The Claudia Quintet - For (Cuneiform, 2007) ****

Percussionist John Hollenbeck's Claudia Quintet belongs to a sub-genre all by itself : it combines elements of jazz, prog rock and chamber music. The band is already on its fourth album ("four"?), and always with the same line-up : Chris Speed on clarinet and sax, Matt Moran on vibes, Ted Reichman on accordion, Drew Gress on bass and Hollenbeck himself on drums. The compositions are like lightly flowing rivers, with repetitive undertones, complex interacting melodies and often changing rhythms. The overall musical effect is more important than the musician's soloing. There are solos of course, but they don't carry the weight of the performance. There are no emotional outbursts here, no screaming saxes, no hourlong explorations. The whole is tightly composed, with the unusual melodies shifting on top of each other, with each instrument playing together, then following different paths, just to come back together at regular intervals. It requires skilled musicians with experience together to achieve all this, and is it should hence be no suprise that The Claudia Quintet gets better with each album, and that holds also true for Hollenbeck's creative compositions. On of the strongest and longest pieces is "Be Happy", on which clarinet, vibes and accordion play a unisono repetitive theme not unlike a Philip Glass piece as support to an enchanting bass solo by Gress, which evolves into a moving but also hard-hitting performance by the whole band. The emotionally strongest pieces is "This Too Shall Pass", on which the accordion creates some eery monotonous sounds, and the arco bass and clarinet tear the the mother of all sadness out of their instruments, and on which especially Moran's bluesy vibes steal the show. But not everything is peace and quiet. On the short uptempo "Rug Boy", the rhythm sections unleashes all its energy, while clarinet and and accordion play a slow melody.

In analogy to Ken Vandermark's habit, all tracks are dedicated to someone (hence the title "For"), and even one to "all music teachers" and one "for you". I thought you might appreciate that I told you so. Recommended.

Listen to some sound samples :

I'm So Ficking Cool
Be Happy
Rug Boy
This Too Shall Pass

Read More

Soundscapes & Soundsculptures : two avant fusion reviews

If the word "soundscapes" can be used for slow, quiet music, consisting of long passages in which the instruments bring layers of sound rather than rhythm and melody, and where the structure offers a horizontal impression like in a landscape, then the word "soundsculpture" can be used for its more vertical version, with strong changes in intensity, jagged edges, nooks and corners, not many regular or smooth surfaces. If you then apply these two forms to two new postmodern jazz albums with strong electronic approach and heavy post-production and you will have an idea what the two following albums each have to offer. Apart from that the line-up is comparable : guitar, sax, piano, bass, drums. And the piano is twice played by Craig Taborn, and that's definitely no coincidence.

David Binney - Out Of Airplanes (Mythology Records, 2006) *****

David Binney has already issued some interesting post-modern jazz albums, with quite some influence from rock and even country music, yet these albums were still very close to mainstream jazz. On this one he takes a big step further, with quiet, jazzy, often on rock-harmonies based music. The music is complex and well-crafted, with beautiful, airy and intense melodies. Next to Binney, no one less than Bill Frissell plays the guitar, Eyvind Opsvik on bass (check his solo albums), Kenny Wollesen on drums and of course Craig Taborn on keyboards. Binney takes risks as a composer, leaving lots of space (hence the title probably), melody, harmony and rhythm are present, but they drop away regularly, creating a space which is then filled with long soloing by guitar or sax. Pieces such as "Jan Mayen" are heart-rending, with Frisell and Binney soloing in the high registers of their instruments, howling and wailing. And the same holds true for the title song, which starts with a nice enough melody, to be replaced by only guitar and sax, then the melody comes back with the thumping drums of Wollesen in support. "The Forgotten Gem" is totally soundscape, with the electronics offering a permanent base tone, with light guitar music on top and light drumming below the surface. I never jumped out of an airplane, but if this music comes even close in terms of feeling, then it seems like really worth a try. This is nice, airy, fresh, pretenceless music. The best CD by Binney so far.

David Torn - Prezens (ECM, 2007) ****

Prezens by David Torn is a totally different ball game. Here you're being sucked into a listening experience like you've probably had very few so far : this is jazz which is played in the studio, then cut to pieces to be reassembled afterwards, minutely with lots of attention to detail. Too many details to absorb even in several listens, because each piece brings constantly new approaches, new rhythms, new sounds, unexpected melodic changes, as if you're walking around a sculpture, seeing the same thing, but from an ever changing different perspective. And the music can be hard. Torn is a fine guitarist, yet I don't think he cares much for the instrument as such, it's sometimes even difficult to distinguish guitar and keyboard, for the level of transformation and electronic distortion. The other musicians are also among the best : Tim Berne on sax, Tom Rainey on drums. The album begins slow and quietly, with plucked guitar and a bluesy organ, with light cymbal work and the high sax of Berne, yet they are the heralds of a raging menace, that suddenly explodes out of Torn's heavily distorted hard rock guitar. Effect is the key word here, and I agree, the trick has been used more than enough, to slow down the music, just to let it explode again, but it still works, at least on this album. Estethically speaking the "Structural Functions of Prezens" is the most beautiful piece of the album, especially because of Berne's stellar sax playing, which we know from his extremely long improvisations, but which is here extremely subdued and beautiful, and remaining so throughout the piece, despite the ever-changing musical background, with amongst others Rainey giving some hard-hitting high energy playing on his drums. "Bulbs" too is full of effects, first with a quiet build-up, then all the instruments fall away, just the guitar plays some plucked chords, which then really (again) explodes in a piece of mad feedback-driven guitar-screaming the likes of which I haven't heard since Hendrix. Effect? You bet! This is music full of tricks, full of chaos, full of electronics, full of sampling, full of intensity, full of suprises, full of pretence, lots of pretence, but Torn offers a voyage which promises to be one of the most unique musical experiences of the year. Forget about your musical preferences for a moment : close your eyes and enjoy the ride!

Read More

Triptych Myth (Aum Fidelity, 2006) ****

In my daily search for music that flies under the radar screen of the more traditional music critics, I can with pleasure recommend Triptych Myth, a trio consisting of Cooper-Moore on piano, Tom Abbs on bass and Chad Taylor on drums, a piano trio such as you've probably rarely heard one. There are some more conventional approaches at first hearing, such as the first track "All Up In It" and the beautiful "Frida K. The Beautiful", but the alienation is just under the surface, really presenting itself in the following pieces. In "Trident" the arco bass leads the piece, with piano and drums giving the rhythmic support, and that is according to me the great strength of this album : the trio is so tight that no single instrument is at the forefront, or rather, all three instruments are in the creative spotlight, giving direction, demanding attention, without the whole becoming a cacophony. The music is familiar yet eerily so, drenched in blues and soul, yet in a refreshing, surprising new way. "Pooch" is in that respect a nice example : the soft melodic line of the piano is heavily counterplayed by the drums, hitting hard and energetic, almost in full conflict, urging for a tempo change, which takes places just to be rehabilitated in the former soft theme. You will hear more candy for the ear at each listen.

Te downloaden via http://www.emusic.com/

Read More

Create (!) - A Prospect Of Freedom (Sounds Are Active, 2006) ****

Before you start reading, please click on this link : Six Dreams Divided.

On this album Create (!) bring non-intrusive, free improvization with a strong melancholic flavor. The band, consisting of Orlando Greenhill (vocals, acoustic bass, percussion); Chris Schlarb, Raymond Raposa (electric guitar, electronics); Lynn Johnston (clarinet, bass clarinet); Kris Tiner (trumpet, flugelhorn); Justice Constantine (drums, percussion), brings a fragile mix of slow tempi and hesitant, tentative instrumentation, which jointly look for musical texture and beauty, yet also for variation in impact and effect. Don't expect any known patterns here, because about everything you hear falls in the category of creativity and inventiveness, they didn't choose their name for nothing, and with success, because the overall sound is more than worth listening to. Emotionally the listener gets torn between tenderness, melancholy, fear, disorientation, tension, and pure aesthetic suprise, and that's the prime purpose of this music, not from the power of the soloing or the creation of a quickly identifiable melody. Common improvization is the key word, with refreshing new angles and rhythms, and new forms of musical expressiveness. Is this jazz? Yes, because it's a typical jazz line-up, yes, because improvization and adventure are at the core of the music, yet on the other hand this music is far removed from the usual jazz structures and melodic or even harmonic approaches. Possible points of comparison are Tortoise, Mazurek, H.I.M. This is modern music, full stop. Brilliant, exclamation mark!

Te downloaden via http://www.emusic.com/

Read More

Mark O'Leary - Two reviews : Awakening & Waiting

Mark O'Leary - Awakening (Leo Records, 2006) ****

Mark O'Leary is an Irish jazz guitar player who has already published quite some albums, yet who is unfortunately too little known, especially Levitation with Tomasz Stanko (trumpet) and Billy Hart (drums) is also worth looking for. But don't look too far, because Leo Records has now issued all its albums, including the whole Braxton catalogue, for download via http://www.lulu.com/, for the democratic price of $ 5.49 per CD. What more do you want? Back to this album, it's a guitar trio, with Steve Swallow on bass and Pierre Favre on percussion. O'Leary's style is great, with a sound which is reminiscent of John Abercrombie on his Homecoming or Getaway albums, with the tone button at the lowest possible level and the reverb high, giving a very soft, warm and spacious atmosphere. Although the music is anchored in bop, with often walking bass and steady rhythm, it is extremely open to new forms, acoustic intermezzi, rock and free jazz influences, yet relatively accessible. "Intimate, or feather-light" may be the best adjectives to describe it, rare qualifiers indeed for a free setting such as this one, but make no mistake, this is adventurous music, full of tension, and in pieces such as "Melting", the atmosphere takes on gloomy and nervous connotations, yet the two qualifiers still apply. O'Leary is a great guitar player, with a very subtle touch, both in the arpeggios as in the fast soloing, yet his major skill is the unity of musical and sound approach he creates. It requires strong musical and compositional skills to keep the attention going for a trio outing, and this band does so extremely well on this album.

Listen to sound samples

Bello Corazon
Last Light

Mark O'Leary - Waiting (Leo Records, 2007) *****

And O'Leary doesn't stop producing great material (and again, thank you Leo for putting all this on http://www.lulu.com/ , making these albums accessible for many among us music fanatics). On this album O'Leary ups the ante by working with Cuong Vu (trumpet) and Tom Rainey (drums), both exceptionally good musicians with their own style and approach and they prove to be a perfect fit for O'Leary's elegant adventurous approach. This album is dedicated to Samuel Beckett, the playwright of amongst others "Waiting for Godot", whose hundredth birthday anniversary was celebrated in 2006. Beckett was a pioneer of absurdist and surrealist theater of the period after the second world war, where religion, the meaning of life, so-called human values were strongly questioned and the incapacity of real communication between human beings emphasized. Yet if there is one thing which is absolutely fantastic on this album, it's precisely the communication between these three musicians. The title piece "Waiting" starts with acoustic guitar, very gently, to which the trumpet adds a beautiful improvization, creating the false expectation that the rest of the album will be in the same vein. This is not about discordance or dissonance, what you might expect from a Beckett tribute album, but quite the contrary, it's about tight interplay among three stellar musicians. The second piece illustrates this even better. "Endgame" offers a strong composition, with high tension nervousness in the strong tonal attack of the trumpet, to which O'Leary offers some fluttering counterpoint on electric guitar, again deep-toned, and wonderfully accentuated by Rainey. The third piece "Lucky" brings an esthetic which could fit the nomer ECM-jazz, highly stylized, creating visions of open space, yet things start to become rougher on "Mr. Krapps Neurosis", with screeching trumpet and high speed distorted guitar, to go even more down the road of madness and disorientation on "Assumption", with electronics, echo effects reinforcing the e-bow sounds. And it goes on like this, deeper and deeper into unchartered musical territory, with the trio creating an high energy high intensity music the likes of which I haven't heard in previous years, and all this with a very clear musical vision, creating a unique sound, with excellent balance between the calm and high intensity moments, hence creating a strong feeling of depth and variation. And also on the calm moments, like on "Godot", the guitar and the trumpet sound like whales communicating, with long and endless sad wails and moans, with Rainey meanwhile quadruple-timing the soloists, and what you believe is free improv appears to be perfectly composed and timed. Amazing. Without a doubt this album will be on the top-10 of the year. One more thing : of many of the best new albums I heard in the previous months, Tom Rainey is the drummer (Tim Berne, Mark Helias, David Torn, Brad Shepik, Tony Malaby). And that's no coincidence either.


Listen to sound samples from Waiting

Waiting
Endgame

Read More

Sean Noonan - Stories To Tell (Songlines, 2007) **

If you notice that some of today's top musicians, Marc Ribot, Jon Madof, Jim Pugliese and Mat Maneri play together on one CD with amongst others African singer Abdoulayé Diabaté, you go "wow, this is going to give fireworks!". Maybe my expectations were too high, because this is lukewarm, if not tepid stuff. The core concept of percussionist Sean Noonan is maybe too ambitious : to combine celtic and African music with rock and jazz. And indeed the album brings all these genres together in a mix, but without any real authenticity, as if every sharpness, every sting has been taken out for fear of the genres hurting each other. You would expect hypnotic rhythms, refreshing musical collisions, emotional outbursts, but there's nothing of the sort on this album, this is mellow background music for the coffee bar on the corner. Allright, admittedly, there is once in a while a soaring guitar solo, but so what? The musicians are good, and that's about all that can be said about this album.

Read More

Free Improv from Clean Feed - two reviews

John Butcher & Paal Nilssen-Love - Concentric (Clean Feed, 2007) **





Playing free jazz or free improv can easily be compared to walking on a tightrope. If you put one step too far to one side, you're gone into into the depths, and that's what I think happened with the music on this album. John Butcher (sax) and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums) are fine musicians with a long track record in free form music, but this CD is to me over the edge. OK, they can get the most unusual sounds out of their instruments, and their interaction speed and interplay are great, but where is the music, where is the emotion? Playing these sounds may be fun for the musicians themselves, but as a listener you don't get involved. Still, kudos of the Clean Feed label to take the risk of publishing this kind of music. I hope others enjoy it more than I do.

Russ Lossing, Mat Maneri, Mark Dresser - Metal Rat (Clean Feed, 2007) ****

Equally risky and equally free improv and equally on Clean Feed, is "Metal Rat", an album by pianist Russ Lossing, with Mat Maneri on viola and Mark Dresser on bass. This music is unusual, to say the least, with eery soundscapes, creating a gloomy, menacing atmosphere throughout. The major difference between this album and the previous one, is that this one creates music, even if not an easy listening experience, it has vision, it paints an aural canvas, albeit an abstract one, that is adventurous, that absorbs the listener in something new, something exciting, with interesting twists and turns, offering unexpected angles. This music sucks you into a different world, pointillistic and microtonal, without allowing the listener to get grip on any fixed pattern or rhythm, yet the overall sound image you get is worth listening to.

Download Metal Rat

Read More

Jason Lindner - Ab Aeterno - (Fresh Sound World Jazz) ***

Jason Lindner's first album, Ab Aeterno, offers a sparkling combination of jazz and world music, in a trio with Omer Avital on bass and oud, and Luisito Quintero on a large variety of small percussion. Lindner himself plays piano, and on some songs also melodica and mbira. The music is light as a feather, not unlike chamber music, with playful influences from the Middle-East, Africa and Latin America. But also Monk and Bud Powell join in. Monk and even Bach are identifiable together in the lightly classical "Song for Amos", Bud Powell in "Sure Thing/Glass Enclosure", a mix of two Powell compositions. On the rhythmically repetitive "Montserrate" the piano is replaced by the melodica, and the bass by the oud. Lindner is a fine pianist and composer, the melodies are harmonically and rhythmically well-crafted, yet it's all a little too composed for me, with not enough climaxes. And that might by due to Lindner's approach of the compositions : once he's got the core melody in his left hand, there aren't too many changes throughout the songs, creating an overall flat impression. On the other hand, the lightly dancing combination of piano, bass/oud, and hand percussion is so refreshing and the compositions so easily accessible, that they form the ideal music for this sunny Sunday morning.

Klik hier voor sound samples

Read More

Mikolaj Trzaska - Kantry (Kilogram Records, 2007) ****

Mikolaj Trzaska is a musician who deserves wider recognition than he does today. He is not only an excellent sax player, as a composer he is also not afraid to take risks and to look for a renewed, more expressive musical language without becoming too experimental or without chasing away potential listeners. He has made some really excellent sax trio albums with the brothers Marcin and Brat Oles, especially "LA Sketch Up" and "Mikro Muzik", both also issued on the Polish Kilogram Records and highly recommended. On these albums, jazz sounds as you've rarely heard it, soft-spoken, sophisticated, nostalgic, yet raw, creative and full of tension at the same time. Interesting. Next to these albums, he's also written a lot of work for theater and television, and this albums fits into that category. It was originally ordered for an internet radio drama, but the music on this album is far removed from the original idea. The input for the music appears to come, not from the play, but from dictaphone recordings made from the author's journey in the Balkans: Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The dictaphone recorded everything that was possible to record, starting with the sounds of streets in Sarajevo, conversations in a Balkan bar and finishing with the singing of a muezzin from a minaret in Sarajevo, but also church bells can be heard, dogs barking, car doors slamming, etc. Right through these ambient sounds Mikolaj Trzaska weaves music in his own specific syle, often solo, or accompanied in the lightest possible fashion, sometimes an accordion, often an organ, or just bass, or drums, but never with the whole band together. It is odd music, sometimes bizarre ("Barbarian's Child"), sometimes of extreme beauty ("The Silence of Fish"), but always airy and accessible. And what he makes of this is really powerful : the human emotions laid bare, pain, longing, distress, anxiety, joy, nostalgia. And it doesn't really matter whether you understand any of the slavonic languages heard on the tape. Just let yourself go and listen to the fragile soul of man, made a little bit more eloquent by Mikolaj Trzaska.

Click here for audio samples

Read More

Chicago Underground Trio - Chronicle (Delmark, 2007) ****

The Chicago Underground Duo/Trio/Quartet has two stable members : Rob Mazurek on cornet and Chad Taylor on percussion. Jeff Parker played guitar in previous configurations and Noel Kupersmith was the regular bass-player, but for this trio he is replaced by Jason Ajemian. This is not what you would call a real trumpet/bass/drums trio, because each musician has an assortment of additional instruments, from the very simple such as a bamboo flute, an mbira or a Chinese cymbal to the more complex electronics, computer of moogerfooerpedals. The album is the chronicle of a transformation in six steps : Initiation, Resistance, Power, Crisis, Transformation and Transcendence. And the music evolves along those steps. "Initiation" is a bass solo, on "Resistance" the percussion starts bringing counterweight to the bass, first with light percussion, then marimba, then electronics until the bass stops, followed by the percussion and only the electronics remain. "Power" begins with light arco bass, marimba and light percussion, rolling on to menacing drumming, first without apparent rhythm, then very rhythmically, with a hard pulsing bass adding power to the playing, offering a solid foundation for the muted cornet sounds of Mazurek, now light and sensitive, then chasing hard, evolving into a quiet bluesy melody, which in terms of trumpet style holds the middle between Lester Bowie and Don Cherry, moving on to light percussion again, an almost-lullaby like melody so fragile and joyful it sounds, soon to die in an electronic chaotic drone of about five minutes, and then you think "that's it, we've had it", but no, out of this chaos emerges a lightly dancing melody of trumpet, arco bass and mbira, the real finale of a track which lasts close to half an hour. And it goes on like that for the rest of the album. The band takes its time to discover the music, to transform it, to think of new angles, but the overall structure is essential, this is free improv along fixed paths. This is avant-garde jazz or experimental jazz, but then with soul. And you can hear this soul at best in the last piece "Transcendence", that unleashes all power with a manic repetitive rhythm, with Mazurek's cornet creating wonderful melodies above this hypnotic drone of bass and drums. This music is probably not to everyone's taste, but the way this band explores new musical avenues is really fantastic to hear and highly commendable. Mazurek suprised us earlier this year with his great album with The Exploding Star Orchestra, but this one is equally brilliant.

Below you can view and extract from the promo video of the accompanying DVD ("Transcendence"):

Read More