A couple of weeks ago Stef wrote up a great review of guitar related albums. In it, he expressed concern that it seemed like many guitar albums went unreviewed on the blog … well, that’s probably true to some extent, as there is just too damn much good music in general, but I’d like to take a moment to point out some guitar album reviews from t…
A little while back I reviewed Lama’s Oneiros. It was a fantastic album, subtle and nuanced, but also with some more aggressive moments. Revisiting my last review, every word still fits this new live recording featuring guest woodwind player Chris Speed:
The pieces fit together so tightly that there’s hardly room for a wasted note, beat o…
ByMartin Schray andPaul Acquaro
Sometimes you come across an artist by chance. Although I (Martin) heard about Frank Gratkowski before, I haven’t seen him live or bought one of his albums. But since I go to all of the concerts Peter Ernst organizes in his seminal Nigglmühle (a spectacular location in Bernbeuren, a small village in the Alpine U…
In a very recent interview with Avant Music News, bandleader and composer Mark Dresser explains that the origins of his new album Nourishments began with a musical / culinary exchange between Chef Paul Canales and one of Dresser’s groups,Trio M,that included concerts with Canales cooking for the audience for between-set-dining.
Suffice to say,…
Bassist Brian Questa’s album Jazz Booty is not a loud album, but I think it’s best listened to that way. How else can you ensure that you are hearing all of guitarist Mary Halvorson’s slinky spiky runs, saxophonist Tony Malaby’s emotional melodies and Questa’s adventurous playing?
Take track 4, ‘Fast Booty (with)’, for example. It’s a quick n…
One of my favorite Bill Frisell albums is a duo recording he did with pianist Fred Hersch called Songs We Know from way back in 1998. Lyrical and spare, it breathed a life into tunes like ‘It May as Well be Spring’ that I found captivating. Well, fast forward a decade and a half and Hersch has released another excellent piano-guitar duo re…
Saxophonist Tim Berne’s compositions are never what you expect — or rather they are totally what you expect if you are hoping to be led to an unanticipated destination in a circuitous manner. Yet, no matter how unique each adventure is, you know that you’ll arrive safely, if somewhat addled.
Snakeoil’s first release was a highly lauded event,…
As Stef recently pointed out, our fortune here at the Freejazzblog is to be exposed to so much wonderful new music, and our curse is the unmanageable desire to listen and share every single one. So, sometimes we have to compromise and do a review ’round up’ style …
Chis Kelsey & What I Say – The Electric Miles Project (Self-released, 2…
Luis Lopes’ Humanization 4tet caught my interests a while back after I read a review of their eponymous first album. Indeed, as Stef described, the group still possesses a straight forwardness, backed up by raw intensity and sharp technical skills.Live in Madison was recorded in Madison, Wisconsin at the end of a US tour that the 4tet did in su…
You may know Devin Hoff as the bassist with Nels Cline Singers, here, he has hooked up with some of the Chicago’s avant-garde players in a project that “explores the intersections of late 70-s-early 80’s ‘post-punk’ and the electric avant-garde (or ‘free funk’) of roughly the same period…” (http://devinhoff.tumblr.com/). More importantly, h…
Pianist Rodger Coleman and drummer Sam Byrd’s collaboration is an energetic and succinct recording. Clocking in at a mere 35 minutes, there is not a scrap of waste onIndeterminate (Improvizations for Piano and Drums).
Captured live at the Zeitgeist Gallery in Nashville, near where pianist Coleman is based, Indeterminate is a vibrant doc…
I think that the opening track ‘Calumet’ is the sound of the bascule opening. The introduction to Tim Daisy and Jason Stein’s duo recording begins with the lowercase sounds of air but the mood is soon punctuated byrandom musical chatter and finally it all gives way to a steady and strong rhythmic bass clarinet and drumsstream ofconsciousness –…
