Free Jazz

Hamid Drake | Ernest Dawkins | Harrison Bankhead | Chicago Trio | Velvet Songs | RogueArt Jazz

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This 2 cd set recorded live at the Velvet Lounge a year before the legendary Fred Anderson passed away, is a fitting tribute by 3 Chicagoans to one of their own, the master tenor player, teacher, Velvet Lounge owner, advocate and AACM member, who has helped foster the musical scene in that city possibly more than anyone else. This artistic outing is a pilgrimage in sound taking us into the deepest recesses of this eclectic medium known as “jazz”. These pieces conceived/composed by the 3 reflect all phases of their erudite abilities, their singular as well as collective approaches to the music both compositionally and improvisational while specifically highlighting Dawkins’ virtuosity as a player and showing the masterful abilities of Bankhead and Drake as well. The music crosses barriers displaying every conceivable aspect of the “jazz” language with an almost religious zeal. — Steve Dalachinsky, excerpts from the liner notes Continue reading →

Roscoe Mitchell | Thomas Buckner | Nils Bultmann | Joseph Kubera | Vartan Manoogian | Stephen Rush | William Winant | Joan Wildman | Hans Sturm | Numbers | RogueArt Jazz

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In the 45 years since he recorded Sound, Roscoe Mitchell’s music has steadily evolved and diversified, making the idea of a comprehensive one-disc survey an impossibility. However, as much as any album, the both/and nature of Roscoe Mitchell’s music is vividly represented on Numbers. — Bill Shoemaker, excerpts from the liner notes Continue reading →

Joe McPhee | Steve Dalachinsky | Evan Parker | Jean-Jacques Avenel | Joëlle Léandre | Sylvain Kassap | Ramon Lopez | Jean-Luc Cappozzo | Simon Goubert | Raphaël Imbert | Urs Leimgruber | Didier Levallet | Barre Phillips | Michel Portal | Lucia Recio | Christian Rollet | John Tchicai | 13 Miniatures for Albert Ayler | RogueArt Jazz

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As for the penultimate phases of this polyphonic hirsutism, fortified by explosions, whirlwinds, chants, howls, bubblings and very high pitched sounds, everything happens as if the last cry recalled, as in a trance, a certain aylerien spirit – did not Robert Schumann write “Music is what permits us to speak with the heavens”. — Philippe Carles, excerpt from the liner notes Continue reading →

William Parker | Centering | Unreleased Early Recordings 1976 – 1987 | 6 CD Box Set | No Business Records

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This box of music is dedicated to my wife, Patricia. I would also like to thank the producer Danas Mikailionis for his conviction to the project and Ed Hazell for guiding us through these musical memories. I give sincere thanks to all the musicians who made a commitment to the music; those who have passed on to the next life – Billy Bang, Malik Baraka, Denis Charles, Raphe Malik, Jay Oliver, Charles Tyler, Arthur Williams – and those who continue to play and create beautiful music of their own today – Ramsey Ameen, Brenda Bakr, Roy Campbell Jr., Daniel Carter, Ellen Christi, Charles Downs, Charles Gayle, John Hagen, Masahiko Kono, Rozanne Levine, Alex Lodico, Zen Matsuura, John Mingione, Jemeel Moondoc, Lisa Sokolov, Ricardo Strobert, and David S. Ware. — William Parker Continue reading →

Henry P. Warner | Earl Freeman | Philip Spigner | Freestyle Band | No Business Records

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Why should an album as good as this one is be so obscure? Well, there are many reasons. There are all the ugly assumptions in the music world that poor black people can’t make serious art, the assumptions that George Lewis lays bare to such devastating effect in his history of the AACM, A Power Stronger than itself. There’s the economic corollary to that assumption: that if it’s not art, then it must be subject to the marketplace pressures of pop music, which European, or “real,” art music doesn’t have to contend with. Since avant-garde improvised music isn’t popular music, the economics always work against it. And so this album, and countless others, fade away due to social and economic neglect to become the quarry of avid record hounds. The reasons albums like this one sink out of sight are not entirely due to impersonal social and economic forces, however. It’s not as if these conditions were mysterious or unknown to musicians. Indeed, they have always been a source of anger and frustration. By the early ’70s, this anger and frustration boiled up into the do-it-yourself, countercultural, and black separatist spirit of the loft movement. Rejecting the system that in effect rejected them, the musicians who lived and worked in the lofts established their own performance venues and sometimes their own record labels. — Ed Hazell Continue reading →

Will Guthrie | Solo – Sticks, Stones & Breaking Bones

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The hardest thing in the world is to have an original idea. As much as creative musicians hate to admit, free improv/experimental/underground (and all other useless adjectival identifiers) music now has as many stylistic tropes as your standard 19th century symphony: the endless variations on white noise, the orgiastic free ensemble climaxes, reassuring bass drones, “brutality”, all of which point to performance, not playing. Musicians cling to the next solution that the media spotlights, as if consensus actually ever helped anything in art. — Anthony Pateras Continue reading →

Ran Blake solo / duo with David ‘Knife’ Fabris | Vilnius Noir | No Business Records

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Vilnius Noir presents solos and duos from veteran pianist and iconoclastic interpreter Ran Blake, joined here by guitarist David Fabris. Fabris has appeared on three of Blake’s prior recordings (one on Soul Note and two on Hat Hut, including the excellentSomething to Live For), and has consistently provided an exciting foil for the pianist. Where Blake is stark, reticent and ambiguous, Fabris is bright and wryly surefooted; when the pianist is full and pushy, the guitarist is spiky and delicate. They’re a cantankerous, moody pair but it’s obvious that they’re having a grand time pushing one another about. The pianist’s composition “Cry Wolf” is a case in point, where Fabris inserts barroom blues-rock phrasing alongside Blake’s silvery, ringing distance. Their pairing on George Russell’s “Stratusphunk” is jovial and funky, though Blake’s strange microcosmic boogie-woogie remains untouched. Unaccompanied, Blake is enigmatic as always, moving from boisterous atonality to coy romanticism in a few notes. He’s a pretty strong foil for himself, which is what has always made his solo work intriguing, but he can also present absolute, rarefied beauty, as he does in a few simple and bright phrases on the traditional Jewish folk song “Shlof Mayn Kind”, or Michel Legrand’s haunting classic “Watch What Happens”. If you like your Third Stream peppered with a little folk-blues eclecticism, look no further than Vilnius Noir. —Clifford Allen Continue reading →

Nobuyasu Furuya Quintet | The Major | No Business Records

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Nobuyasu Furuya is a relatively little-known Japanese reedman who lives in Lisbon, where he’s been making associations with some of the city’s finest improvisers. Following his 2009 debut on Clean Feed (Bendowa, with bassist Hernâni Faustino and drummer Gabriel Ferrandini) he’s back with The Major, joined by the RED Trio (Faustino, Ferrandini and pianist Rodrigo Pinheiro) and trombonist Eduardo Lála in six original compositions ranging from pulpit-pounding to cagy sonic exploration. On tenor, Furuya’s playing is reminiscent of Peter Brötzmann and Mototeru Takagi, and the RED Trio is akin to a contemporary version of ARC or a free-improv version of the Garland / Chambers / Taylor rhythm section. They’re surely one of the most cohesive improvising trios in modern music, and collaborations with figures like John Butcher, Nate Wooley and now Furuya are extra icing on the cake. The three build up a detailed storm behind his gruff, burnished shouts and Lála’s tailgate on “Jap Agitator Caught Again”, bashing and whacking brush alongside the leader’s manic sear. Opening the flip side, “Where Are the Brothers and Sisters?” has a chunky ragtime to no-time rhythmic bash, with Lála’s Rudd-like slushy chortle sailing on the pianist’s eddies. The trombonist is an impressive member of the front line, belting out jovial and brusque commentary. The Major is an enjoyable and frequently compelling session with strong, engaging interplay and flashes of studied seamlessness. What more could one ask for from a second date? — Clifford Allen Continue reading →

Daunik Lazro | Jean-François Pauvros | Roger Turner | Curare | No Business Records

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Exceptional music that’s blazingly intense yet judiciously moderate, Curare, apparently named for the South American muscle-relaxant plant, captures sessions recorded almost two years apart from what in advanced music terms is a super group. All of its members have been plying their trade in this gene since the 1970s, French baritone saxophonist Daunik Lazro with the likes of soprano saxophonist Michel Doneda and bassist Joëlle Léandre; fellow Gaul, guitarist Jean-François Pauvros with everyone from drummer Makoto Sato to harpist Hélène Breschand; and British percussionist Roger Turner with seemingly every advanced sound explore in the United Kingdom, North America and the Continent. Never before have they recorded in trio formation and the four tracks hang together so well because of another contradiction: each cooperates fully with the others, but no one alters his individual style. — Ken Waxman Continue reading →

Mockuno NuClear | Drop It | No Business Records

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This is the first album of this trio with my homeland musicians. The music balances in between impro and composed, between heavy and beautiful, between jazz and whatever… I’v been playing most of these tunes with different ensembles of mine during the last 6 years, but they have never been released for different reasons. I realised – to be able to move on you really have to finish your unfinished work… Here it is. Enjoy! — Liudas Mockūnas Continue reading →