★NoBusiness Records
Symbolic Heads
Even for the standards of NoBusiness, a label that sometimes features artists who haven’t been very well known so far, YAPP is a really young band, all of the band members seem to be around 30. It’s Bryan Rogers on tenor saxophone, Alban Bailly on guitar, Matt Engle on bass and David Flaherty on drums, and they cultivate the field between post rock, modern jazz, minimal and improvised music. I must admit that I was rather skeptical when I realized that Bryan Rogers has played in Melody Gardo…
Rebento
For avant modern jazz piano trio music at its free best, you can't go wrong with RED Trio. And their LP on No Business (NBLP 67) is as good a place as any to start. They give us three supercharged cuts. Hernani Faustino's double bass cavorts, rumbles and brings in a storm from the lower depths throughout. I love his pizzicato and his arco equally and he sets up the churning excitement the band generates. Gabriel Ferrandini has the drum dynamics covered--senses the sound colors and thrust needed …
Murmurs
While it would be an exaggeration to suggest that there was a house style for the adventurous Lithuanian No Business imprint, the European saxophone trio nonetheless forms a significant strand in its output. Recent winning entries in the format have included sets from the Anglo Polish Riverloam Trio, Thomas Borgmann's excellent US-German unit, and Evan Parker's longstanding trio. To these illustrious sessions must now be added the Fabric Trio featuring German reedman Frank Paul Schubert alongsid…
Taagi
Taagi – which takes its title from the Apache word for “three” - is his first trio recording with bassist Aaron Gonzalez and drummer Stefan Gonzalez. Recorded on successive nights during May 2009 performances in Dallas and Austin, this album represents a great collaboration between jazz veteran and great piano maestro Curtis Clark and young, but very talented Gonzalez brothers - Aaron and Stefan. Piano trio at it’s best. Curtis Clark (piano), Aaron Gonzalez (contrabass) and Stefan Gonzalez (drum…
Kampen
"Sometimes there are weird coincidences. When we got new albums on our review list recently, many of them included reminiscences of the golden jazz eras in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Rob Mazurek's Pulsar Quartet sometimes sounds like the seminal Miles Davis Quintet, Sam Rivers' trio with Dave Holland and Barry Altschul brings back memories of his RivBea studio days, Michael Blake taps the great jazz-rock bands of the 70s, Joe McPhee's plays "Naima" and "Round Midnight" on two new reissues, and even…
Live at Hasselt
Excellent free improvisation from the quartet of Els Vandeweyer (vibraphone), Fred Van Hove (piano / accordion), Paul Lovens (percussion), Martin Blume (percussion) recording at Kunstencentrum BELGIE & Cultuurplatform Motives for Jazz.
Lava
"Lava is a wonderfully apt title for this duet between Liudas Mockunas on soprano, tenor and bass saxophones and Barry Guy on bass. The music was recorded live at Kaunas Artists House Concert Hall in Lithuania on the 2nd of April, 2011, and released in a limited edition run of 300 vinyl LP's. Lava is the appropriate name for this music as it flows slowly and inexorably forward. Guy is a rock solid bassist who is a stalwart on the avant jazz and classical scene in Europe, and his skills ar…
Live
A previously unreleased concert recording from 1986 of a group of leading out jazz artists (Billy Bang, Fred Hopkins, Andrew Cyrille, &c.). Part of the magic of jazz in New York City is groups of musicians coming together for brief engagements and then moving off into other groups and configurations, leaving fond memories but little recorded evidence of their existence. The Group was a very talented amalgam of musicians, veterans of the free jazz and loft scenes: Ahmed Abdullah on trumpet …
Canons - 2nd Hoisting
Four extended compositions from the Tubass Quintet led by Szilard Mezei (performing on double bass instead of his usual viola) performing with a heavy group of 4 double bassists and tuba. An unusual configuration playing unusually named tracks (HEP 15, HEP 16, HEP 17 B, HEP 58/2), but clearly playing a unique rendering of jazz, swinging music from the lower end of the spectrum, with an open and accessible nature.
Nasty & Sweet
Very limited 2 LP release of the trio of Thomas Borgmann (reeds), Wilber Morris (bass) and Reggie Nicholson (drums) performing live at the Tampere Jazz Festival in 1999, plus one track from St. Ingbert in 1998.
Slow and Steady
The Convergence Quartet with Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet), Alexander Hawkins (piano), Dominic Lash (bass) and Harris Eisenstadt (drums) performing live at the Vortex Jazz Club in November, 2011 as part of the London Jazz Festival.
Shift
Sweden's advanced free jazz piano trio Correction (Sebastian Bergstrom on piano, Joacim Hyberg on bass, and Emil Astrand-Melin on drums) are met by fellow Swede, baritone saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, for a stunning album ranging from abstract to hard blowing improv."In Gaito Gazdanov's marvelous novel "The Spectre of Alexander Wolf" there is a crucial scene in which the narrator contemplates his future lover Jelena Nikolajewna and wonders about her disharmonic physiognomy which he considers as a…
Melodic Art-Tet
**CD edition** 1974 recordings at WKCR in NYC from the quintet of Charles Brackeen (flute & sax), Ahmed Abdullah (trumpet), William Parker (bass), Roger Blank (drums) and Tony Waters (percussion), beautifully recorded and essential free improvisation. "The dominant influences at this time were John Coltrane and Albert Ayler (both of whom had passed away relatively recently); and Ornette Coleman (who had not yet gone Harmolodic). Although some musicians had sought to push the Fire Music of late C…
For We Have Heard
"As a band leader, Lugerner has released multiple albums to critical acclaim - Narratives (2010) These Are The Words (2010) & Live at The Bunker (2012). His compositions have been described as "a textured, nearly seamless blend of composition and improvisation" by Francis Davis of The Village Voice - while the New York Times calls him "an impeccably trained multi-reedist, with an emphasis on 'multi' - he plays clarinet, bass clarinet, oboe, English horn and flutes, along with saxophones...…
Centering
Milestone! The music on these six discs comes from roughly the first decade of William Parker's career, one of the most intensely creative periods enjoyed by any musician of any era. William Parker's Centering (No Business CD 42-47), as the subtitle makes clear, is composed entirely of Unreleased Early Recordings 1976-1987. It's six CDs in all, with booklet and attractive slipcase.What makes all that important? It's William Parker the superb bassist, jazz composer and bandleader at his very bes…
Live at Kerrytown House
Though modern, “avant-garde” jazz is an ensemble music often based on collective improvisation, solo performance is its own extraordinarily fruitful sub-area of investigation for the creative improviser. Without a reactive, interpretive partner (or several), the solo recital blurs the lines between composition and improvisation as the performer enters a world of unfettered development. Greene has been performing and recording solo since the 1970s, and these settings have yielded some of t…
Metal!
A double LP of The Thing (Mats Gustafsson, Ingebrigt Haker Flaten, and Paal Nilssen-Love) performing live with bassist Barry Guy at Saint Catherine's Church, Vilnius, Lithuania in 2011, exceptional cutting-edge improvisation.
Six Feet Under
Nate Wooley, trumpet. Christian Weber, bass. Paul Lytton, percussion. Recorded November 30, 2009 at Radio Studio Zürich, Switzerland by Martin Pearson "Five group compositions recorded in 2009 at Switzerland's Radio Studio Zurich by trumpeter Nate Wooley, bassist Christian Weber, and percussionist Paul Lytton, amazing cross-Atlantic improvisation. " Squidco
The Major
Nobuyasu Furuya, tenor saxophone, flute, clarinet. Rodrigo Pinheiro, piano. Eduardo Lála, trombone. Hernâni Faustino, contrabass. Gabriel Ferrandini, drums, percussions. Recorded and mixed on 14 and 22 November, 2010 at Namusche Lisbon by Joaquim Monte. All tracks were composed and conducted by Nobuyasu Furuya.
Vilnius Noir
Ran Blake, piano. David 'Knife' Fabris, guitar. Ran Blake solo and duo with David 'Knife' Fabris. Works from Alexander Olshansky, Joel Yennior, Jason Yeager, George Russell, Peter Udell, Tommy Goodman, Michel Legrand, Herman Yablokoff, Abraham Ellstein, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Stevie Wonder, Duke Ellington, Barney Bigard, Irving Mills. Recorded live on 10th December, 2010 at St. Catherine's Church by Arunas Zujus. Limited edition of 500 records