Marty Ehrlich - Fables (Tzadik, 2010) ****½

I rarely review world jazz albums, although they used to be very high on my listening agenda. One of my favorites is Myriam Alter's "If", with clarinet, piano, bandoneon, bass and drums, a very intimistic, melodious and yet utterly creative album.

This album by Marty Ehrlich is of the same nature, and strangely enough with almost the same line-up, here with Ehrlich on clarinet, bass clarinet, flute, alto and soprano sax, Hankus Netsky on piano, and accordion, Marcus Rojas on tuba, and Jerome Harris on acoustic bass guitar. Although the line-up changes regularly, with one track, "Scroll N°2", consisting of Ehrlich on all his instruments in a haunting overdub.

The recipe are world music influences in scales and mood, with long unison themes and phrases, yearning sentiments and an all-permeating melancholy, played with such refinement and sensitivity that every note is a pleasure for the ear and heart. This is about beauty of sound and execution, not about adventure, but that makes the end-result not less creative (although I can imagine that the ferocious alto on "The Lion's Tanz" will not please regular mainstream listeners).

Despite the typical klezmer influence, Ehrlich goes far beyond the often too straight-forward replication of traditional klezmer in a modern context that characterises the "Radical Jewish Culture" series. This music takes it all a level higher, making it almost genre-less, with tunes that sound familiar to the European memory of street music, or to the human subconscious "tout court".

Highlight of the album is the soprano-piano duo "Rozo D'Shabbos", a classic but so full of emotional depth, together with the dark closing tune "Scroll N°3", with accordion, bass clarinet and tuba, which suddenly shifts to full joy.

Without a doubt the most sentimental of albums I have listened to in many years, but it's luckily on the right side of tastefulness, with no cheap effects and feelings, but expressing genuine emotional depth, musical creativity and vision. Don't underestimate the feat : it is incredibly difficult to turn the familiar into something so authentic, personal and fresh. A major achievement.

Listen and download from iTunes.

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Powerhouse Sound - Overlap (Laurence Family, 2010) ****

The second album by Powerhouse sound brings several tracks of the first album : "New Dirt", "Coxsonne", "Acid Scratch", "2-1-75", "Shocklee", "Exit Salida". Actually, only "Broken Numbers" is a new track, penned for the band in 2007, properly rehearsed, and with two versions on this album. This repetition with their debut album more than explains the album's title.

Powerhouse Sound is Ken Vandermark on saxophones, Jeff Parker on guitar, Nate McBride on bass and electronics, and John Herndon on drums.

I think the album is much better than the first one: it has the same rhythmic power with McBride and Herndon making the music an absolute fun and funky joy. As we all know, Vandermark is a great improviser on funky beats, and he does not disappoint us here. Parker is excellent, from the raw noise to rock-like bridges, reggae touches, jazzy and rock soloing, with wah-wah and all, sometimes all in the same piece, as on "Exit Salida". Together with the electronics, Parker is a kind of jamming station for the overall sound, at times breaking the rhythms and the tempo, adding abrasive touches to smooth surfaces, adding doses of toxicity, which by itself are sometimes off-putting but when the quartet picks up the compelling rhythmic musical power out of the debris, you want to jump up and dance.

Despite the overlap, this is an easy album to recommend. If you like great rhythms, high energy playing and raw power, brought by excellent musicians, then look no further.

Watch the band with "Coxsonne" some years ago



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Vyacheslav Guyvoronsky - Pieces For String Trio And Trumpet (Leo, 2010) ****½

Russian trumpeter Vyacheslav Guyvoronsky usually does several things to me : his technical skills are awe-inspiring, with a background from classical to avant-garde, but with a musical vision that is so full of conflict that it disturbs me. The conflict is the one between serious heart-felt emotions, musical playfulness and even silly jokes.

The same is true on this great album with an equally fabulous string trio, with Vladislav Pesin on violin, Dmitry Yakubovsky on alto violin, and Mikhail Degryarev on cello. But the good thing is that the majority of the ten pieces are serious, with elements of classical romanticism, avant-garde dissonance, folk tunes, middle-eastern scales, ... you name it, it's here. "Pastoral Fugue" is a nice example, starting with solo trumpet, heart-rending, then being joined by a lovely folk tune on the violins, which evolves in Bach-like counterpoints of the three string instruments, with the trumpet acting as the improvising party.

All pieces are through and through composed, at least for the strings, which gives Guyvoronsky the ample opportunity to soar over it and react in any way he feels, including not playing at all on the third piece, "Puzzles". 

On "Fugure With A Lost Theme", his trumpet-playing, unvoiced and weeping, acts as a disturbing factor over the classical trio, a great conflict of styles, but the effect is fantastic. "Sol-fa In Tibetan Style" starts with drone-like strings and bluesy sad trumpet, but then the piece starts picking up speed, with a more middle-eastern than Tibetan feel, adding rhythmic complexities and vocals, full of rhythmic emphasis : weird but it works well. "Ballad" is again all melancholy, but then on the right side of sentimentalism. But I assume Guyvoronsky thought that four minutes of seriousness was more than enough, so then comes "Burgher's Concert", a fun piece, and a great showcase for his exceptional technique, with a tune fit for the "Comedy Capers", which even includes his trumpet laughing full-heartedly.

The album ends with the slow and beautiful "Saraband".

In short, it is fantastic. But then I wonder what it would sound like if he had left out the jokes. Would it be better? Would it be more coherent? Would it still be Guyvoronsky? And then I think possibly not. In contrast to some of his previous albums, I think he found the right balance between artistry and entertainment.

Highly unusual, but great music by four stellar musicians. 

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Mark Dresser - Guts (Kadima, 2010) ****

When I introduced myself to Mark Dresser after a concert, he said "So, you're the guy who always writes negative reviews", and that was the end of the conversation. Until earlier today he was of course totally wrong, but now he's suddenly right, but not because of this new CD and DVD he released.

If you ever buy this album, listen to the CD first. And listen in wonder.

Then watch the DVD. On it, there is an interview with his colleague college professor Roger Reynolds, and an interview with Dresser himself about music, interplay, spontaneous creation, context and control, the use of eletronics, and many more topics. Lots of interesting stuff. But the real treat, for bass-players and non-bass players is the following hour of Dresser's explanation and demonstration of the tricks of his trade. This is very rare and incredibly instructive.

You get information on two-handed pizzicato, on falsetto flautando, on bitones and artificial harmonics, lots on partials, on bowing techniques, on multiphonics, just all these great sounds you often hear without actually knowing how they're created. This is stuff that you hear at a Dresser concert, but actually never manage to notice because of the distance or the speed. But he is a great teacher: his explanations are precise - though read - and his demonstrations are easy to follow and understand. To the non-bass player that I am, it was all very enlightening, and I hope it will too for those of you playing the instrument.

Then listen to the CD on which all these techniques are put into practice, not for demonstration purposes but to make music with. True, the CD will keep its didactic nature (it kind of lingers on in the brain), but then the sounds and the music he displays here are absolutely fabulous, from the gut-wrenching Hendrix-like tones on "Innard Pulse", on which sliding near unisons break up into sliding descending gestures returning to bitones, over the weird sonic environment of "Demus", which starts intimately yet gradually destabilises the listener with haunting urgency, to the more common sounds of the bass played pizzi on "Duohandum", but then played with both hands plucking the strings and playing the notes, giving the impression of two basses playing simultaneously, or the magnificent "imagE/contrabass" on which his subtle arco tones will move you to tears.

The CD could stand on its own. The upside of the whole is also its downside. When listening to the CD, you cannot but think back about the wealth of demonstrated techniques, wondering which one is being used, and that's detracting the listener's attention  - or at least mine - from some great solo bass. So you should keep listening to it again and again, till the only thing you hear is the music.

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Guitars, guitars, guitars, guitars

The guitar is possibly the only instrument in jazz without a natural voice. It needs amplification so as to be part of the overall acoustic sound of a regular jazz band. The electric guitar is a dead instrument without electricity. Since Hendrix demonstrated the power of the latter in creating sonic expressivity, the instrument became truly something else.

Through rock music, the guitar has become a symbol of machism. None of the other instruments even come close to the number of Youtube clips of young guys demonstrating the speed and complexity of their skills, in the ongoing competitive guitar battle to be the fastest, the loudest, the most energetic, the rawest. Why is that? And yes, it is sometimes amazing what technique they have at a young age. But musical skills? None, more often than not. Why? Because it's not about the music.

The kids talk about their guitars and pedals and amps like car afficionados talk about horse power, and suspension, and aerodynamics, ... all very technical and impressive, but it's machism again. It's showing off, with the little kid still inside of them shouting, "look at me, look at, look at me, look what I can do".

Because there are today absolutely no limits to what you can do with the sound of a guitar, the real challenge resides in how to control this power to turn it into something meaningful, with new sounds, unexpected sounds, moving sounds, rather than the endless demonstration of technicalities.

Clean Feed asked Elliott Sharp to compile the modern jazz guitar album, highlighting some of today's best artists.

Various Artists - I Never Met A Guitar (solo guitars for the XXI Century) (Clean Feed, 2010) ***

The album consists of sixteen pieces, by the following musicians : Brandon Ross, Elliott Sharp, Gunnar Geisse, Henry Kaiser, Janet Feder, Jean-François Pauvros, Jeff Parker, Kazuhisa Uchihashi, Mary Halvorson, Michael Gregory, Mick Barr, Mike Cooper, Nels Cline, Noel Akchote, Raoul Björkenheim, Scott Fields.

The great thing about the album is the breadth of material that Sharp put together, and the quality and variety of the pieces.

There are some real discoveries here for me : Jean-François Pauvros is absolutely brilliant, demonstrating the beauty of slowness and emotional depth of his extended techniques; Mike Cooper playing on acoustic guitar, very bluesy and sensitive,

And my favorite guitar players of the moment are excellent too on the album : Noël Akchoté playing a crisp and sweet ballad, so does Nels Cline with possibly the most jazzy piece on the album, Raoul Björkenheim showing how subtlety and rawness can be combined, Brandon Ross on his six-string banjo.

Then there are of course the guys who have barely anything to tell, or at least they play stuff that we've heard so often before, and that leave me quite indifferent : either the blues (Michael Gregory), avant-garde emptiness (Kazuhisa Uchihashi), high speed emptiness (Mick Barr).

For the guitar freaks, some technical detail is given too about the mics and amps and guitar-builders, but it's all within the boundaries of acceptability.

That being said, most of the tunes are not jazz at all. Lots of new ideas and insights into modern guitar playing. Not everything works though, and that's possibly as well.

Elliott Sharp - Octal Book Two (Clean Feed, 2010) ***

As the sequel to his "Octal, Book One", Elliott Sharp keeps pushing the same envelope, playing little notes on his custom-made Saul Koll 8-string guitar, adding more pretense in his liner notes than ever before "The solo compositions are my most personal and while existing as formal music, they also exist as meta-music: outlines and strategies for ensemble pieces, examinations of orchestration and extended techniques, and most importantly, meditations on readings in various topics but especially in contemporary physics, genetics and mathematics". The guy's not only a guitar genius, he's just a genius "tout court".

I cannot keep myself from adding the following from the liner notes : "The piezo was plugged into a very hi-fi K&K Pure Pre-Amp and from there into my all-valve 1980 Fender 75 with a 15" speaker... The 75 was mic'd with a Neumann TLM170 condensor into a Styck preamp and the Pears with a Royer 121 ribbon into a Focusrite ISA220 preamp.A Neumann TLM103 into Sytek channel to gather some acoustic tones completed the picture".

Why is it that only guitar-players talk like that? And sure all this may be important and true, you still need the creative musical insight that is compelling to listeners. At the circus you are impressed by the skills of the acrobats, in the theater you are moved by the actors. That's the difference between entertainment and art. I fear the focus here is more on the former.

Dead Country, Featuring Eugene Chadbourne (Konnex, 2010)

The first track is fantastic because it's wild and unrelenting. The band is Şevket Akıncı and Umut Çağlar on electric guitar, Demirhan Baylan on bass and Kerem Oktem on drums. Eugene Chadbourne plays guitar, banjo and sings. The second track leads into total disillusion with the traditional "Mole In The Ground", a bluesy piece played and sung in the vein of Captain Beefheart, but then of poor quality and becoming pretty irritating after a few lines. Somehow it continues like this, sounding like a garage band on speed. I think this band may have been better off without Chadbourne.

Çağrı Erdem - Connected (Re:Konstrukt, 2010)

Also from Turkey, this band has a lot more to tell, and it does it well, with Çağrı Erdem and Umut Çağlar on guitars, Michael Hays on double bass, and Ekin Cengizkan on drums. At moments Çağlar looses himself a little too much in the possibilities of his guitar-synthesizer, especially on the first track, but the playing is good, jazz-influenced with a rock attitude. Especially the second piece, "The Flux Identity", is haunting.

Pascal Maupeu - Folk Standards (Sans Bruit, 2010) 

Pascal Maupeu plays acoustic folk blues guitar. An unexpected release from an avant-garde French jazz label, but then of course what would jazz be without the blues. Maupeu's playing is sensitive and precise, and despite the limitations of the setting, it is fun listening to.

Steve Tibbetts - Natural Causes (ECM, 2010)

On fifteen pieces of 12-string acoustic guitar with occasionally piano, Steve Tibbetts, assisted by Marc Anderson on percussion, does his best to keep the attention going, but the monotony of the playing fails with me. Sure, his technique is strong, but his compositions are not memorable and you really need someone like Egberto Gismonti's emotional drive, working with volume and rhythm and sudden changes, to be compelling for a mostly solo acoustic album. It is given to very few do bring that to a good end. Maybe I'm too restless for this kind of music.




Dither (Henceforth, 2010) 

Dither is a guitar quartet from New York, consisting of Taylor Levine, David Linaburg, Joshua Lopes and James Moore. Their music shifts with each track, from the quite minimalist, or all powerful drone with the occasional scream coming out of the background, to bizarre sound experiments and fully arranged compositions. Alright, so what?


I am not in a good mood, maybe, and I hate writing negative stuff, but there you go.

One message to guitar-players : stop ego-tripping and use your instrument as a device to tell a story, and not as the story in itself.


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Erik Friedlander

No doubt one of the most prominent cello-players in modern jazz, and an essential part of the overall sound of John Zorn's musical universe, Erik Friedlander has turned fifty, and for the occasion he brings us two albums. He has been searching for his own voice as a musician, hesitating between the jazzy "Broken Arm Trio", the more ambitious "classical" sound of "Grains Of Paradise", or the more modern studio work like "Block Ice & Propane", or avant-garde work as with Dani or Teardo. His work with the Masada String Trio is possibly the easiest to recommend.

Erik Friedlander - 50 Miniatures For Improvising Quintet (Skipstone, 2010) ****

Fifty short pieces of music are clustered in seven groups of seven pieces, plus one at the end to round it off. The structure is inspired by the "50 Gates Of Understanding": 49 days of self-evaluation and character development undertaken by Moses and the Israelites during the Exodus. After seven weeks, they were ready to receive the covenant, the "10 Commandments", on the 50th day. Apart from this being mentioned in the liner notes, I am not sure how this information is relevant for the music.

Sure, there are the obligatory klezmer influences, but the overall sound does not sound religious at all. And that's probably a good thing. The band is Jennifer Choi on violin, Erik Friedlander on cello, Sylvie Courvoisier on piano, Trevor Dunn on bass, and Mike Sarin on percussion.

Despite the incredible short length of the pieces, the overall result is quite coherent, with sometimes sudden unexpected violent intrusion in more sensitive pieces, but the contrast works well. Not only is the playing excellent, but Friedlander is full of musical ideas, sufficiently so to make the short snippets of music - sometimes quite structured, sometimes seemingly improvised - utterly compelling.

The only downside of the approach is the total impossibility to expand on any given idea, somehow crucial to jazz, reducing the identification of the listener with the music, or to say it differently, not long enough to allow the listener to become truly part of the music. Each time you start to be in the tune, it's already gone, evaporated, sucked up by the past. And that effect is possibly what it may feel like to become fifty: time flows by, ungraspable, and it's gone before you know it.


Erik Friedlander - Alchemy (Skipstone, 2010) ***½

Originally only released on vinyl, this album brings a collection of moody and sad pieces, primarily played by Friedlander on cello with overdubs, and with Teho Teardo on keyboards and guitar on "The Wrong Answers".The music is almost like a soundtrack, full of direct emotions and easy to remember themes, quite accessible and atmospheric. Friedlander's playing  - on especially the opening track - is absolutely fabulous. Against the quiet and softly plucked backdrop, his arco will drag you from dark deep tones to heart-piercing and precise high tones, all in one natural and effortless movement.

Several of the tracks are dedicated to or inspired by authors : Ken Follett, Robert Frost, Cormac McCarthy, John Berryman.

Luckily it is not all misery and sadness, pieces like "Wag" often a fun change, "Lee Av" is a gospel tune, and because of its predictable harmonics somewhat less interesting, "Folly" is a short piece with eery electronics.

It is good, but not essential in Friedlander's discography. 

Erik Friedlander - Aching Sarah (Skipstone, 2010)

A digital single, released earlier this year, and freely downloadable from the artist's website, with Erik Friedlander, cello, electronics and piano programming, Michael Leonhart on trumpet and mellophone, Trevor Dunn on acoustic bass, and Satoshi Takeishi on percussion. Nice and sweet.

Listen and/or download the track here.

Listen and download all albums from Erik Friedlander's website.


Watch a great solo clip by Friedlander

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Clare Cooper - Hammeriver (Mikroton, 2010) ****

Sometimes, almost out of nowhere, new stuff arises that is utterly compelling as it is convincing. Australian harpist Clare Cooper does exactly that with her debut album. She is accompanied by a stellar and like-minded band, consisting of Chris Abrahams on grand piano, Tobias Delius on tenor saxophone and clarinet, Werner Dafeldecker and Clayton Thomas on double bass, Christof Kurzmann on lloopp, Tony Buck on drums.

The music is dedicated and inspired by the music of Alice Coltrane, the first piece even being an interpretation of the latter's "Ohnedaruth". The band keeps Coltrane's hypnotic, almost ritualistic use of repetition and improvisations around the same tonal center, but pushes it a step further into every modern music, far beyond jazz.

"First Free" consists of sparse notes and noises that create a kind of uncanny background of the stretched notes of the sax. The concept is even brought to its extreme on "E", in which the E chord is the solid anchor point around which everything evolves, expands and contracts. The minor variations and shifting sound colors of the instruments make it really hypnotic. On "DD" the minimalism is still more explicit, and it is hard to believe that seven musicians are at work here, but they are. "Heartbreaker" ends the CD, and despite its shortness, the sonic universe is as interesting as on the other tracks.

The harp is a very unusual instrument in modern jazz, with Alice Coltrane and Zeena Parkins the only musicians that come to mind, but Clare Cooper demonstrates that it can add magic to the genre if played well. And she combines this with her own powerful musical vision, and a remarkably strong one for a debut album.  

Listen and download from eMusic.


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DeepTonesForPeace (Kadima, 2010) ****

So far two albums were played by double bass quartets, William Parker's "Requiem" for four basses, in memory of Peter Kowald and Wilber Morris, with Henry Grimes, Sirone and Alan Silva, and with Charles Gayle on sax, and "For all it is", with  Barry Guy, Barre Phillips, J.F.Jenny-Clark, Palle Danielson, accompanied by Stu Martin on percussion.

Now JC Jones, a bass-player from Israel, and the boss of the Kadima label, and William Parker stretch it even further, with no less than fifteen bass players, playing together in two different locations over the internet, without being "compromised" by other instruments.

In Jerusalem, the musicans are Thierry Barbe (France), Mark Dresser (USA), Irina-Kalina Goudeva (Bulgaria/Denmark),Chi-chi Nwanoku (UK), Michael Klinghoffer (Israel),  Bertram Turetzky (USA), J.C. Jones (Israel), Barre Phillips (USA/France),

In New York, the musicians are Trevor Dunn (USA),  Henry Grimes (USA), Lindsey Horner (USA), Rufus Reid (USA),William Parker (USA),  David Phillips (USA), Sarah Weaver (USA).

The purpose of the meeting is to create a movement for peace in the Middle-East.  As William Parker writes in the liner notes "Philosophically, it is about making a commitment and truly believing that the music that we are doing can really bring about balance in the world".

The music is more than just dark and deep rumbling as you might expect. The long movements come and go like waves, but there is the occasional arco solo, jazzy or classical, or a common reduction of the volume, or explorations on the basis of a dissonant phrase, some sudden pizzi changing the course of the music again, .... or some sad and melancholy bowing over a backdrop of a mourning bass choir, It is more than just a political statement for peace. It is also worth listening to with shifting colors and shades of sound, pitch and volume.

But it is all more than just a CD + DVD, carefully produced and with a nice full-color booklet, it is also an ongoing project, with bassists playing their pieces for peace at regular intervals. Go to DeepTonesForPeace for more information.

DeepTonesForPeace will be performing on October 8 at the International Double Bass Convention in Berlin, Germany. 

An excerpt from the DVD can be viewed here.

William Parker ends his introduction with the following sentence : "May deep tones for peace echo and resound across the universe".

We hope they do.

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Andrew Lamb - New Orleans Suite (Engine, 2010 re-issue) ****

In the wake of hurricane Katrina's catastrophe in New Orleans, several musicians captured tried to express what they felt about the situation in what they do best : their music. Possibly trumpetist Terence Blanchard's "A Tale Of God's Will" is best known, like its title a tasteless amalgam of strings, cheap drama en ditto sentimentality, but with excellent trumpet playing.

This album is almost entirely the opposite : a cheap production, with a musical and emotional authenticity that is as rich as it gets. The anger, the political criticism, the sadness, the powerlessness : it is all here, in the text of "Dyes and Lyes", the first track, but also in the music of this great trio : Andrew Lamb (aka the Black Lamb) on sax, Tom Abbs on bass and Warren Smith on drums, now re-issued on Engine records. All three musicians have played extensively before, and released in duo or quartet line-ups.

Their approach is direct and straight from the heart.  The cynicism and ironic joyful tune and text of the first track, with some great lines such as these ....

"Mother Nature just staged a terrorist act on ou' ass
And for once in a loooooong time, not a muslim was blamed"

"We're gonna rebuild it
Better than before
Of course we'll have to
Eliminate the poor.
That includes the culture
That the place was famous for"

... soon evaporates for the more serious stuff. The lengthy "Katrina's Path" is an almost intimate piece of subdued desolation and despair. "Rescue Me", with its pumping bass and high tempo percussion results in the cry for help the title refers to. "Black Water"starts with one of Warren Smith's major strengths : to tell stories through percussion. Listen to the initial chirping of the crickets over chimes and bells, contrasted by deep rumbling sounds of scraping his drum heads. The piece evolves with no real sense of direction, but the playing is excellent: unassuming but genuine, and gets even more sensitive and nuanced on the next, more joyous piece. The album ends on a positive note, with a joyful tune played on the harmonica, accompanied by whistle, bass and drums. Because of the lack of a strong lead instrument, it strangely lacks substance, ending quite indecisively and helpless with no climax or finale at all.

The album was possibly the first to commemorate the devastating events of 2005, and in my opinion a strong and real statement.


Watch Andrew Lamb and Warren Smith, here with Harrison Bankhead on bass :



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Frode Gjerstad, Skaset, Grenager, Tafjord, Mølstad, Moe - Sekstett (Conrad Sound, 2010) ****

Norwegian saxophonist Frode Gjerstad, here on clarinet, has many faces and has always been open to innovative approaches. On his latest albums he moved away from his former lyrical free jazz playing into more short bursts free improv, but on this album he ventures into totally new realms: those of the minimalist soundscapers or soundscrapers, in the "tradition" of AMM. He is accompanied by fellow countrymen  Håvard Skaset on guitars, Lene Grenager on cello, Hilde Sofie Tafjord on French horn, Børre Mølstad on tuba, Guro Skumsnes Moe on double bass.

All musicians manage to create sounds unknown to their instruments, through the use of lots of extended techniques, resulting in weird sonic environments with their own dynamics and tensions. The music is entirely acoustic and at more than one moment you wonder how these sounds have come to life : scraping hollow howls alternated by sustained and stretched overtones on all instruments, or percussive effects when no percussion is in the line-up.

Beyond that surprise, there is the fantastic joy of the end result, that is partly sad, partly gloomy, sometimes joyful, yet always sensitive and precise, full with gravitas. As is the case with the subgenre, there is no real soloing, but a communal creation of music. It has an authentic purity that is hard to describe.

Somehow, the future of music is here ...

Listen and download from eMusic.


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