This 1949 album saw legendary seven-fingered Gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt reuniting for a recording with also-legendary jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli for the first time since World War II broke up their Paris-based combo, the (yep) legendary Quintet of the Hot Club of France. Recorded in Rome with some not-so-notable Italian sidemen four years before Django's death in 1953, it's bebop influenced, although not Django's Les-Paul-inspired interest in electric guitar (he plays an acoustic here, as per his pre war habit). A nice digipak reissue, with lots of informative liner notes, and versions of Django faves from "Heavy Artillery" to "Djangology" to "Swing 42". 23 tracks total. A record collection -- let alone a jazz collection -- without any Django Reinhardt is sadly lacking, and this is a fine demonstration of his immense, shining talent.
There are very few contemporary jazz ensembles that get us excited, that remind us of the good ol' days, you know, Jazz Actuel, free jazz, REVOLUTIONARY JAZZ, so it should come as no surprise really, that one of the new bands that does do it for us, is made up of players from the old days, still making music as exciting, powerful and emotionally charged as ever.
Revolutionary Ensemble is Leroy Jenkins on violin, Sirone on bass, and Jerome Cooper on drums and a variety of other sound making devices, and Beyond The Boundary Of Time, captures the trio's 2005 final performance, live in Poland, recorded 2 years before Jenkins' death.
We've long been obsessed with Sirone, ever since the Chicago Art Ensemble days, one of the few players who could mesmerize and entrance us with an hour of solo bass, and he gets to do his thing here too, opening the set with 4 plus minutes of scrapes and drones and rumbles, until the song kicks in proper, and violin is such a strange non traditional jazz instrument, but Jenkins makes it sing, so melodic and haunting and mysterious, soaring over the strange rubbery basslines, and the abstract percussive skitter. The opening track gives us chills every time we hear it. The playing so lyrical and emotional, it's definitely jazz, but with elements of classical music, chamber music, intense, but also raw, and loose, and so free. Utterly beautiful. And that's just the first track.
The whole record is magical and mysterious, and sonically unique, Jenkins' violin and Sirone's bass are perfect foils, tangling and sparring, sometimes in perfect harmony, other times exploding into different directions, but the result is always the same, lush, expressive, otherworldly, some alien strain of jazz, that just seems to unfold and flower and splinter into all sorts of different shapes and sounds as the set progresses, seeing this in person must have been incredible, cuz recorded, it's pretty breathtaking.
The set ends with two lengthy improvisations, and the players go for it, the first, an endless avalanche of strange tones and layered skitter, lots of space, but also strange sonic molecules darting to and fro, the band occasionally locking into some serious droney dreaminess, but just as quickly breaking down into near chaos. The final track, lush and abstract, seriously melodic, until what sounds like some strange drum machine kicks in, and the track is transformed into some almost new wave free jazz freakout, fucking AWESOME.
Definitely one of the best performances from one of our favorite, and sadly now defunct, modern free jazz ensembles. Dedicated, as it should be, to the memory of Leroy Jenkins.
Reissue of this 1975 classic featuring the Art Ensemble Of Chicago's Sirone on bass, Jerome Cooper on drums and piano, and ensemble leader Leroy Jenkins on the very un-jazz violin and viola. Treading similar musical ground as the Art Ensemble and the A.A.C.M. this is abstract, and very free. And while it may be Jenkins' group, it's definitely Sirone's party. Sinewy fretless bass pervades every dark nook and cranny of the recording. Wandering and slithering under and over Jenkins' wild sawing and Cooper's splattery drumming. So cool and free. So free in fact that some of you folks who aren't all that psyched on jazz might even give this a shot. There's lots of drone and NNCK / SHOTM tribal clatter that might just change your mind about jazz. Maybe.
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Guitarist Ribot's take on many jazz tunes, standards and otherwise ("Body and Soul", "I'm In The Mood For Love", Albert Ayler's "Ghosts", Charlie Haden's "Song For Che", and many more).
Simply solo guitar from one of the great stylists Marc Ribot, denizen of the downtown Knitting Facotry avant jazz scene. He puts his own flavorful, loping, precise take on pieces by Albert Ayler (three of them), Leonard Bernstein, The Beatles, John Zorn, John
The latest from downtown NY jazz guitarist Marc Ribot manages to sound as much like a Ribot record as any of his other recordings while sounding totally alien and beautiful. The liner notes mention Ribot's "world of atavistic horror", and then mentions that the compositions touch on Ayler, Feldman and obviously the Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi mentioned in the title, and while you can definitely hear those influences on this record, Ribot douses them in plenty of Goblin/Argento darkness and drone-y doomy clatter. From the opening track, with it's haunting distorted guitar, scrabbling over a brambly bed of chaotic percussion, with thorny tendrils of Klezmer woven throughout and sounding not unlike a free jazz Tom Waits number, the record gets dark and sppoky and keeps the creepiness coming with throbbing pump organ, pulsing bass notes, moaning low end and rumbling drones, noisy, clattery clangy free form guitar over a militaristic framework of tribal tom toms, occasional squalls of machine gun guitar and splattery percussion, stumbly bass and tinkly piano, heavily affected guitars, buzzing and shimmering, all culminating in the music concrete drone of the 12 minute centerpiece 'Geese', with accordion, pump organ, violin, viola, clarinet, bass clarinet and of course guitar, stretching a 20th century composition into occasional atonal Nitsch style fugues and Reichian repetetive motifs. Quite possibly our favorite Ribot record yet, and one that definitely hits the spot for you drone loving, free clatter creepiness afficianados.
"From brilliant surf guitar to perverse improvisation to Cuban rhythms, this eclectic compilation of his cinematic music displays the full range of his talents and the sick depths of his mind....listened as an album without the visuals, suggests a twisted and vivid narrative drama."
Marc Ribot's comedy record? Sorry, we love Marc Ribot, but this is, um, not so good. Indeed, one listen to the title track (skronk-punk with perhaps the worst vocal ever) will cause a painful full-body cringe. The original Shrek record on Avant was lovely, stick with that.
You may not necessarily know who Emil Richards is, but you've most definitely heard him play. The list of his musical accomplishments, is nearly Zelig like, seeming to appear everywhere and on pretty much every great recording, and having played with a who's who of performers, jazz, rock, underground, mainstream, even a small sampling of his music resume will have you wondering why he isn't a household name. He played with Charles Mingus, Lord Buckley, Lenny Bruce, Frank Sinatra, Nelson Riddle, Doris Day, Judy Garland, he performed frequently with Harry Partch, he plays the bongos that open Lalo Schifrin's theme to Mission Impossible, he's the guy snapping his fingers on the theme music from the Addams Family, he played tuned bowls and gongs on Jerry Goldsmith's iconic soundtrack to 1968's Planet Of The Apes. He later played with Frank Zappa, George Harrison (he even traveled to India with Harrison) as well as Blondie, and hundreds of other pop artists, and played on soundtracks like Taxi Driver, The Exorcist, Shaft, Chinatown, Dirty Harry, and again, HUNDREDS more.
But for weird music obsessives, he's no doubt best known for his record New Sound Element: Stones, originally released in 1967, which was a collection of 12 songs, each named for a month, and its specific birthstone, and which is infamous for the fact that it was in fact the first commercial recording to feature the Moog Synthesizer. But beyond that, it's a crazy record, some sort of twisted electronic jazz sci-fi exotica, the main instruments being ring modulated mallet instruments (marimba, xylophone, etc.) and synth, trippy and woozy, playful and silly, but at times, seriously twisted and darkly psychedelic. We're reminded of course of Perrey And Kingsley, after all for many of us, that was our first real exposure to early Moog pop, but Richards' compositions are a lot less goofy, less melodic too, more rhythmic, with the best tracks layering wild jazz drumming, over heavily effected marimba or xylophone, the sound locked into propulsive grooves, while the tones and overtones are constantly altered to created woozy warbly melodies, that's not to say this stuff isn't on the playful side, it most definitely is, the darker passages more than balanced by goofy, super melodic workouts, but the sound seems to always slip back into something a wee bit darker, whether it's the droney, swirly shuffle of "Emerald (May)", or the driving drum heavy psychedelic trip out of "Bloodstone (March)", the wild Moog swaddled xylophone shredding of "Moonstone (June)", or the fuzzy twisted jazzfunk of "Ruby (July)".
Imagine a drum/percussion driven sixties jazz record, re-engineered by some Moog mad scientist, and you'll get an idea of what Richards concocted on Stones, which has been floating around as a bootleg for years, but this is the first official reissue. And Stones is only the beginning. While it's most definitely the reason to pick this up, Omni has also tacked on a bunch of bonus tracks, first, a handful of songs from New Time Element, also originally released in 1967, which features a selection of pop and jazz standards, presented with odd time signatures and unique percussion, the original liner notes even give the listener breakdowns of the various rhythms of each song. It's not super far out, but a fun listen, and a nice chunk of sixties jazz. The final batch of extra tracks come from Richards' 1968 release Journey To Bliss, which is probably closest to Stones in sound, dialing back the electronic element, and heavy on the rhythms, lots of marimba, xylophone and percussion, some drum solos, a bit of fuzzy jazz funk, a heady psychedelic jazz excursion for sure, fans of the recent Spiritual Jazz collections will definitely dig, the album culminating in the final 18 minute six part epic "Journey To Bliss", which features a yogi like recitation, directions for meditation and inner peace, over Eastern raga style buzz, playful percussion, and more of Richards' wild psychedelic jazz.
Like all Omni reissues, gorgeous presented, with loads of pictures and extensive liner notes!
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We've been stoked on the series of 2-on-1 remastered cd reissues of classics from the vaults of avant-jazz label Impulse!, among 'em discs we've reviewed by Alice Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, and Gabor Szabo, with more to come.
Among the latest batch of Impulse! twofers, we discovered this one, featuring two albums, Antelope Freeway (1971) and Equinox Express Elevator (1975), by jazz guitarist Howard Roberts. No, we hadn't heard of him before, perhaps you have, apparently he did a lot of session work, and cut a number of records for Capitol as a bandleader in the '60s. We're now curious to hear those (1963's H.R. Is A Dirty Guitar Player is supposed to be really good) to see how "straight" they were, 'cause while Howard Roberts might be a bland sort of name, turns out these two Impulse! albums of his are some darn freaky records!
Well, it WAS 1971, and Roberts and his session cat colleagues were obviously turned on to the psychedelic rock scene... and drugs... so they made Antelope Freeway, a "jazz" record with tracks seamlessly flowing from one to another, interspersed and layered with field recordings of highway traffic noise on account of the album's loose 'on the road' concept. There's song titles like "The Ballad Of Fazzio Needlepoint" and "Five Gallons Of Astral Flash Could Keep You Awake For Thirteen Weeks", plenty of experimental ambience, electronic effects, and, most importantly, tasty playing. There's surreal stoner humor to it for sure, but the actual emphasis is on groovy, beautiful instrumental sounds. Lots of funky jazz-rock jamming AND wacked out weirdness...
Even a boogie track like "De Blooze", which starts out quite cliched, intentionally so (the title is a tip off), by its fifth minute has gotten quite warped...
To give you an idea where Roberts was coming from, Antelope Freeway's original sleeve includes shout outs to the Firesign Theatre (whose comedy records may have inspired the subversive, quasi-narrative sound collage elements of this album) and guitarist Joe Walsh of the James Gang. Walsh is specifically credited with "Optimization of space-time energy transformations" here, which likely has something to do with his immortal quip, "The smoker you drink, the player you get!"...
Recorded at sessions in '72 and '74, Equinox Express Elevator is just as freaky, similar to Antelope Freeway but with extra Moog synth added to the mix. Tracks range from the delicate, droney "Unfolding In", to the abstract burble and textural drift of "Real Freak Of Nature Historical Monument", to the herky-jerky "Harold J. Ostly, The County Tax Assessor".
Across the two albums, there's 19 tracks in all, each one uniquely lovely and/or strange. The cd booklet considerately contains the original artwork (front, back, gatefold interiors) for both albums. Definitely a recommended reissue twofer fer sure - much thanks to Impulse! for bringing back, and bringing to our attention, these trippy '70s jazz gems.
An odd, odd blend of jazz with drum'n'bass and a bit of post rock... from Poland! Shifting percussion, heavy doses of saxophone, spaced-out textures.
1996 uber-group recording featuring Tom Cora on Cello, Lux Ex on Bass, Phil Minton on Vocals and Michael Vatcher on drums. One of those rare and amazing efforts that continues to impress me every time I hear it. I guess it takes heavyweights such as these four, with broad backgrounds in music to produce such a unique album that is both completely out there skronk, and retaining catchy songlike membrane to every piece. Highly recommended. Includes a cover of Harry Partch's "The Letter."
This new vinyl (+cd) release from the consistently winning experimental label Utech comes from an artist we weren't previously familiar with, by the name of Frank Rosaly. We think he's based in Chicago, but aren't even sure about that. And it's a little hard to describe his music, as documented here, but we'll try, 'cause as soon as we heard this record, we could tell it was right up our alley. There's two long tracks here, about 15 minutes per side, apparently created/composed using a highly conceptual process, yet the results are much more than of academic interest, they're quite compelling and original, we think any adventurous listener will agree. Utech somewhat drily describes the genesis of Centering And Displacement thusly: "A body of improvised source material was collected, segmented and organized by a simple chance operation. These segments were then orchestrated into a sound program and arranged by order of the strict composed form. At times, the score also regulated post-recorded effects to manipulate the original material. As the material was edited, it was divided into six separate channels (three stereo tracks). Each pair of channels was transferred to a cd and each was played on three cd players simultaneously, creating a simple six-channel sound installation� the dense six-channel score was revised and reduced to two channels (one stereo track), which is now the final, preferred version."
Ok, but what does it sound like? How about a gamelan (or a recording of one) that's been all crumpled up, then unfolded and stretched out? Or, less fancifully, like a one-man electro-acoustic improv session on drums, percussion, and electronics (which IS what this is), subjected to the operations described above, in such a way as to strike a balance between abrasive, abstract textures and more hypnotic, if unusual and damaged, quasi-rhythmic soundscapes. Like we said, right up our alley!
It begins, on side one, with a low thunderous rumbling, like a magnified burst of record crackle. And such startling, ominous blown-out barrages of distortion continue intermittently throughout this first track, sounding like the breath of an expiring monster, sighing heavily amidst tinkling percussive jumble and crash, with pauses for silence� these tumbling spasms then steady and flow into what sound like masses of clattering chimes, a soundscape above which a recurring three-note motif (on synth? vibraphone?) is heard. That, in fact, reminded us of the incredible soundtrack to the 1971 movie Klute, sinister and suspenseful. There's electronics that sound like bird-twitter here too, and it's all very atmospheric, far from a mere experimental compositional exercise.
The second side/track continues with that atmospheric vibe, being a twilight soundscape of distant airplane engine drones, with more up-front textural scraping and bell ringing tones, that eventually coalesces into a softly thrumming humming pulse, over which a very gentle clitter-clatter of percussion drifts. Quite lovely and mesmeric, it is. The clank and rattle builds towards the end, as does the pulsation, becoming more insistent and dramatic, but still relatively mild as such things could be imagined, before a sudden whistling finale.
Inspired (we're merely guessing) equally by '60s/'70s out-there free improv (stuff on FMP, BYG) and also Industrial music's infamous "pipe-fighting" techniques, Rosaly's music has moments that may remind you of No Neck Blues Band, of Will Over Matter, of Supersilent, of Pierre-Yves Mace, of Aufgehoben, and other disparate and unusual and sometimes counter-intuitive but fascinating music-and-noise-makers. This is really pretty great. And, LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Note, the lp comes packaged with a compact disc version of the album as well, which is always a nice touch (much preferable to a mere download card, we think).
The beloved Bay Area saxophone quartet (whose Bruce Ackley managed AQ around the time this record was released!) gets the honorary reissue treatment from Atavistic's wonderful Unheard Music Series. This originally self-released 1981 record has never before been
New one from San Francisco's world-renowned Rova. Featuring the six-part Zorn-style game-piece "Maintaining the Web...".
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WOW. And do we mean WOW!! Fifteen classic free jazz records from the late sixties / early seventies, long out of print, finally getting the ULTRA deluxe reissue treatment. For some reason these are incredibly limited, so they've been a bit tough to get, so we're going to list a few at a time as we can get them.
Ahhh, the trombone, not the most common of jazz instruments, but one of the most versatile and powerful, "the voice of God" according to one 19th century composer, and to our ears one of the strangest and coolest. Roswell Rudd may very well be one of the better known masters of the jazz trombone, as well as one of the few white players in the sixties free jazz scene. Having done time with a handful of big jazz names (including Cecil Taylor) this is a reissue of Rudd's first record as a band leader. Featuring Rudd on trombone,�John Tchicai on Alto Saxophone, Finn Von Eyben on double bass and Louis Moholo on drums, these five tracks smolder and smoke, it's free, but not chaotic and skronky, instead, the sounds here sort of drift and intertwine, these pieces smolder, dark and brooding, murky and subterranean sounding, the drums are a constant skitter, a dense tangle of impossibly free rhythms, the bass wrapped around the drums like a warm blanket, Rudd's trombone and Tchicai's sax are slippery slithering snakes one moment, then wisps of smoke the next, occasionally turning sharp and jagged, but usually slipping back into the shadows. A dark dreamy blend of�marching band music, traditional African music, New Orleans jazz, and random avant free drone clatter and shuffle, with long stretches sounding like they came straight off some lost Avarus or No Neck record. So mysterious and beautiful. HIGHLY recommended.�
Comes in a gorgeous diecut fullcover three panel sleeve, with new artwork, as well as a huge booklet with the original album sleeve notes, new liner notes in french and english as well as a bunch of cool photos. So nice!
At last, back in print! This Ruins album from 2000 had been unavailable for a while, but Skin Graft, recognizing the severity of the situation, has stepped in to address that problem. For those who don't know, the Ruins are a Japanese duo on bass and drums who since 1985 or so have played a pretty unique form of hyper-kinetic hardcore prog rock with schizoid changes, influenced by weird French progsters Magma -- and themselves influencing stuff like John Zorn's Naked City. Here's our original review of this, with a few additional notes tacked on at the end:
Mastermind Tatsuya Yoshida (drums) and his current sidekick Hishashi Sasaki (6-string bass, MIDI) kick out the jams yet again on this, the Ruins' upteenth (15th?) cd. Beware their percussive frenzies, sizzling bass guitar acrobatics, and bizarre vocals (with lyrics in their own improvised language, that seems to mean something to them, even though they don't). With "Pallaschtom" the Ruins have really settled into a tight, mind-bogglingly complex compositional style, that's perhaps not as catchy as some of their past classics, but is still definitely insane and amazing, and incorporates some new, what you might call "post-rock" influences (i.e. there's moments on here that sound more like a Storm & Stress record than your usual Ruins stuff). And, it's also true that they are further in danger of garnering official "novelty act" status, especially with their newfound penchant for cover-song medleys: for instance, this disc ends with a track of 26 classical music themes (well-known tunes by Beethoven, Satie, Musorgsky, Bach, Chopin, Mozart, Vivaldi, etc.) run through in a little over one minute! Exhausting, and entertaining! Novelty act or not, they're still one of our favorite bands.
Since then, there's been a few live Ruins albums released and one newer, more multi-dimensional studio disc (Tzomborgha) that we thought was superior to Pallaschtom, though that's not to say that any self respecting Ruins fan should be able to live without Pallaschtom in their collection! Also, Sasaki isn't in the band anymore, either. A further note: this Skin Graft reish adds two more medleys (Hard Rock and Prog Rock) as bonus tracks.
Early '70s British progrock reissue, heavily featuring obscure jazz guitar legend Ray Russell. So yeah, it's kind of jazzy, with tons of fantastic Russell soloing.
Live recording of eccentric Chicago jazz experimentalist Hal Russell, from 1979.
British jazz guitarist Ray Russell has been having a renaissance of sorts, first with two albums early '70s albums reissued on import, now with this domestic double cd on Jim O'Rourke's Moikai label. Known for his guitar freakout on the Dr. No soundtrack album (?!), Russell has had a fairly low-profile career, but can count among his fans the likes of O'Rourke, Henry Kaiser, Rudolph Grey, and Alan Licht. The latter contributes very personal liner notes in which he compares Russell to Masayuki Takayanagi, Sonny Sharrock, Jimi Hendrix, and John McLaughlin, concluding that Russell is, for him, the ultimate free jazz/psychedelic rock fusion guitarist. Licht: "Heavy metal guitar heroes are getting harder and harder to find (after all, you don't see Brad Gillis on too many magazine covers these days), and free jazz can be a bore after awhile. This CD restores my faith in both."
Russell's band was definitely a jazz group, with sax, trumpet, piano, etc. appearing on most cuts, but with Russell's solid body guitar skree taking things into the realms of rock, psych, and beyond. Gorgeous stuff. This collection includes both live and studio versions of Russell's most killer composition, "Stained Angel Morning". Thanks, Jim, for making this stuff available!!
We know that Magma mainman/genius Christian Vander is back on the scene with a new, updated version of that classic monster prog rock band of the seventies. And he's been doing quite well (as the lucky few who saw Magma perform at '99 SF Progfest know) at maintaining Magma's formidable reputation as France's amazing prog-rock answer to both John Coltrane and Richard Wagner. But what of his '70s Magma bandmates, who aren't involved with the current line-up? Here's a disc that shows what bassist extraordinaire Jannick Top (best known for his proto-Ruins composition "De Futura" on Magma's 1976 album "Udu Wudu") has been up to lately. STS is his trio with sax player Eric Seva and drummer Claude Salmieri, and "System Solaire" is a live concert recording from '97, for which they were joined by guest guitarist Thibault Abrial. The nine planetarily-aligned tracks are both moody and energetic, dark jazz fusion with heavy Magma touches (Top and the drummer lock into some unmistakably Magmoid grooves), and the guitar adds a definite psych-rock element. The booklet features a photo of bald-headed Top looking very metal indeed in shades and leather.
Former Sun Ra Arkestra drummer chants and plays electronic finger drums, among other things, and wears a gold cape given to him by Mr. Ra. At a 1995 show in New York, his electronic drums temporarily refused to work, so he gamely chanted a single phrase whilst fixing the thing. Reminded me of the time Rick James was playing "Super Freak" on Solid Gold and one of the synthesizer's legs partially collapsed. Panic crossed his face but he played on.
First time on cd outside of Japan for this early '70s album from Coltrane contemporary and torch-bearer Sanders, a free jazz saxphone legend in his own right. As you might expect, it's a disc both meditative and groovy, with a strong spiritual vibe and definite African/Nigerian influences, as on the uplifting "Ore-Se-Rere" which features lots of rhythmic percussion and vocal chant, or the 14 minute "The Gathering". The title track is also quite a lengthy number, 18 minutes long, of which quite a few are occupied by spurts of hard-blowing outside improv skronk, which you'll also find in "The Gathering" expressively wailing to a downright scary extreme. This was one of Sanders' last albums for the Impulse label, issued in 1974, and has much to recommend it to fans of his other Impulse sides. Herewith the recording details, like we're the DJ on a jazz radio station...
Personnel: Pharoah Sanders (vocals, soprano, tenor saxophone, shaker, percussion, bells); Joe Bonner (vocals, wooden flute, cow horn, piano, harmonium, percussion); Calvin Hill (vocals, bass guitar, tambora); Lawrence Killian (vocals, congas, percussion, bells); John Blue (vocals, percussion); Sedatrius Brown (vocals); Michael White (violin); Michael Carvin (drums, percussion); Kenneth Nash, Jimmy Hopps (percussion). Recording information: The Ash Grove, Los Angeles, California (09/1973); Wally Heider Studio, San Francisco, California (09/13/1973).
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