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Conspiracy
A new ECM studio album and a programme of new music from Terje Rypdal is cause for celebration. On Conspiracy the great Norwegian guitarist seems to reconnect with the wild inspiration that fuelled such early masterpieces as Whenever I Seem To Be Far Away, Odyssey and Waves, exploring the sonic potential of the electric guitar with both a rock improviser’s love of raw energy and a composer’s feeling for space and texture. Keyboardist Ståle Storløkken, who contributed to Terje’s Vossabrygg and Cr…
Life Goes On
*2024 stock* A striking album of new music from pianist/composer Carla Bley, whose trio with Andy Sheppard and Steve Swallow is now in its 25th year. Individual associations among the players go back much further: bassist Swallow first recorded music by Carla in 1961. So when Bley says “Life Goes On”, a lot of life is alluded to. The album, realized in the Auditorio Stelio Molo Studio in Lugano in May 2019, with Manfred Eicher producing, takes the form of three suites. The title piece begins as …
Bayou
*2024 stock* A fresh and open music, delicate and space-conscious, is shaped as drummer Thomas Strønen and Ayumi Tanaka, previously heard in the ensemble Time Is A Blind Guide on Lucus, resurface in a new trio with clarinettist/singer/percussionist Marthe Lea. The group first came together at Oslo’s Royal Academy of Music, where for two years the players would meet each week for exploratory music making. Strønen: “We always played freely- drifting between elements of contemporary classical music…
Bay of Rainbows
*2024 stock* “There is no hurry to this music, but there is great depth,” observed London Jazz News about Danish guitarist Jakob Bro’s trio with two kindred-spirit Americans: bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Joey Baron. This poetically attuned group follows its ECM studio album of 2016, Streams – which The New York Times lauded as “ravishing” – with what Bro calls “a dream come true,” an album recorded live in New York City, over two nights at the Jazz Standard. Bay of Rainbows rolls on waves o…
Trio Tapestry
*2024 stock* The great saxophonist Joe Lovano has appeared on a number of ECM recordings over the last four decades, including much-loved albums with Paul Motian, Steve Kuhn and John Abercrombie. Trio Tapestry is his first as a leader for the label, introducing a wonderful new group and music of flowing lyricism, delicate texture, and inspired interplay. Lovano and pianist Marilyn Crispell are in accord at an advanced level inside its structures. “Marilyn has such a beautiful sound and touch and…
Skala
*2024 stock* Mathias Eick’s intensely melodic trumpet occupies the centre-stage in this album of self-penned tunes which will appeal to an audience beyond “jazz”. Against the powerful backdrops offered by his sleek, modern band, driven by two drummers, he delivers richly lyrical soliloquies.
Timeless
*2024 stock* John Abercrombie’s ECM debut Timeless (recorded 1974) has proven to be exactly that. This fiery session with Jack DeJohnette and Jan Hammer still sounds as fresh as the year it was released. “Timeless comes as a major surprise in terms of its depth, scope and inventiveness,” wrote Tim Buckley’s guitarist Lee Underwood in the L.A. Free Press. "[It] indicates that John Abercrombie is a major musical voice of tomorrow.”
Arbour Zena
*2024 stock* “I consider this one of my most richly lyrical and consistently inspired works,” wrote Keith Jarrett of “Mirrors”, the almost half-hour long concluding piece on Arbour Zena. “Jan Garbarek’scontribution is irreplaceable and ecstatic.” It is easy to agree that Arbour Zena as a whole is one of Jarrett’s most exceptional albums. Evocative writing for strings, beautiful playing by Keith and Jan and by Charlie Haden at his most soulful, and a glowing panoramic production make this 1975 re…
The Dreamer Is The Dream
*2024 stock* or his third ECM release as a leader, Chris Potter presents a new acoustic quartet that naturally blends melodic rhapsody with rhythmic muscle. The group includes superlative musicians well known to followers of ECM’s many recordings from New York over the past decade: keyboardist David Virelles, bassist Joe Martin and drummer Marcus Gilmore, who each shine in addition to the leader on multiple horns. The Dreamer Is the Dream features Potter on tenor saxophone – the instrument that …
Lucus
*2024 stock* Norwegian drummer/composer Thomas Strønen presents a revised edition of his acoustic collective Time Is A Blind Guide, now trimmed to quintet size, and with a new pianist in Wakayama-born Ayumi Tanaka. Tanaka has spoken of seeking associative connections between Japan and Norway in her improvising, a tendency Strønen seems to be encouraging with his space-conscious writing for the ensemble, letting in more light. As on the group’s eponymously-titled and critically-lauded debut album…
The Gleaners
*2024 stock* Larry Grenadier’s The Gleaners is a profound and highly creative album, harvesting influences from many sources, its title inspired by Agnès Varda’s film The Gleaners and I. In between his own pieces here, including a dedication to early hero Oscar Pettiford, Grenadier explores compositions by George Gershwin, John Coltrane, Paul Motian, Rebecca Martin and Wolfgang Muthspiel. “The process for making this record began with a look inward,” Larry writes in his liner note, “an excavatio…
Tub Of Deep Green Ink
A limited CDr included with the A Castle Popping LP (R11, 2015). Tub of Deep Green Ink compliments the nature of the A Castle Popping, presenting ten tracks from 2011-2014. Ranging from layered string recordings, like the pastoral 2012 piece Inverness String Variations, to computerized-vocal experiments, as with ADR Aria & The Wind Sick (both from 2014). Human voice is dissected and stitched back together; examined under odd light. 2011’s Rooms of Night explores the interior of Sean’s old house …
Micromegas
Seeing Matthew Erickson perform live is an impressive experience. The sound he gets by blasting his saxophone through his Fender Twin literally shakes you to the core. Erickson has a great ear for experimental music; exercising tasteful timing and restraint, which I am finding to be more and more important. Whether performing in the sax-guitar duo Sudden Oak, or solo as Radiant Husk, his sonic presence has earned the respect of many.
Andre Sider Af Sonic Youth
Andre Sider Af Sonic Youth is an album by Sonic Youth with Mats Gustafsson and Merzbow. It is the eighth release in the SYR series. It was released on July 28, 2008. It will not be released on vinyl. The album is recorded the first July 2005 on the Roskilde Festival. The album title is in Danish and means "Other sides of Sonic Youth".
The ReR Quarterly Volume 4 Number 2
CD contains commissioned works by Q.R. Ghazala: Sacrifice To Isis, , Mike Hovancsek/Paul Guerguerian:Three Cold Floors, Tom Dimuzio: Inception, Marie Goyette: Short-Cuts: Brahms, Ken Ando: Danseuse, Robert Iolini: Congo, Zimbabwe, Giovanni Venosta: Le Ombre Di Otello, Keith Rowe/A. De Fillips: Feu Brilliant, Brian Woodbury's Variety Orchestra:Shenandoah/Innsbruck, Richard Barrett: The Unthinkable, Stevan Tickmayer: Heterophony, Volapuk: Des objets de la plus grande importance, Boris Kovacs: Extr…
The ReR Quarterly Volume 4 Number 1
On the CD: John Oswald/John Zorn, Biota, Cornelius Cardew, ZGA, If Bwana, Kalahari Surfers + Lesogo Rampolokeng, Koongoortoog (Tuva),Blitziods, Al Margolis, Tom Nunn, Thinking Plague, Adenoid Quartet, N.O.R.M.A., Les Sales Combles, R.Deutsch, Martin Burlas, Peter Machajdik, David Myers, Chris Cutler/Fred Frith. New, found and commissioned work.
The ReR Quarterly - Selections From Vol. 2
Commissioned materials from Robert Wyatt, Iva Bittova / Pavel Fajt, LA 1919, Jocelyn Robert, James Grigsby, J. Lachan, Henry Kaiser, Increase The Angle, Bill Gilonis, David Thomas, Jospeh Racaille, John Oswald, Musci / Venosta, Luciano Margiorani, 5UU'S, When, Jean Derome. Taken from Volume 2 of the influential Quarterly, remastered, with an exquisite book by Dirk Vallons. L
ReR Quarterly Vol 1 - Selections
Selections from Volume 1 of the ReR Quarterly,including the legendary recording of the so-called 'supergroup' Duck And Cover (Tom Cora, Chris Cutler, Heiner Goebbels, Fred Frith, Alfred Harth, Dagmar Krause and George Lewis), Biota, Steve Moore, CASSIX, 5UU's, John Oswald. With generous book.
Getting A Head
Re-issue of Bob Ostertag's Getting A Head, and underground classic of tape manipulation from before the days of samplers. Best known for his work with computers, here a young Ostertag plays an instrument consisting of a highly unstable and peculiar recording system, which uses helium balloons to hold up tape loops between three tape recorders made to malfunction in a variety of ways. The record marks one of the first, and to this day one of the only, times that tape manipulation techniques devel…
Future(s)
This CD of songs, grittily arranged and produced is noticeably more straight-ahead than ReR’s usual releases though it sits comfortably within the broad range of Steve’s tirelessly experimental output. This is a project with a long history: Steve and his main collaborator Todd Dadaleares have been writing, recording and performing together for longer than MeRCy’s 20+ year existence and David Fields (drums) and Tim Inman (keyboards) are also long servers. New, for this phase of recordings …