of populism and emotions, monstrous things will happen. The rationalism of a modern society normally keeps the human monsters among us in check, but when this characteristic of being guided by thought and intellect disappears from society, not only do such human monsters emerge, but the entire society becomes corrupted and falls into irrationality, fear, anger, and hatred. It would be mischievous not to think of current trends in Western democracies.

So who are the monsters we create in our sleep? TSORPM reflects on this question with the help of sound and spontaneity, with harshness and dissonance - as one should in today’s world. They try electroconvulsive therapy, nine shocks in nine tracks, in the hope of reviving our dying consciousness.

The Sleep Of Reason Produces Monsters is available as a CD and as a download. You can listen to it here: 

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Fred Lonberg-Holm’s Flying Aspidistra Label

By Eyal Hareuveni

Aspidistra elatior is a worldwide common house plant that is very tolerant of neglect. A fitting image to the life of a globetrotting free improviser like the American cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, who has collaborated with many great improvisers on both sides of the Atlantic like Peter Brötzmann, Joe McPhee, Ken Vandermark, Jim O’Rourke, Mats Gustafsson, John Butcher, and many more. Lonberg-Holm’s Flying Aspidistra is a CDR label that enjoys his vast archive of free improvised meetings. 

Gary Lindorff and Fred Lonberg-Holm - Sandblasted Poems (Flying Aspidistra, 2025) 

Lonberg-Holm was introduced to fellow American, Vermont-based poet, dreamworker, and Jungian therapist Gary Lindorff, through Lindorff’s son, the founder of cassette-only Notice Recordings (which released four albums with Lonberg-Holm), Evan Lindorff-Ellery. After hearing each other’s work, they decided to collaborate, and Sandblasted Poems was recorded at Lone Pine Road Studio in Kingston, New York, in May 2024.

Lindorff says that the six poems of Sandblasted Poems “are comprised of stacked fragments that tell a story that isn’t all there, but enough of it is there for our imaginations to stitch together a dreamlike narrative”. His chance-like poetry is based on pulling ten random books on diverse subjects from his library, opening each book at a random page, and selecting approximately ten fragments per book without controlling the selection process. Then he shrinks the font so he can not distinguish any of the words, and shuffles the list so that no three phrases are in the original order. And then he divides the list into stanzas of three or four lines. Only then does he read what he has to, usually a story or more than one story. He picks an evocative line to serve as the title and call it finished. “The story or stories of Sandblasted Poems are not my invention, any more than dreams are the invention of my conscious mind”, he concludes. Lonberg-Holm is the perfect partner for a kind of John Cage’s chance music-like meeting with William Burroughs' cut-up technique poetry. His free improvised cello intensifies the subversive, poetic spirit of Lindorff’s delivery, exploring different aspects of both the meaning and the sound of the evocative readings.

The Maneri Lonberg-Holm Symphony Orchestra (Flying Aspidistra, 2024) 

 

The Maneri Lonberg-Holm Symphony Orchestra consists of only violist Mat Maneri and Lonberg-Holm, but they do sound like a much bigger ensemble. Maneri and Lonberg-Holm took part in 2022 in the recording of Seven Skies Orchestra (Fundacja Słuchaj!, 2023), with Ivo Perelman, Nate Wooley, Matt Moran, and Joe Morris, and recorded their debut duo album at Ivy Leeg Studios in Hudson, New York, in July 2023. Lonberg-Holm did the cover artwork. The five “Symphony” pieces show two like-minded masters in free improvised action, bursting with endless, captivating ideas, sketching complex, inspired string conversations that cleverly employ extended bowing techniques, using the studio space with their resonating overtones, and searching for enigmatic microtonal timbres.

Helena Espvall & Fred Lonberg-Holm - Borboletas Andarilhas (Flying Aspidistra, 2021) 

Borboletas Andarilhas is the debut duo album of two old friends, Swedish-born, Lisbon-based cellist Helena Espvall and Lonberg-Holm (who also did the cover artwork), a frequent visitor in Lisbon. The album was recorded at Studio Mereotopologia in Lisbon in December 2019. The album offers two extended improvisations, both titled after colorful butterflies, and, indeed, these gifted improvisers sound like restless butterflies who communicate in highly expressive and colorful lingo, floating all over the place, and sharing many stories, insights, and experiences. 

Honsinger / Lonberg-Holm / Zubot - A Meeting Inside The Brain (Flying Aspidistra, 2021) 

A Meeting Inside The Brain documents an ad-hoc string trio of the Canadian violinist Josh Zubot, late American, Amsterdam-based cellist Tristan Honsinger (who also did the cover artwork), and Lonberg-Holm, performing a 17-minute free improvisation at The Hungry Brain in Chicago during the Chicago String Summit in May 2019. It was the first-ever meeting of this trio, and its musicians were picked by chance from the festival lineup. “the one and only” piece is informed by the eccentric, Dadaist antics of Honsinger that cements its playful and openly emotional interplay.

Lonberg-Holm / Rosso / Zingaro (Flying Aspidistra, 2020)

Lonberg-Holm’s string trio with Portuguese pioneer free improviser violinist Carlos “Zingaro” Alves (who have collaborated with Lonberg-Holm before and after thai recording, including in a self-titled duo, Flying Aspidistra, 2066) and double bass player Alvaro Rosso (in his first recorded collaboration with Lonberg-Holm, but a frequent collaborator of “Zingaro”) was recorded at Studio Namouche in Lisbon in November 2018. “Zingaro” did the cover artwork. This session produced four extended “Mammoth” improvisations and two short “Mammoth” ones, all highlighting the immediate affinity of these fearless improvisers, flowing with irresistible creative energy. These improvisations focused on resonating conventional and extended bowing techniques, free-associative timbral searches and rhythmic, percussive inventions, and intense dynamics even in the most sparse and quiet moments. As can be expected, often it is impossible to know who is playing what, and the trio sounds like a three-headed, mammoth-like powerful sonic entity.

https://flyingaspidistra.bandcamp.com/album/flying-aspidistra-10-lonberg-holm-rosso-zingaro

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Ivo Perelman - Oxygen (Mahakala Music, 2025)

By Hrayr Attarian

Intrepid saxophonist Ivo Perelman excels in collaborative settings, especially in the company of like-minded artists. Perelman is as prolific as he is inventive, and each of his releases is simultaneously unique and bears the indelible mark of his style. On Oxygen, Perelman is joined by saxophonist and clarinetist Ken Vandermark and trumpeter/saxophonist Joe McPhee. Both men are eminent practitioners of avant-garde music, and the three-way conversations on the six, spontaneously created pieces are innovative and moving.

Perelman opens the album with an accompanied contemplative performance on “One”, setting the mood for the set. McPhee on trumpet and Vandermark on saxophone respond with wistful and reserved urgency. As the momentum grows, the evolving refrains, both disparate and complementary, coalesce into a riotous repartee that maintains a poetic sense. It becomes a form of musical free-style verse. Over Vandermak’s growling instrument, Perelman weaves a sinuous melody that engages McPhee’s muted horn in an ethereal and provocative dialogue, concluding on a melancholic note.

There are moments of absorbing soulfulness on the album, especially on “Two,” which features Vandermark on bass clarinet soloing with bluesy melodicism. His colleagues keep the beat with rhythmic vamps, building an ambience of mainstream sensibilities. Perelman takes over, initially echoing some of the same ideas before launching into an unfettered extemporization. After a climax of fiery and delightfully dissonant passages, the trio resumes a sublime solemnity with Perelman and Vandermark contributing forlorn lines and McPhee blowing warm, mournful tones on his trumpet.

In addition to the seamless camaraderie that makes the recording so stimulating, there is also an undercurrent of shimmering lyricism. “Six” starts as a relaxed and crisp series of musings that has a dramatic sense. Midway, the overlapping and interlinked improvisations go from crystalline and angular to languid and mellifluous. The track, more than any other, showcases how these three master improvisers anticipate one another with sensitivity, intelligence, and deft skill.

Oxygen is not merely another brilliant addition to Perelman’s discography. It is also a showcase of how ingenuity thrives in good company. Each musician has an idiosyncratic voice, yet here they elegantly unite their disparate sounds for a work that surpasses the sum of its parts. Thus making Oxygen a rewarding listening experience.

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Natural Information Society and Bitchin Bajas – Totality (Drag City Record, 2025)

By Guido Montegrandi 

In the last four minutes of the title track a steady rhythm emerges from the cosmic expanded atmospheres that have marked the first twelve just to end in a prolonged harmonium chord. It had all began with keyboards and synths and electronic and flutes and clarinets and sparse bass notes “low key revolutions in gravity” to quote the linear notes. What you get is a sensation of particles gathering together just to scatter and then it all starts again until something forms and it is time out of space.

This second convergence of Natural Information Society and Bitching Bajas seamlessly connect to their first cooperation Autoimaginary (2015 Drag City Records). The feeling remains the same: a mix of minimalism, traditional music and electro-jazz - again the focus is on the deep side of the acoustic spectrum, sounds more often stay on the bass register and even when they go high a sense of gravity remains. And rhythm; steady, circular, basic, like a pulse that emerging from the last minutes of Totality spreads rhizomatous all trough the music.

'Nothing Does Not Show' develops on the sonic landscape created by guimbri, harmonium and percussion. Winds and synths and electronics create circular lines and brief suspended melodies; Quoting the words used to describe their former work: “Sky music by deep earth people...”

'Always 9 seconds away' starts like rocking slow pace footsteps marked by a repetitive flute tune and distant background electronic swirls and it goes on and on until the melody develops on the ground of more sustained keyboard notes, flute and bass clarinet chase each other over the organ and harmonium and then it all stops into silence.

The closing track - 'Clock no Clock' - is presented on the bandcamp site with a video that enhances the psychedelic quality of the music. Here the two groups are more distinguishable in their interaction with NIS presenting one of their typical trance rhythmic run and Bitching Bajas developing electro-psych layers until it all merges in rotating particles of sound. In the end we are gliding to earth again driven by the guimbri and the harmonium.

Totality in all of its tracks is a layered piece of work, the listener can trace many influences from the Terry Riley of A Rainbow in a Curved Air to the cosmic German music of the 70s and you can add Sun Ra and Gnawa music and something else (add your options here…) but what it remains is the fascinating quality of this music; maybe it falls outside of many of the music reviewed in this site but certainly stays in the field of the music you would like to listen to.

Musicians:

Double Bass, Guimbri - Joshua Abrams
Harmonium - Lisa Alvarado
Drums, Percussion - Mikel Patrick Avery
Organ, Synth - Cooper Crain
Flute, Synth - Rob Frye
Bass Clarinet - Jason Stein
Electronics - Daniel Quinlivan

Digital download, vinyl or cassette here:

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Alexander Hawkins at Bimhuis

And the Sunday Video is a solo concert from pianist Alexander Hawkins from the Bimhuis in Amsterdam. You can't go wrong with this combination!

 

More about Alexander Hawkins here 

More from Bimhuis here  

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Mikołaj Trzaska & Daktyle - Transient Riot (Antenna Non Grata, 2025)

By Nick Ostrum

Recorded live in concert in 2024, Transient Riot is the latest release from Polish reedist Mikołaj Trzaska, who has been well documented on this blog. On it, he is joined by fellow Polish group Daktyle, a duo consisting of Marek Sadowski on various percussion and electronics and Maciej Jaciuk on daxophone, bass-box, sidrax synthesizer, loops, and other electronics.

Although experimental jazz of all sorts seems to be leaning toward electronics these days, the addition of Daktyle still adds something novel to this outing. Some of this might be because live performance is the heart of the Daktyle project. The notes to one of their few releases, DKTLE, emphasizes their reliance on “electronics and prepared live instrumentation,” which is an excellent way to describe the dialectic between preparation and in-the-moment decision and deployment. The duo is unpredictable and engaging throughout, laying out a carpet of beats here, liquid ambient wrinkles there, restive percussion and abstract slashes of noise elsewhere. But they also often provide the textures and rhythm (or beats or loops) over which Trzaska plays. If you have heard him play before, you will likely recognize his approach. He can go on a tear, but never for too long. Often, he waits and listens, sprinkling some stray notes until he finds space for his plangent and soulful wails.

Although the title might denote something aggressive and violent, an eruption that quickly burns itself out, Transient Riot is anything but. It is open and free flowing – though I should add that the album itself has an impeccable and directive flow. At the same time, it is somewhat constrained. One gets the sese that Sadowski and Jaciuk could run amok if they wished, but they don’t. Conversely, they could content themselves with some juicy ambient backdrops but are too interested in the details and detours to do that. The same goes for Trzaska. Much like Joe McPhee, with whom he has played before, he focuses on constructing wafting and mournful phrases. He harnesses rather than discharges energy. Sadowski and Jaciuk respond in kind. There is no real riot here, but there is a lot of bluesy abstraction and EAI dissonance. And that’s certainly good enough for me.

Available as CD and download on Bandcamp: 

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Tatsuya Yoshida/Martin Escalante –The Sound of Raspberry (Wash and Wear records, 2025) *****

By Fotis Nikolakopoulos

This release (out on vinyl for all of us vinyl lovers) is, probably the biggest surprise of 2025 so far. And certainly one of the best. The makers are the legendary noise drummer, founder of the Ruins, Tatsuya Yoshida and Mexican powerhouse saxophonist Martin Escalante. They both contribute different kinds of noises to the sounds you will absorb –mostly by their voices…

Even though I have devoured a lot of noise releases through the years, I have come to the belief (maybe this is progress, maybe not) that I prefer to listen to any kind of music made by acoustic instruments, rather than the usual pedals with effects, a laptop and some electronics (all of them or separately) set up we find when listening to noise music live.

The ethos of noise music is there though. And not just that. This music is amazing not only because it has the cathartic quality of noise. Both players adjust to each other’s playing and also add, every second after second, extra pathos and energy. They also play –powerful drums and an aggressive but not angry alto saxophone- in unison, creating a wall, a mass of sound that bewilders and fascinates you. But also make you wait and want more, even though all tracks are short (like a rapid image that appears and, immediately disappears in order to be replaced by the next) clocking under four minutes.

I particularly enjoyed and was, kind of, baptized to the sheer volume of it while laughing with their “don’t take us serious” approach utilizing their voices , and some electronics by Yoshida, in order to add some humor. Oh, but they are not just playing (or “playing”…), they are so serious in creating an alternative noisey space that will make the demons of the outside world, of reality, go away. This record is totally recommended for anyone not interested in the same boring labels or genres.

Listen:

 

@koultouranafigo

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