Category: Recordings
Poet and activist Amina Baraka, has just released, I believe, her first recording on the storied ESP-Disk label. Her album of spoken word and inside/outside jazz is a spot-on debut, drawing deeply on her life, culture, and politics. Baraka is the widow of writer, activist, and music critic, Amiri Baraka, mother of current Newark, NJ mayor Ras B…
Pianist and poet Elliot Cardinaux floats into this set of music and poetry quietly and when the first track ’Thicket’ ends on the phrase “There never were any Indians in Columbus’ America” you know something is happening, even if you don’t know exactly what it is. Though it took me a while to get to this album, when I finally dove in,…
I’ve had this new release from the David S. Ware Trio on heavy rotation for the past week. I do have a pile of other new records and a bunch of CDs sitting on my coffee table, plus several digital albums to contend with too, but they’re going to have to patiently wait their turn – this one is just too good to interrupt. Recorded at the Blue …
Something that has always fascinated me is the many ways instrumental music – without the help of lyrics – can be used to carry a message, to protest, or to advance a cause. A group of musicians out of the Bay Area in California have found their way by creating a record label which donates all proceeds to Planned Parenthood. Founders Vijay And…
For some reason, I lost track of Sexmob after 2003’s Dime Grind Palace,and so aftercatching a show by another long-standing Steven Bernstein group “Spanish Fly” a couple of months back, I wondered why this was. Diving back in with Cultural Capital had me instantly a bit nostalgic for the late 90’s/early 00’s in New York when there were groups…
Ok, let’s not judge this one by its cover. These guys do not exactly look like happy jazzers, but crack the CD open and listen, this is intense music, vivacious, vigorous, and full of lively twists and turns.Happy Jazzdelves into free improvisation with zeal, electric guitar lines snake around expressive bass work while bass clarinet melodies…
I’ve always enjoyed guitarist Bill Frisell’s duo work. His playing is always supportive, incisive, delicate, and persuasive, really everything a partner should be. Some collaborations that come to mind includehis 1998 meet up with pianist Fred Hersch (Songs We Know), a 2006 rendezvous with Jack DeJohnette(The Elephant Sleeps but Still Remember…
Shapeshifter Lab, tucked away in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn, is an impressive 4,200 square foot venue. The stage area alone is the size of most venues catering to experimental music. The area is gentrifying quickly – in the few years I’ve been attending more and more bars and coffee shops have been opening up and I am pretty sure there was…
The core of the group Dálava is the husband and wife team of vocalist Julia Úlehlaand guitarist Aram Bajakian. They released the first Dálava albumin 2014 and like The Book of Transfigurations,it is an exploration ofMoravian folk songs collected by Úlehla’s great-grandfather,sung in Czech, and set to the more contemporary downtown NYC…
Drummer Devin Gray’s quartet with guitarists Ryan Ferrier and Jonathan Goldberger, and bassist Chris Tordini is a potent post-rock explosion – at least that how it begins.
The two guitarists twist distorted sounds around like they are sculpting with sheet metal. Legato melodies are stretched over the sharp angles and effect laden structu…
Filosofer – landet er gitt oss (Nakama Records, 2016) ***½
‘Planet earth is about to be recycled … your only choice to survive is to leave with us,’ so says the omnipotent voice that begins ‘vi er universitet’. A loopish sequence of plucked strings follows, sounds rise and fall, explosions, synthetic drum beats, and waves of electronic nois…
BassistEivind Opsvik, originally from Norway but living in Brooklyn for a number of years, has been slowly releasing a series of albums with the title ‘Overseas’. Now on volume V, the group refines the more rock oriented sound that emerged on Vol IV, this time with a distinctive New Wave/No Wave intent.
So, no better place to do this th…
