Labels

Bryan Rogers ­| Alban Bailly | Matt Engle | David Flaherty | YAPP | Symbolic Heads | No Business Records

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Even for the standards of NoBusiness a label that sometimes features artists who haven’t been very well known so far, YAPP is a really young band, all of the band members seem to be around 30. It’s Bryan Rogers ­on tenor saxophone, Alban Bailly ­on guitar, Matt Engle ­on bass and David Flaherty ­on drums, and they cultivate the field between post rock, modern jazz, minimal and improvised music. — Martin Schray Continue reading →

Giacomo Papetti | Emanuele Maniscalco | Gabriele Rubino | Small Choices | Aut Records

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Small Choices focuses its research on contemporary improvised music, in constant relationship with the practice of composition – including original tunes as well as some personal re- interpretation of influent works from the 20th Century (Ligeti, Messiaen, Sibelius and Gershwin) – reaching a delicate balance between extemporariness and organization. In this scenario “small choices” become necessary in every moment. Strongly influenced by a certain “eccentricity” in contemporary art music and by the expressive power of jazz and free improvisation, this small ensemble expresses itself through an unpredictable and intimate interplay, searching for its own integrity and following its natural urges, easily crossing borders between musical genres. Continue reading →

Andrea Laino | LAAND | Electrical Landscapes | Aut Records

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Electrical Landscapes documents a solo research on electric guitar made by Andrea Laino for the project LAAND. The first part is an improvised session focused on timbric exploration in which sounds are generated through some non-conventional techniques and a few objects. All the audio materials have been recorded using an analog delay, a nail file, other objects and devices. No overdubs were added during the recording, except for track n.4. The second part is freely inspired by William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch. Some of the readings recorded by Burroughs himself have been used, in connection with the cut-up technique made so popular by this author. The sound poetry dimension inspired Laino’s work and his radical improvised approach to the composition. Continue reading →

Kongrosian | Bootstrap Paradox | Aut Records

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The music of Kongrosian is free jazz or is it improvisational jazz? I think both terms will bring to mind complete freedom, which for a few may mean “lack of organization or direction”, which in their case is untrue. Bootstrap Paradox (Aut) is a collaborative effort between the trio and Oreste Sabadin, and together they make music with a small bit of foundation, but then they each have the freedom to go anywhere and everywhere with what they do. In fact, the group say they are “a trio + 1″, and the role of that +1 is open to anyone who wants to join them. I love the concept of music that is “in the making”, or at least music that sounds like it’s being assembled as you hear it. You may hear trumpets, saxophones, and a bass clarinet play an off-key melody, while another clarinet plays around and within that melody, only for another instrument to follow, which in turns follows something else. It’s like an onion unveiling new layers, and you’re not sure whether to enjoy the onion or keep peeling. That’s the joy of such pieces as “I’m A Strange Loop”, “Fractal Structure Of Revolutions”, and “No, sir, away! A papaya war is on!”, the words have no reason for being there and perhaps the sounds are the same. They don’t belong, but do because that’s how it’s combined, to create these reckless sounds that may make you want to join in and play. Bootstrap Paradox is an album that is far from lacking any direction, the fun is trying to compile the sounds and figure out what they’ll do next. I look forward to their next destination. — John Book Continue reading →

Hanam Quintet feat. Tristan Honsinger | Aut Records

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Hanam is a Berlin based quintet of musicians coming from different geographic areas: well know musicians like Horst Nonnenmacher (who has been part of the Improvisors poll, a group born to celebrate the collaboration between two jazz monsters as Alex Von Schlippenbach and Sam Rivers) and Alison Blunt (of various important collaborations and member of the London Improvisers orchestra that gathers, together with the Glasgow orchestra, the best of the avant-garde jazz of today in UK), joined here by the fresh possibilities of pianist Nikolai Menhold and two saxophonists, Anna Kaluza on alto sax and Manuel Miethe on soprano sax. Hanam is the perfect demonstration of how singularities can be sublimated: the interplay is the essential referring point where, in a sort of secret conduction, the musicians work on sharing energies. Each one knows how use their personal techniques to be part of a restless sound fluxus. You can easily feel it: look at their video recorded at the Vortex Jazz Club in London and appreciate their abilities and symbiosis. In this cd we find two different recordings: the Lumen Church one is a true hommage to contemporary music made by devoted to improvisation: a suite built on woodwinds overtones (Scelsi), opposed to extended percussive touches on piano and double bass (Berio) that seem to refer to the essential structures so connected to the contemporary composition strategies (Lachemann). In the other performance at the Collegium Hungaricum in Berlin, a two set concert, guest artist Tristan Honsinger, the premises are confirmed: great expression of this group, able to set a quality standard of the highest kind and to play a captivating chaos improvised music, thanks to a wise contrast/fragmentation playing, able to cause that neural involvement that only free improvisation can give. These sounds are imaginative, the instruments themselves seem to cause situations through their musicians: the idea is that of a special narration the goes through innocence and unpredictability of music. Something close to Alice in Wonderland adventures, an idea close to the famous cellist Tristan Honsinger who in his participation here joins his chamber instinct (especially in less dynamic phases) to his experimental side (feeding the transversality and the opposition to the mainstream use of the instrument). Highest level. — Review by Ettore Garzia Continue reading →

Crisco 3 | You can never please anybody | Aut Records

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We are glad to present as our third release a record made by three of the most representative new italian voices on saxophone. Bigoni, Bittolo Bon and Scardino are all members of El Gallo Rojo, a collective which produced many good releases during the last years. The album, the second one of our wind instruments series, is an explosive mix of original and complex themes, collective improvisation devoted to explore the timbre of the instruments and new interpretations of pieces, different by origins and content, like Twenty Years by Bill Frisell and Philosophy of the world by the weird rock group of The Shaggs. Continue reading →

East-West Collective | Humeurs | RogueArt Jazz

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The traveler listens, and says: I was called by a name that is not mine, and that is revealed by music. I barely had the time to assemble a bouquet of our hands and feet and to hang from the rope of our bodies. I heard this voice, the orgeat of this voice: what is happening to us? And with a more evasive tone: who are we, really? I stumbled on the chimney of dreams. I was with scarlet crows.Alexandre Pierrepont (translation: Remain Tessler) Continue reading →

Evan Parker | Matthew Shipp | Rex, Wrecks & XXX | RogueArt Jazz

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Two (exceptional) musicians two backgrounds, two approaches to music, two generations, an ocean between them: at the end, only one music, unique, outstanding, made of listening and respect of each other. The purpose is not to limit themselves to what they might have in common, but to expand the realm of possibility by assimilating in the moment what the other can bring. Even if everything is improvised, studio work of the first CD, leaving more time for reflection, is the perfect complement to the second CD, live, giving free rein to spontaneity. Continue reading →

Rob Mazurek Exploding Star Orchestra | Matter Anti-Matter | RogueArt Jazz

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Out of the 63 or 67 satellites around Jupiter, fifty or more of them were discovered since the year 2000 (since the “elections” of George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin, since the busting of the Internet bubble and the market launch of the first USB key: it’s all a question of scale, right?). We are told their orbits are far apart, eccentric, inclined and retrograde. That they do as they please, heads in the clouds, that they dance. It’s your turn to dance. You understand you are a moon in all its phases simultaneously. Let me say that again. Anybody can be the root, says Roscoe Mitchell. Everything is seed, says Novalis. Ascension Dream Phoenix, says Rob Mazurek. A feast. — Alexandre Pierrepont (translation Romain Tesler) Continue reading →