I suppose that Blixt is best described as a rock power trio. Working with industrial strength rhythms, thickly distorted leads and dark enveloping bass, the trio moves through a series of tough minded improvisations bracketed by short heads. However, as tough and stormy as the tunes may get at times, the musicianship and sensibilities of all invo…
The music starts getting tense midway through ‘Two’ on Matthew Shipp and Joe Morris’ vibrant new duo recording ‘Broken Partials’. Shipp extracts all the sound he possibly can from the piano while Morris, intense and focused on upright bass, contributes a swarm of sound below the piano. Soon, like Shipp, he is digging fiercely into the acoustic …
The Kris Wanders and Mani Neumeier Quintet’s Taken by Surprise is an excursion into free but highly melodic improvisation, and Wanders and Brett Evans’ tandem tenor saxophones on the the impassioned “Oxymoron” is an inspiring opener. The quintet is rounded out by Rory Brown on bass, Yusuke Akai on guitar and Neumeier on the drums. The rhythm s…
You could try approaching XYX actively listening to every nuance and rhythmic shift, analyzing and digesting every note. Or, you could let it wash over you, letting its sonic sandpaper exfoliate your mind. Either way, you will not be able to escape the tingling rawness it inflicts.
I’ve tried both approaches, during the same listening session. T…
‘Unknown Skies’ posseses an intriguing quality: it seems to be precisely imprecise, the strength of its cohesion built upon the tensions of it coming apart. Song heads could almost be improvisations, they seem so naturally unfolding, yet unison accompaniment belies their composition. Rhythms unfold loosely yet totally in control, and it makes fo…
I wonder what would make music like ‘Scowl’ of interest to the ‘lay’ listener? I suppose this is a question that has been asked in varying ways many times before, and no doubt will continue to be asked as members enter and (dare I say?) leave the fold of avant garde jazz. I don’t pretend to have an answer, nor will I even posit a theory, all I ca…
There is some quality to the Nels Cline Trio’s Silencer that keeps making me think of the first album by the jazz-rock trio Gateway. Cline’s guitar here is often a clean and clear fluid mix of single note runs and well placed double stops that echoes Abercrombie’s work decades earlier. Likewise, Cline dirties up his sound but often never quite ge…
The four musicians in the Kris Wanders Outfit connect at a level deep below the surface. Their primal collusion results in some dark and earthy improvised music that bares the soul while kicking up some serious dust.
Wanders, a tenor saxophonist from the European free jazz scene in the late 1960’s has made Australia his base since the late 70s a…
This guitar and piano duo album from Joe Morris and Agustí Fernández is an outing by like minded improvisors, happily extending the definition of melody and the physical limitations of their respective instruments. Between rich acoustic tones they scratch and pluck in unintended places, creating rhythm and melody in adventurous ways.
The serie…
Picked by John Zorn for his new Spotlight series on Tzadic records, one suspects something interesting must be is going on with Aram Bajakian’s trio. One spin of the Brooklyn based guitarists debut recording and these suspicions are confirmed. The songs on this album seductively, destructively and quite entertainingly blend passion, reverence and…
From Quebec, the Maikotron Unit refers to themselves as ‘mythic’ in some of their press material. Now, the ‘mythic’ may refer to the elusive maikotron, a reed instrument with a range that dips below that of the bass saxophone, or perhaps it is related to the scope or origin of their mission, which is “dedicated to research in New Music.” Regardle…
Joe McPhee’s Survival Unit III’s “Synchronicity” is a tough, dark and moving affair. His experience working the timbers and tones of the avant-garde with his saxophone and clarinet is on great display. The recording was made of a concert date at The Hideout in Chicago in 2007, the sound is excellent and the audience was obviously quite appreciati…
