Elephant9 - Walk The Nile (Rune Grammofon, 2010) ****

Two years ago, the Norwegian tio Elephant9 released its first album, "Dodovoodoo", which was praised here for its forward thinking and energy level. On their sophomore album, Ståle Storløkken on fender rhodes, hammond organ, and synth, Nikolai Hængsle Eilertsen on bass and electric guitar, and Torstein Lofthus on drums, keep the same recipe, but drive up the speed, the intensity and the complexity.  Whereas on the first album, the MMW references seemed appropriate, I think they go a lot beyond MMW now.

Think of an instrumental concoction of King Crimson's inventiveness with Deep Purple's Jon Lord bombast, and some avant-punk attitude ... and then a step further.

It is magnificent, but it isn't jazz.

The stuff of them you find on Youtube is pale compared to the music on this album, hence no clips. 

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Joe McPhee, Mikołaj Trzaska, Dominic Duval, Jay Rosen - Magic (Not Two, 2010) ****½

After the excellent "Intimate Conversations", Joe McPhee and Mikołaj Trzaska release a new album together, again with Jay Rosen on drums, but now also with Dominic Duval on bass. You might say it's Trio X + Mikołaj Trzaska, and that's correct if you look at the names, but not when you listen to the music. This band does not even touch on the "traditional" Trio X repertoire. McPhee plays sax and pocket trumpet, Trzaska alto sax and bass clarinet.

The album starts with "The Magician", with tribal sounding tones from Trzaska, full of primitive incantations, slowly being joined by trumpet, bass and drums, and developing into a slow, smooth and warm open lyrical exploration. The fit between Trzaska and McPhee is almost perfect, since they have the same attitude to music, one of freedom, respect and authentic warmth. That doesn't mean they don't go wild at times, but the dominant element is careful and reverent. The first track immediately illustrates this range, from tribal over sensitive dialogues to more boppish uptempo steaming improvisations. The second piece is more free form in nature, with Duval playing arco, McPhee delving into the deeper regions of his tenor, Rosen accentuating, and Trzaska's alto adding layers of sensitivity on top. "Sex Toys" is more minimalist and subdued, with the musicians scarcely breaching through the silence, and I think rarely a track has received such an inappropriate name (there isn't even an orgasm of sound to conclude). The first CD ends with "I Remember Max", a luckily not too long drum solo by Jay Rosen, dedicated to Max Roach.

The second CD continues with the minimalist approach, with a long dialogue between the two saxes, interlocking and interweaving calm yet urgent phrases, with McPhee doing some quiet singing while blowing his sax, bursting open into a screaming duel, waking the sleeping dogs of drums and bass in the process. "Contra-ception" is a bass solo track by Duval, nohting wild, nothing too smooth either, and when he starts using his bow, some shouting brings back the sax for one of the most intense pieces of the album, that shifts mood a little over half-way when McPhee picks up his pocket trumpet: for almost spiritual gospell-like lyricism. One of the most beautiful tracks is the long and slow "Turtles Crossing", a tune that was already on McPhee's Jumala Quintet release with the same name. As the title suggests, there is no need to hurry (from the turtle's perspective of ignorance), but the deep tension of the menace of being crushed is omnipresent, and this horror of course gets articulated musically near the end of the track, but it ends happily.

Again, Trzaska is a perfect fit for this band, who deliver a strong, balanced and varied album of great instrumental power and coherent musical expression, full of emotional depth and moments of fun. Enjoy!

Recorded at Alchemia, Kraków, November 8, 2007

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Superb piano trios

Piano trio albums are part of the more standard line-ups in "serious" jazz, in the tradition of Paul Bley and Bill Evans, bridging between jazz and classical impressionism and romanticism, and these two icons have been copied a zillion times, especially in the hotel lounge tradition. Luckily, the format is still open to innovation, to creative intensity and unexpected surprises. The two albums reviewed here are part of this realm of new possibilities. Both trios also fully act as trios with the three musicians improvising on equal footing, and all three creating something that is much more than the sum of its parts.

Sebastiano Meloni, Adriano Orrù & Tony Oxley - Improvised Music For Trio (Biground, 2010) ****½

Sebastiano Meloni on piano, Adriano Orrù on double bass, and Tony Oxley on drums. The latter is possibly best known for his work with Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, Cecil Taylor and John McLaughlin. The Italian musicians received a classical and a jazz education, which explains their versatility and the unclassifiable nature of the album (under "Chamber Music" on eMusic, although they often make genre-errors). Anyway, the album consists of fourteen improvisations, and of a refreshing intensity and sonority. The three musicians do not have to get recourse to lots (yes some) extended techniques to have novelties in every track. Lyricism and stubborn dissonance go hand in hand, melody and atonal improvisation merge, emotional power is unleashed through free form. The music has an intensity which has nothing to do with chamber music: the sweetness and accessibility you would expect from the genre are hard to find, but instead you get a captivating focus and ever-changing inventiveness, coupled with incredible subtlety and authentic feelings. Really strong.

Listen and download from eMusic.

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Rodrigo Pinheiro, Hernani Faustino & Gabriel Ferrandini - Red Trio (Clean Feed, 2010) ****

The Portuguese RED Trio is Rodrigo Pinheiro on piano, Hernani Faustino on bass, and Gabriel Ferrandini on drums.The intensity is comparable to the previous album, the music not entirely: it is more avant-jazz, darker, much darker.

The album starts with nervous half-muted piano playing, agitated bass and drums, full of tension till the very end. The scene for the second piece, "Flat", is set by the heavy plucking on the bass, in the style of Paul Rogers, full of emotional power, with great attention the sound, less to the rhythm or melody, a scene which is dark and foreboding, accentuated by light percussive elements, and minimal piano touches. "Coda, Static", is light, open and again quite intense in its slow building around silence, using sparse notes and brush-strokes to create a whole world.

"Quick Sand" is an absolute horror of a piece, a sonic nightmare, but then one that is of such a high musical level, that it really makes you shiver: piano, bass and drums create a wall of unnatural sounds, now high volume and monstrous, then low volume and eery. "Timewise" is more uptempo, almost upbeat, but again with a sense of urgency and immediacy that is out of the common: they play as if every note, every single sound counts, and then with high relevance: they are heavily accentuated, placed with precision in the evolving soundscape. It is incredible what kind of emotional depth and sonic visions this trio creates, out of nowhere, out of nothing.

Listen at eMusic.

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The first jazz recording was made today ....

"The Original Dixieland Jazz Band, who billed themselves "The Creators of Jazz", have long been been dismissed as the White guys who copied African-American music, and called it their own. There is a lot of truth to that statement, but on the other hand, The Original Dixieland Jazz Band's recordings still hold their own unique charm, over 80 years after their initial release. However unfair and indicative of the racism of the era, the record "Livery Stable Blues", coupled with "Dixie Jass Band One Step" became the first Jazz record ever released on February 26, 1917 for the Victor Talking Machine Company. It was wildly successful. Its release signaled the beginning of the Jazz age and helped define the wild, exuberent era we call the "Roaring Twenties ... more ...

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Steve Raegele - Last Century (Songlines, 2010) ***½

Compared to some of the recent guitar trios that I reviewed, this album is the odd one out : it is not trying to impress, it is not trying to tear down, yet it is not mellow or mainstream either. Raegele is accompanied by Miles Perkin on bass and Thom Gossage on drums and kalimba. The music is creative, searching, open-textured, subtle and sensitive. Some pieces, like the title track, come close to a real soundscape architecture, with precise guitar notes floating over ethereal backgrounds, other tracks are more post-modern, with quite structured themes and harmonic development. The music is unobtrusive, yet quite creative at the same time: unexpected things happen along the way, and I like that. Raegele seems unsatisfied with known idioms and starts playing around with what he knows: jazz, rock, rhythm, melody and lyricism, and he cuts them all to pieces and re-assembles them again : accessible, sweet sometimes, but never boring, never following the beaten track, creating new openings into music. Listen to the rhythmic oddities on "Stop Short". His guitar sound is clear with a little notch of distortion, just sufficient to give it a little harshness. Perkin and Ghossage's contribution is never less than functional, but often being more than just the rhythmic support. A nice and carefully crafted album, which could do with a little more tension.

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The Other Tet (Engine, 2009) ***½

In 2003, young Ghanese master drummer Kwaku Kwaakye Obeng released "Afrijazz", with Bill Lowe on bass trombone and Taylor Ho Bynum on trumpet, a promising, if somewhat unbalanced album. Now they are back with Joe Morris on bass. The drumming is still great but has a less prominent role in the music, and rather than being a demonstration of percussion and rhythms from the African diaspora, the music itself gets the full focus. And you could say it's a free bop album in the best of traditions: rhythmic, open, mostly without apparent themes, but yet with very close and coherent interaction between the musicians, who weave their solos over and around each other, constructing a great flowing and dancing sonic play.This opening track is the highlight of the album, and its great promise is unfortunately not fully met by the other pieces.

"Naptown/Trenton" is a real bopper with a theme (yes), a walking bass and constant rhythm, although Ho Bynum's trumpet solo is more left of center than you would expect from the genre, with Lowe's bass trombone sticking closer to the theme. "Dreamsketch" is slow and bluesy, with arco bass, and great dark combination of the bass and the bass trombone, and slowly develops into free improvisation, full of tension and emotional power. "Cold Day Clip", stays in the slower bop regions, a slowness which is necessary to make Lowe's playing come to its full right. "Look Below", is a again free bop, with a solid theme, and a long bass solo by Joe Morris.

A very enjoyable album, straight from the heart. 

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Brötzmann ....

Sometimes you wish that German saxophonist Peter Brötzmann would do something else that what he's been doing for the last fourty years, namely to blow his lungs out in his horn, occupying musical space and then not let go of it for the rest of the performance.

Sometimes you wish that German saxophonist Peter Brötzmann would NOT do anything else than what he's been doing for the last fourty years, not only because that's what he does best, but because doing other stuff clearly brings him out of his comfort zone.

Peter Brötzmann & Paal Nilssen-Love - Woodcuts (Smalltown Superjazz, 2010) ****

This is without a doubt the best album of the lot: fierce and relentless power play between two masters. Paal Nilssen-Love has played many times with the saxophonist, including a duo recording, "SweetSweat". It works best because Brötzmann does not have to care about other sounds intermingling with his own, he just needs the percussive power to drive him forward, and whatever he does, can move and shout and scream without hitting the borders of other melodic musicans. The result is fireworks from beginning to end. True, there a few seconds that the avalanche of punches and kicks and jabs slows down a little, but these are far and few between. Even on the eighteen minute long fourth track the fire does not die down for one millisecond. And when you think he's reached his climax, he goes even harder and higher. Not for sentimentalists, but a delight for the fans.

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Sonore - Call Before You Dig (Okkadisk, 2009) ****

Sonore is Ken Vandermark, Mats Gustafsson and Peter Brötzmann, the three power players of current jazz for their third album in this configuration, now with a double CD, with 7 tracks on the first, and no less than 17 tracks on the second CD. The interesting concept is that, without the presence of a rhythm section, they move into a more melodious and lyrical mode, giving each other ample space at times, or adding a double backbone to the soloist. "Mountains Of Love" on the first CD is an absolute beauty, with sensitivity that will move you to tears and sudden blasts that will blow off your chair (at least it did to me). Next to sax, Brötzmann and Vandermark also play their bass clarinets, and Gustafsson his flutophone (a flute with a sax mouthpiece). In their trialogue they explore not only all the timbral possibilities of their instruments, but also the comfortable shifts in improvisation provided by this unique line-up: lengthy single tone developments offer solid background for improvisation, but trio is also duo + one, evolving into one + duo, merging into trio and dissociating again. A pleasure for improvisors. The album offers much : from subtlety to utter cacophony.

Peter Brötzmann, Mikołaj Trzaska & Johannes Bauer - Goosetalk (Kilogram Records, 2010)***

We find Brötzmann back with Mikołaj Trzaska, a Polish saxophonist who is in my eyes the antipode of the German, because of his sophisticated warm tone and melodious phrasing, and with Johannes Bauer on trombone to complete the trio. The album's title is quite well chosen, because that's exactly how it sounds on the title track: geese chatting full of excitement and enthusiasm. The long second track is more fluent, called "Ducks Call", and the contrast in physical power between the German and the Polish sax-player becomes all too apparent, although they do find each other in the content of what they're doing, mostly in short bursts of sounds, with the exception of the last track, an ode to Albert Ayler, that starts with a two minute solo intro by Brötzmann, full of raw power, and then listen how emotionally more subtle Trzaska joins, again the perfect complement for the German's tone, with Bauder's warm trombone lifting the whole piece up where it belongs, in the free sky, with Albert Ayler, the ducks and the geese.

Peter Brötzmann - A Night In Sana'a (ARM, 2010) **½

Interestingly enough, Brötzmann some years ago expressed his interest in playing with Arabic musicians, which he now finally does with this classical band from Sana'a, Yemen. The ban is Abdul-Aziz Mokrid on violin, Khalid Barkosch on cello, Achmed Al-Khalidy on kanun, Ali Saleh on ney, and Yasir Al-Absi on darbuka. The band is further completed with Michael Zerang on drums, who himself happens to be of Iraqi descent.

The first piece starts with the Yemenite band playing their classical Arabic music, accompanied by Zerang, with its typical sophisticated sad and spiritual tone, marked rhythmic unison lines, and long improvisations. When Brötzmann joins after six minutes, it sounds like the building is being invaded by godzilla in person, yet the terrified band keeps playing, and they are right, because godzilla apparently retreats so that they can bring their music to its expected finale.

To be honest : it just doesn't fit. Brötzmann lacks the skills to find common ground with the band from Yemen, nor do they seem particularly open to what the German does. Brötzmann's compositions are too bland, as compared to the opening and closing track. There are many other examples where traditional arabic music and jazz work very well, but not here. Brötzmann's endeavor to follow the melody on the second track is almost painful (as on the other pieces), yet it does work when he completely ignores the tune, and does his own thing just on top of it. Believe me : that works, and after a while there are even some great moments of powerful contrast.

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Tatsuya Nakatani & Forbes Graham - Essences (BLAQ - 2010) ****½

Tatsuya Nakatani plays all kinds of percussion: bells, gongs, small drums, bowls, while Forbes Graham plays trumpet and piccolo trumpet, yet most of what you hear are sounds: floating, flowing, fleeting, scraping, scratching, screeching : balanced, in the sense of real equilibrium between different elements that are quite active and dynamic, balanced in the sense of authentic expression of feelings and thoughts, rather than showing off skills, balanced, in the sense of using regular playing in combination with extended techniques.

  If the first piece, "Cardamom", is quiet and menacing, the second track, "Vanilla", starts with a trumpet like you've rarely heard it, full of a howling desire to escape from something unspeakable, then gradually shifting to flutelike whistles over an almost endless single vibrating tone coming from the gong. "Lavender" is full of intense bustle and interaction, shadowboxing on a square meter.

"Mhyrr" is more expansive, with stretched sounds and the trumpet and drums identifiable for what they are, with Forbes stepping it up, with hypnotic circular breathing moments, supported by Nakatani's subtle touches around the beat, a great pivotal improvisation around which the rest of the album revolves. With "Basil", we're back in the realm of minimalism, with both musicians playing almost the same whistling sounds despite the quite different nature of their instruments, a harmony of diversity. "Sage" is the mirror part to "Lavender". The last track, "Sandalwood" evolves again from recognizable instruments to weird growls and grunts, shouts and scraping, full of intense energy. Intimate and powerful.

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Stefan Keune, Hans Schneider, Achim Krämer - No Comment (FMP, 2009) ****

In the best European free improv tradition of in-the-moment intensity and dialogue, this trio with Stefan Keune on alto and baritone saxophones, Hans Schneider on bass, and Achim Krämer on drums, drive the concept on with maximum power and focus. All three musicians create together, quite egalitarian, on the spot. They investigate sound and timbre and how subtle nuances in pressure and interaction can change the color of the piece, add new dimensions. On the first track volume is of the essence, on the long second track this shifts to minimal squeeks, and plucks and plops, a careful and precise construction of musical dashes that create an interesting abstract canvas, evolving almost organically into the next piece, with the tempo increasing gradually, as does the volume. Over the eleven tracks, the same lightness and raw immediacy is upheld. Despite the lack of phrases, or melodious fluidity, the music still manages to create a linear movement with peaks and moments of increased intensity. This will not be for everyone's ears, but will please fans of Evan Parker and John Butcher.

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Jean-Luc Cappozzo - Joy Spirit (Quark, 2009) ****

On this solo album, French trumpeter Jean-Luc Cappozzo brings hommage to musicians who left a lasting impression on him, either through several evenings of playing music together, or because of long friendships. The musicians are Bernard Prouteau, Frank Lowe, André Zemp, Paul Rutherford, Dizzy Gillespie, Jacky Barbier, Wallace Davenport, Alain Guérini, Mal Waldron, and Siegfried Kessler. His solo improvisations are made with those late musicians on his mind. The result is quite varied, in tone and in style, sometimes meditative, sometimes exuberant, often adventurous, but also bluesy, sometimes classical. Even if the musicians are deceased, his tribute to them is one of joy : for what they offered, for what they meant, for how they made you feel. This joy he expresses using all these different styles and techniques, with timbres that range from multiphonic screeches and growls to intonations of classical purity. On one piece, "Jacky Barbier", he even gives the impression to laugh in his horn, on "Mal Waldron" he alternates on his custom trumpet between muted and unmuted, giving the impression of overdub playing. As you hear, lots of variation, lots of ideas, and skills, but first of all, the joy of music.

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