Anthony Braxton Quartet | Standards (Brussels) 2006 | Amirani Records

Anthony Braxton’s periodical incursions in standards repertory are always a new way to think classical structures. His style is immediately clear: pixeling notes, sudden fastness, stretched sentences. A live recording with all the freshness one needs to be in deep touch with creativity and joyous interplay. Italian partners provide a vivid sustain, an evocative tone palette, a great rhythmic support and sincere brilliant solos.

An elegant cardboard 6 CD box (Decca style) including a 26 pages booklet with three little essays by Italian poet and writer Erika Dagnino Continue reading

EAR & NOW | Eclipse | Amirani Records

Eclipse is a wind, opening and moving the pages of a book, hidden to our attention because too important, too inexorable. It’s a music that soon leaves its first aesthetical dimension to begin to dig up, as a drop, as a bedded narration,a choir. A same story we pass through, we listen as told in different places, with different shadings, from different sides. As if the possibility to come across a time, through scenes that freeze themselves in a sort of tableau vivant, animated by dense symbols. Great and overwhelming, ritual and evocative, the Eclpise still retains the power of admonition, of calling to re-consider our single perspectives as parts of a pulsing complexity, we can’t properly describe.

EAR&NOW delivers a perfected work where it is easier to feel the harshness of lives moving there, like sharpnesses of a tide, darkened by a lunar Eclipse. Eclipse is each one’s other side. Continue reading

Gianni Mimmo | Angelo Contini | Xabier Iriondo | Elda Papa | Agua Mimmo | Kursk – truth in the end | Amirani Records

Starting from an extremely accurate recording of a performance by Gianni Mimmo, Angelo Contini and Xabier Iriondo in an italian ancient church and then working on the music as on a real storyboard, here is a thrilling, touching, exciting DVD about the tragically epic adventure of the Russian nuclear submarine, realized in an intense relationship between music and images. Drama is explored in an imaginative creative way. From launch to point of no return, Elda Papa’s photos and Agua Mimmo’s movie along with Xabier Iriondo’s sound treatments keep each tragedy step in its epic-metaphorical aspect. Don’t miss this great work! Continue reading

ElectroAcousticSilence | Flatime | Amirani Records

Second excellent work for ElectroAcousticalSilence on Amirani, here is an awesome sound investigation, with lyrical flights in a contemporary atmosphere and sudden perspective changes in depth, space, drama and warmth.Pisani’s bassoon poetry and Cosottini fluegelhorn sweetness find in Taketo Gohara‘s sound design a new teathrical dimension and a vertigo delight, excellently sustained and pushed by the groovy dash of Pedol’s grounding bass and the Melani’s refined drums. Continue reading

Gianni Mimmo | Xabier Iriondo | Your Very Eyes | Amirani Records

Performance recorded early on a sunny dawn, June the 24th, 2007, in an ancient 10th century cave-church in a magic stone town named Matera, South of Italy. The church is named Santa Lucia alle Malve. Summer solstice is a holy moment in so many and various traditions. We chose there because of the sound of these alveolar stones. Not only we had beautiful reverbes and resonant echoes but the sound seemed to go into the stones themselves.
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Halfpipe | Open Curtain | Mudoks Record

A handful of children on the way to all aspects of their sound. So you can call a company to confront young people with new and improvised music, so that they can do in this rather unusual profession her musical experience. Other hand, the most original field from which they just develop and will hopefully grow even more. The unbiased natural play with the possibilities that the moment offers. Similar to the “Godfather” of this recording Giacinto Scelsi, the young people draw from the reservoir which feeds them from the improvisation making it reflective tho their vocabulary to apply and further develop awareness. Continue reading

Wendell Harrison | The 8th House: Riding with Pluto | Entropy Stereo Recordings

The 8th House is a disc of solo clarinet and saxophone improvisations with a few duets with Juma Santos thrown in. Wendell Harrison and the Tribe were pioneers along with BAG in St. Louis and the AACM in Chicago. Here Wendell recalls some of the freedom and soul from his early work with the Tribe in Detroit. He is joined by percussionist Juma Santos on a few tracks. You may recall Juma from his work with Miles Davis on the Bitches Brew record, or some of his work with Marion Brown. Continue reading

Trevor Watts and Jamie Harris | Ancestry | Entropy Stereo Recordings

On Ancestry, Trevor approaches improvisation in a more stripped down approach with percussionist Jamie Harris. Both Watts and Harris combine an incredible sense of rhythm with exploration and subtlety. The recordings were culled from live performances and more intimate settings at Trevor’s home studio to give a balance of the high energy of performance and relaxed musical exploration between friends. The end result is a stunning document of duo interplay on various hand percussion and reed instruments. Continue reading