Nemu Records

A European label like Nemu has the flexibility to present performers based both close by and across the pond. The only requirement, crucial for a new label, is a shared aesthetic. Not music that all sounds the same, but accomplishes similar things. Carnival Skin is a quintet of Americans except for German drummer Klaus Kugel, who is one of four Europeans in the Syntopia Quartet. Both albums are compelling, feature unusual front lines and highlight the often drastic differences between American and European jazz that no one usually wants to admit. Continue reading

Bruce Eisenbeil Sextet | Inner Constellation Volume One | Nemu Records

Don’t let the corrosive guitar that begins Bruce Eisenbeil’s extended “Inner Constellation” fool you into thinking you’re about to hear a psychedelic rave-up or some proto-fusion. Once bass and drums join in, followed by violin and horns, it’s apparent “Inner Constellation” (a 45-minute work recorded in one long take, meant to be listened to straight through from beginning to end, notwithstanding 27 individual track numbers and the enigmatic inner titles) is an example of what’s still sometimes called “free jazz” or “creative improvised music,” terms that ceased being meaningful as long ago as the 1970s, when composition asserted itself as a force to be reckoned with in the jazz avant-garde. There are numerous passages here that sound collectively improvised, and as many others that sound preplanned. Happily, because Eisenbeil’s writing is so open-ended and the members of his sextet give themselves over to it so completely, you’re never quite sure where composition ends and improvisation begins, or when the two overlap— a measure of Eisenbeil’s success. — Francis Davis Continue reading

Bruce Eisenbeil | Klaus Kugel | Perry Robinson | Peter Evans | Hilliard Greene | Carnival Skin | Nemu Records

Passionately concocted free jazz played with a strong, but never stolid, consensus of purpose. / This is definitely a group were variance of experience and style work as core virtues. / sharp-toothed collective improvisation / dynamic shifts that stretch from passages of somber quiet to flareups of explosive jangling catharsis. — Derek Taylor , ALLABOUTJAZZ.COM Continue reading