Rogue Art

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RogueArt’ is a natural name for a label that provides shelter for music that is outside the mainstream. – Michel Dorbon, Rogue Art founder

In matters of artistic expression

the cheaper the statement, the more chances it gets to be heard. The market demands barren goods with a short turnover and no resistance. As far as music is concerned, one only has to dig into the entertainment supermarket displays to find that they are packed with cheesy products: is it for hiding some treasures destined to a happy few? On the other hand, this implacable Market is crushing independent record shops and labels that aim at experienced music lovers and true curious.

Rogue Art goes against this tendency and allows original, clever and creative artists to express themselves. Rogue Art is a jazz label, in times when the word itself has lost its meaning, to such point that the great creators won’t even name their music that way. Jazz is one of the big artistic revolutions of the last hundred years. Without any preconceptions, open to many influences of other forms of expression, jazz perpetually evolves, remaining only true to its own history. Jazz still lives and disturbs. It will do so relentlessly, with its complex, refined and sensitive way of expressing our energy, emotions, joy and pain, breaches, fights, hopes and despairs… of life. Jazz is one of the rare artistic movements to embrace social concerns – its African-American roots built its identity and far reaching sensibility. Too many people forget that jazz isn’t just a void aesthetical movement; it is totally devoted to the everyday fights of those who struggle for survival and social existence.

In this context, Rogue Art has built a field of expression and discussion. Listen to the artists and musicians who honour us with their presence and you won’t be disappointed! We only aim to make their voice audible to you, audible to everyone.

Larry Ochs | Miya Masaoka | Peggy Lee | Spiller Alley | RogueArt Jazz

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This music of exquisite sensibilities profound listening and genuinely laid-back cloth at first throws you; nobody is trying to do anything, just play as together as possible. Nobody gets in anybody’s face, including the listener. Nobody solos more than the depth they listen at; nobody never wanted not to be there…. Anyway if this ingenious blend of scents from Masaoka’s ancient koto, Lee’s middle-European cello and Ochs’ out of hock saxes is any indication, “musica da camera” – that old elite art of chamber music – is going to be around for some time yet. — Alvin Curran, excerpt from the liner notes Continue reading →

Alexandre Pierrepont | Mike Ladd | Maison Hantee | RogueArt Jazz

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On one level, both music and poetry are very much the same, that being sound – at least the spoken word would be. Here in “Haunted House” is a sound design or shape being put forth with multiple meanings psychoacoustically, linguistically, musically that I can only say very little about in terms of meaning, since ultimately it’s meaning will be with each individual who experiences this work. This rhythmic engagement between these two art forms create a third reality of sound gestures and events that collide and integrate. Yet knowing these facts it still does not allow me to analyze or describe exactly what “Haunted House” is. Hopefully this experience will be a catalyst at some level for good. — Henri Threadgill, excerpts from the liner notes Continue reading →

Hamid Drake | Nicole Mitchell | Harrison Bankhead | Indigo Trio | Anaya | RogueArt Jazz

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Creative music making is a matter of energy, heart, and trust and when all three are present the music flies. A meeting of three old Chicago friends and collaborators, flutist Nicole Mitchell, drummer Hamid Drake, and bassist Harrison Bankhead, the Indigo Trio soars with the kind of spiritual energy that has inspired Great Black Music from its inception… Building a bridge between composition and improvisation, Bankhead, Drake, and Mitchell have created an inspiring second CD. With their spirit of openness and generosity, the Indigo Trio model the poet Rumi’s insight that “only from the heart can you touch the sky.” — Ellen Waterman, excerpt from the liner notes Continue reading →

Michel Edelin Trio | Kuntu | RogueArt Jazz

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Flutists’ albums, in jazz, do not clutter up record stores. Michel Edelin is one of the (very) few jazz musicians, French on top of that, to have chosen the flute, in all its forms, as his exclusive instrument. For ages, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Eric Dophy, Jeremy Steig, James Newton, Dave Valentin and the likes have held a central position in his personal pantheon, he who was able to digest their teachings in order to feed his own syntax: a sound of a beautiful elegance, an angular phrasing where a propensity for melody and lyricism can be heard, a taste for certain instrumental audacities, the understanding of the collective… …This album of a complete openness, breathing onto the melody, is collectively constructed in real time around pretext-themes with great rigor and a radiant imagination. — Gérard Rouy, excerpt from the liner notes Continue reading →

Kassap | Lavant | Lopez | Medioni | Tchamitchian | Ascension, Tombeau de John Coltrane | RogueArt Jazz

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…Questions: none of Coltrane’s albums bears this title. And somehow all of his albums do. All are clearly subjected to the ramified, plural, moving, exuberant, augmentative interrogation, that they left us, as if panicked or distraught. Such trust. A unique manner, always beyond and ahead of itself. A haunted, questioning manner. Inheriting a question is, in many ways, convenient; it’s called mysticism, and in the end, there’s something in it for everybody. To see oneself or live as the guardian of a range of questions certainly can’t be read on the same stave. It creates different obligations. Requires, in more ways than one, writing – taking part. As, here, Franck Médioni and Lavant’s voice, or Sylvain Kassap and Ramon Lopez, and Claude Tchamitchian… — Chrisitan Tarting, excerpt from the liner notes Continue reading →

Joelle Leandre | George Lewis | Transatlantic Visions | RogueArt Jazz

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Léandre plays with Bailey who plays with Lewis who plays with Léandre. Lewis plays with Les Diaboliques and Günter “Baby” Sommer or Paul Lovens. Léandre plays with Lewis and Steve Lacy, with Lewis and Anthony Braxton. The good thing, in the unknown world of known improvisers, is that everything is crater and archipelagos……Then, and foremost, have no reason to wait. The improvisers are first and foremost sound modifiers or particle accelerators. The chain reactions they provoke aim at the amorous new world. — Alexandre Pierrepont, excerpt from the liner notes Continue reading →

Larry Ochs Sax & Drumming Core | Stone Shift | RogueArt Jazz

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For me form precedes function. If I can’t see the big picture, that universe of sound within which a given piece will come to life, it is hard to organize the internal details. The great thing about the Sax & Drumming Core experience is that I have four special forms developed for this band. So I actually get to write pieces similar to other ones I’ve already penned, just like a jazz band-leader who works with “the changes.”! It’s cool, and it really helps to get to the center of the music and probe and evolve. — Larry Ochs, quotation from the liner notes Continue reading →

Hamid Drake & Bindu | Reggaeology | RogueArt Jazz

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Following the stream of time and the dances of Kâli the successive incarnations of Bindu, more a crew, sailing, outward bound, an elective community of musicians, than a defined group of people, divulge the logbook of navigation by Hamid Drake. A logbook of boarding sounds, which is not written but delimits and unlimits the narrative space where the drummer and percussionist freely circulate… …The third Bindu, dedicated to a rapprochement between “jazz” and “reggae” – neither a recording of “jazz” nor a recording of “reggae”, but a recording from the “Great Tradition” – continues to create open environments… …Whatever he does, the creative musician states the collective value, the variable mutant of play. Euphoria. At the second hearing, if all goes well, if he got across Kâli’s heart, if he or she does not hide no more, the listener should have grown younger by two or three sources of happiness. — Excerpt from the liner notes, written by Alexandre Pierrepont

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Sabir Mateen | Urdla XXX | RogueArt Jazz

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The dramatic act of this performance draws a deambulatory line colouring each phase in the sound of the required instrument; large discursive logic intensity in the atmosphere appropriate to each segment. After his entry “City of Lyon” which sets the happening hic et nunc, the second piece “Art Dance” on alto clarinet is heard as a twirling questioning with changes of mood from anger to melancholy: bal(l)ade autumnal de Dakka Du Boo Yu”, again on the clarinet. “Music is Sound, Sound is Music” thunders suddenly like an urgent manifesto poem. From now on, it’s the alto saxophone that will lead the evening serenade. Is it Lyon which assonance calls for the invocation of Jimmy Lyons? The chant becomes progressively more intimate, less “freenetic” and the evening comes to an end in a melodious serenity. Poetic episode in the luxuriant existence of URDLA, this concert offered as a present to its adepts will remain thanks to RogueArt, a pearl in the treasury of progressive music. — Excerpt from the liner notes, written by Max Schoendorff Continue reading →

Nicole Mitchell’s Sonic Projections | Emerald Hills | RogueArt Jazz

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…The writing, or rather the musical cards drawn up by Nicole Mitchell for Sonic Projections carefully and continuously handle many openings and many transitions. …It is fascinating to hear each musician circulating freely in the space of each piece, following the internal logic of the proposed forms and spacing them out, bringing in other forms inside and round about – stretching and projecting the meaning, as if to respect the opulence of things with their doubles. Each musician is himself a space and a passing place. Such is David Boykin on Wishes, leaning against the other three and giving out one of his enigmatic rewound solos; such is the transformational duo between Craig Taborn and Chad Taylor on the second half of Emerald Hills, passing completely as the interventions or non-interventions of the saxophonist and the flutist go by. …And if a volcano can project, on demand, lava, sulfur, cinders or scoria, this music projects vision and nourishment. « That’s what I love about music – the unlimited possibilities – and always restless to try something else. » — Alexandre Pierrepont, excerpt from the liner notes Continue reading →