Henry Kuntz & Paul V. Kuntz | JAsZ KHARdMA

The title JAsZ KHARdMA stems from Paul’s occasional use of a number of R. Crumb’s Early Jazz Greats Trading Cards inside the piano, laying the cards across the strings to achieve a flapping percussive effect. JAsZ KHARdMA evokes as well that improvisational inspiration of ours that comes from the jazz tradition. It represents our personal connection to that tradition through our family’s New Orleans history and ancestry. Appropriated images from the Early Jazz Greats Trading Cards within the album cover & CD art are used with permission graciously granted by R. Crumb. — Henry Kuntz Continue reading

Peter Brötzmann | Masahiko Satoh | Takeo Moriyama | Yatagarasu | Not Two Records

Takeo Moriyama – drums | Masahiko Satoh – piano | Peter Brötzmann – alto & tenor saxes, tarogato, B-flat clarinet. Recorded at the Manngha Hall, Krakow, Poland on November 8, 2011 by Rafal Drewniany. Mixed on March 5, 2012 by Peter Brötzmann and Rafal Drewniany at DTS Studio. Produced by Marak Winiarski and Brötzm. Art and design: Brötzm. Photos: Peter GannushkinAll music by Brötzmann/Satoh/Moriyama. FMP-Publishing Continue reading

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

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

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

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

Rogueart Jazz

RogueArt’s 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 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.

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

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

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

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