Category: Recordings

Something that is striking, though subtle, about Devin Gray’s latest recording, a solo drum with electronics outing, is the attention to visual detail. With few exceptions, from the digital music perspective, artwork has gotten the short end of the stick, but here, each track has a different piece of imagery associated with it. Some are abstract, s…

Listening to The Selva makes me feel like I am in on a secret, their music is
a clandestine whisper in my ears, and I like to listen with headphones. The
message moves slowly, it oozes, it delivers in little hits, like dopamine, its
takes over, and I acquiesce obligingly.

Camarão-Girafa, the Portuguese trio’s fourth album, delivers …

have you ever wondered is an ear-catching set of music that makes use of the sonic environment of the bell tower of the lovely Notre-Dame de la Drèche in France, a Catholic church in the French countryside dating from the 14th century. As composer and bassist Pascal Niggenkemper explains, the album is “chamber music for carillon, trumpet, voice, e…

Any recording by FUSK is great combination of snappy melodies and free-jazz excursions, humor and wisdom. The quartet, which sprang forth from the
compositional mind of drummer Kasper Tom Christiansen over a decade ago, features Tomasz Dąbrowski’s tasteful trumpet, Andreas Lang’s ebullient bass,
and Rudi Mahall’s brash and buoyant bass an…

I first heard saxophonist patrick brennan play at a solo show at Downtown Music
Gallery, long long ago in a galaxy far far away. I recall being quite impressed with his fiery and rhythmic playing and on his
tremendous Tilting Curvaceous, a quintet recording featuring a stellar
cast of musicians, brennan merges his effusi…

While part 1 of this feature focused on German saxophonist and bass clarinetist Gebhard Ullmann’s acoustic work, part 2 considers his recent electronic leaning work. We begin by going a bit further back, to 2021 and then shoot ahead into the near future… GULPH of Berlin – self titled (ESP Disc’, 2021)

Ok, so this one was released mid-pandemic in…

Last year, German woodwind player and composer Gebhard Ullmann turned 65, but judging by his recent output, it seems safe to say that retirement is not on the agenda. In fact, between the latter half of 2022 and into early 2023, he has released an impressive batch of recordings that not only bristle
with creative energy but also show off quite …

By
Paul Acquaro,
Tom Burris,
and
Gary Chapin

The Sam Rivers ArchiveSeries looks to be a beautiful
physical manifestations of the love and respect that NoBusiness Record’s
DanasMikailionis has for NYC loft era free jazz (we’re working with PDFs
and digital files but I, for one, have my copy on
pre-order!). Over the …

Abdul Moiméme. Photo (c) Nuno MartinsIntroduction

This past summer, late July to be more precise, I had a partial chance
encounter with guitarist/sound sculpture Abdul Moimême outside of the Jazz Messengers record shop in Lisbon. I say ‘partial’
because we had been in touch about his latest recordings and had made loose
plans to …

So, you know the old joke, “when is a guitar not a guitar?” No? Ok, that is likely because it doesn’t exist, besides, the guitar is always a guitar, even when it is being played in utterly unexpected ways. Like, for example, the double guitars of Lisbon’s Abdul Moimême, which are laid flat on tables and played with various tools, rather than by be…

This is a bit unusual, it is a review of a recording that is still being made. Saxophonist Catherine Sikora has undertaken an ambitious project to record a solo piece every day for the month of December and add to Winter Solos, available in its evolving form from Bandcamp. The first track, ‘Winter Solos #1,’ is by far the longest track (so far) at …

At a point during the track ‘Space for Hour’ on vibraphonist Patricia Brennan’s More Touch, I was pretty sure I heard guitarist Mary Halvorson’s patented pitch bends. However, a quick glance at the album credits pointed out that this was actually coming from Brennan’s set-up. Originally from Mexico, Brennan appeared on the New York scene in recently…