From AAJ:
06-Jul-08 Kirk Knuffke Quartet
Big Wig (Clean Feed Records)
Reviewed by Troy Collins06-Jul-08 Barry Guy / Marilyn Crispell / Paul Lytton
Phases Of The Night (Intakt Records)
Reviewed by Nic Jones05-Jul-08 Wadada Leo Smith’s Golden Quartet
Tabligh (Cuneiform Records)
Reviewed by Dan McClenaghan05-Jul-08 Humi
Dune (Moonjune Records)
Reviewed by Nic Jones05-Jul-08 Revolutionary Snake Ensemble
Forked Tongue (Cuneiform Records)
Reviewed by Mark Corroto
The latest ReR releases:
FRED FRITH . JOHN ZORN: The Art of |Memory II
The long-awaited follow up to their first release on Derek Bailey s Incus label and a kind of prequel, going back to the time when Fred was playing home-made instruments and John was using mouthpieces and duck-calls as much or more than alto sax; this was back in the New York glory days when 100 new ideas popped up somewhere every day, and these performances lie right at the fringe of what most people would accept as music . Anyone wanting to get back to one of the roots of what later became known as noise music will want this CD, since these performances encapsulate an approach to improvisation that has much more to do with listening to the world than perpetuating an existing musical tradition that works through safe, mutually understood, rules and conventions. AOMII is a vintage DOCUMENT from a lost era when innovation, energy and imagination were valued, and still had the power to shock and surprise.
FRITH, FRED: The Technology of Tears
With an all-star line-up that features Tenko, John Zorn and Christian Marclay with guest Jim Staley on trombone , Technology of Tears started life in New York in 1986 as a dance commission by Rosalind Newman. Fred took this opportunity to experiment with Henry Kaiser s brand new synclavier the absolute state-of-the-art sampling and processing technology of the time - Henry had to take out a second mortgage on his house to buy it . It was the sophisticated sampling that fascinated Fred, and the piece is characterised by technological comparisons between real and virtual voices which constantly merge into one another. Tenko and Zorn tear through it all with breathless intensity. Parts two and three, which follow, couldn t be more different, for them Fred adopts a completely different methodology, playing everything himself mostly on low-grade instruments, then inviting turntablist Marclay to add plundered parts. Here is a completely different approach to sampling : exploring dense layers of quotation intercut with melodies formed using random editing processes with subsequent transcription and re-performance . Lastly there is Jigsaw, a later work, also made for Rosalind Newman, reflecting the frustrations experienced making Technology… where, every time Fred would complete a stable version, Rosalind would ask for changes incidentally, sending the recording way over budget . This time Fred decided to make a modular piece that could be re-assembled in any way requested - and having no pre-determined structure at all. The original composition consisted of dozens of musical cells, each recorded separately in increments of between 3 and 12 measures; all at the same tempo, and in the same key. The idea was to play the elements separately and then ask Rosalind how she would like them constructed. Ironically, the test assembly, made as demonstration of what was possible, won instant approval, and no reconstruction was ever necessary.
MACLEAN, STEVE: Frog Bug Guitar Computer
Steve is back with a truly original and unusual CD; very different from his other work - featuring, as the title proclaims, frogs and insects - recorded in the field - and guitar -, all subtly and intelligently processed which is where the computer comes in ; not to alter the sounds so much as to lock them together into complex rhythm and pitch relationships. The result sounds somehow natural but yet spookily integrated. Then MacLean treats each track, or episode, differently, coming at them from different angles, sometimes even letting the computer add its own percussive parts to the mix. This work, while bearing the hallmarks of complexity and chaos, has a deep underlying order that never quite gives itself up to the analytical side of the brain. A quiet landmark in the fusion of soundscape, performance and computer mediation that breaks new ground in the pursuit of OPEN but organised form.
SUN RA: Sleeping Beauty
Originally released by Saturn in 1979, this is a studio recording by a large ensemble including, unusually, electric guitar and bass . These are the first recordings of the titles included though they were played live a few months earlier on German radio . Springtime Again is a floating, sonically OPEN composition, with a distant sung ostinato, interestingly mixed. The door of the Cosmos, which features June Tyson, is a relaxed groove-driven piece in which electric piano, guitar and bass function as ground, over which events drift in and out, while Sleeping Beauty is a chaotic, swirly masterpiece with lots of effects added to the instruments, interestingly mixed. As an ex-LP, it s LP length.
SUN RA: On Jupiter
A big band studio recording made a month before Sleeping Beauty and released by Saturn in 1979 consisting of three quite different pieces: On Jupiter, which is a vocalised, relaxed, swing trance piece, UFO - Sun Ra s unashamed approach to disco, layering big band events over a funky beat and chunky chants -, and Seductive Fantasy, which lurches along in classic Ra fashion, very easygoing and with a good high-definition recording quality. It s nice to hear the oboe and bassoon, often lost in live recordings, so prominent, Again, the mixing is unusually sophisticated. As an ex-LP, it s LP length.
From Rastascan Records:
The New Black
The White Album
Robair/Shiurba/Rothbaum/DrakeThis direct-to-disc recording spans four LP sides, one of which includes nearly two dozen locked grooves. A special pressing on black vinyl. Edition of 200 copies.
Gino Robair - percussion
John Shiurba - electric guitar
David Rothbaum - analog modular synthesizer
Jeremy Drake - electric guitarRecorded January 21, 2008 at Infrasonic Sound, Los Angeles, CA, by Pete Lyman, Richard Simpson, and Jeff Ehrenberg.
Upcoming shows with Henry Grimes:
Thursday, July 24th, ‘O8: Jason Hwang’s Spontaneous River, a convergence of New York City string improvisers including Henry Grimes, at the Living Theatre, 21 Clinton St. betw. Houston & Stanton St’s, Manhattan (NYC), 1O:3O p.m., 212-792-8O5O, http://www.livingtheatre.org, http://www.rucma.org, livingtheatreorg@yahoo.com, info@visionfestival.org. Take Houston St. bus #M-21, Ave. B bus M-9, F train to Delancey St., or J/ M/ Z train to Essex St.
Symphony for Improvisers Double Quartet,
Merkin Concert Hall, NYC, ‘O6,
photocollage by Enid Farber, www.farberfoto.comSunday, August 24th: Symphony for Improvisers Double Quartet (Dave Douglas w/ J.D. Allen, Henry Grimes, and Andrew Cyrille; and Roy Campbell, Jr. w/ Mixashawn, Hilliard Greene, and Hamid Drake), music of Don Cherry, at the main stage, Saalfelden Congress Centre, Jazzfestival Saalfelden, Austria, phone +43 (O)6582 75999, http://www.jazzsaalfelden.com/2008, office@jazzsaalfelden.at. This festival runs from August 21st to August 24th (31 concerts on 7 stages in 4 days) and also includes groups led by Dave Holland, Wadada Leo Smith, Craig Taborn, and many more.
Thursday, August 28th: Symphony for Improvisers Double Quartet (Dave Douglas w/ J.D. Allen, Henry Grimes, and Andrew Cyrille; and Roy Campbell, Jr. w/ Mixashawn, Hilliard Greene, and Hamid Drake), music of Don Cherry at Piazza del Nuraghe, Sant’Anna Arresi, Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy, phone +39 O781 9661O2 or -966861, http://www.santannarresijazz.it/festivalb.html, puntagiara@santannarresijazz.it, amministrazione@santannarresijazz.it. This great festival runs from August 28th to September 6th this year, is dedicated to Don Cherry, and also includes Peter Apfelbaum, Karl Berger, Daniel Carter, Christian Cherry, David Ornette Cherry, Eagle-Eye Cherry, Neneh Cherry, Ernest Dawkins, Trilok Gurtu, Fareed Haque, Graham Haynes, Mark Helias, Sabir Mateen, Joe McPhee, Louis Moholo & Minafric Orchestra, Lawrence “Butch” Morris, William Parker, Ingrid Sertso, Warren Smith, Bob Stewart, Chad Taylor, Keith Tippett, Julie Tippetts, Ken Vandermark, Nana Vasconcelos, Carlos Ward, Greg Ward, Corey Wilkes, Kahil el’Zabar, and many more…
Bruce from DMG reviews this year’s fest.
The annual Vision Festival is an important gathering of free spirits from around the world, who come together in the inhospitable environment of downtown NYC for one week out of the year (recent years in June) to bathe in the sounds of avant/jazz and related art-forms like dance, painting, poetry and films. It is the one yearly festival in New York that so many of us look forward to the most. Patricia Nicholson organizes and is at the heart of this fest, doing an incredible amount of work to make this much-needed gathering succeed.
pfMentum has released this offering.
Always Outnumbered
Steuart Liebig/Tee-Tot QuartetJoseph Berardi: drumset, percussion
Dan Clucas: cornet
Scot Ray: dobro
Steuart Liebig: contrabassguitar
The schedule for this year’s festival is out, and features the following artists.
DJ Spooky & Vijay Iyer (New York)
Matana Roberts’s Coin Coin: Prologue (New York)
Rouge Ciel (Québec)
René Lussier (Québec) and Kevin Breit (Ontario)
Kidd Jordan Quartet (Louisiana)
John Kameel Farah (Ontario)
Kid Koala (Québec)
SAFA (B.C.)
Joane Hétu’s Filature (Québec)
Satoko Fujii ma-do (Japan)
Instant Composers Pool (ICP) Orchestra (Netherlands)
Fond of Tigers (B.C.)
Francois Houle Aerials (B.C.)
Burrows (Ontario)
Friendly Rich and the Lollipop People (Ontario)
Sangha (B.C.)
Barry Guy (UK), Maya Homburger (Switzerland) & Jeff Reilly (Nova Scotia)
Tallboys: Kevin Breit, Matt Brubeck, Jesse Stewart (Ontario)
Burnt Sugar (New York)
L’Orkestre des pas perdus (Québec)
Tortoise (Illinois)
Bernardo Padrón Group (Ontario)
Jane Bunnett’s Carnavalissimo (Ontario) with Puppets by Jerrard Smith & Natalie Axon (Ontario)
John Zorn: Improvisations (New York)
John Zorn’s The Dreamers (New York)
John Zorn’s Electric Masada (New York)
From Free Jazz:
Friday, July 4, 2008
Heath Watts & Dan Pell - Breathe If You Can (Leo Records, 2008) ***½Thursday, July 3, 2008
Daniel Carter, Chris Welcome, Shayna Dulberger, John McLellan - Singular (Empty Room, 2008) ****Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Denman Maroney - Gaga (NuScope, 2008) ****½Tuesday, July 1, 2008
His Name Is Alive - Sweet Earth Flower : A Tribute To Marion Brown (High Two, 2007) ****
From DMG.
6.5 hours of new Braxton recordings - on One Disc! Three Satoko Fujii/Natsuki Tamura CDs - and their available back catalog! Andy Emler/Marc Ducret DVD! Marco Cappelli/Marc Ribot/Doug Wieselman! Manuel Gottsching! The Lovely Music records catalog!
From the Bohemian National Home:
Sunday, July 6: New Gree, Eagle Ager, Heart The Band
New Gree is a dance ensemble that tours like a rock band and improvises it’s performance according to the environment. Eagleager is a multi-media performance that utilizes electronic music, visual art, theatrical effects and costumes to create a total art experience. Also appearing is Heart The Band (Chris Peck/John Maniacci).
Doors at 8 pm; $6.Tuesday, July 8th: Troy Gregory and The Stepsisters, Outrageous Cherry
Two of Detroit’s great, under-heralded rock bands join forces for an exciting night of music that remembers the past but looks to the future. Troy Gregory has had one of the most significant careers in recent Detroit rock, leading The Witches and Medusa Cyclone and contributing to Detroit acts like The Dirtbombs, Larval and soul singer Nathaniel Mayer. He’s also had significant activity beyond Detroit in groups like Flotsam and Jetsam, Prong and Swans- as well as a small acting career. The Stepsisters delve into the realm of cabaret in an indirect way; their version of Gothic America has more to do with circus sounds and a predilection for “monster” songs than genre bands like Bauhaus.Outrageous Cherry is one of Detroit’s longest running pop-rock groups lead by another significant contributor to Detroit scene, Matt Smith. A veteran of groups like The Volebeats, THTX, Medusa Cyclone and Nathaniel Mayer, Smith’s guitar playing has it’s strongest vehicle in Outrageous Cherry. The band combines pop music culled from sources like The Beach Boys and Phil Specter (which informed his production work for groups like The Go, Kim Fowley and Slumber Party) with the raw guitar power of groups like the Velvet Underground and Television. Second guitarist Larry Ray adds some captivating lines to some of their more “outer-limits” explorations.
Doors at 9 pm; $5.Tuesday, July 15th New American Folk Hero showcase: Tusk Lord, Chris Niels
This tour of folk music innovators was put together by Bohemian pal Mike Tamburo, who had to drop off the bill due to family emergency. Tusk Lord is only a folk act in the broadest sense: rooted in intuitive playing and mostly electric, he could just as easily fall under the Art Brut category. Very distant sounding percussion and gobs of reverb on everything swirl around tremolo guitar (the technique, not the effect).Chris Niels’s relation to folk music is more direct; he cites Mississippi John Hurt, Robert Johnson and Robbie Basho as influences and it clearly shows in his guitar playing. Favoring slide guitar and open tunings ala the country-blues greats, he shows reverence for his predecessors, but focuses on his own contributions to the genre.
Doors at 8 pm; $6.Friday, July 18th: Abuakwa African Music and Dance Ensemble
One of the greatest shows of the past year at BNH has to be this outstanding group from Ghana. Although the instrumentation is traditional (belafone, flutes and loads of percussion), the group is innovative in that they draw on repetoire from across Africa, creating a fusion of classical African music and dance. This year, Abuakwa will be providing seperate workshops on African dance and drumming, followed by a lecture/performance. Don’t miss this incredible all day event!7/19 MISSION OF BURMA play Signals,Calls and Marches! with SSM
What can we say about this show? One of the greatest rock bands of all time makes an appearance at Bohemian National Home, in a set that includes it’s entire classic first record, Signals, Calls and Marches. This is one of the shows that I’ve dreamed of since opening our doors and it’s finally happening. Also featuring one of Detroit’s finest bands, SSM.
Doors at 9 pm. Advanced tickets available at Stormy Records and Bohemian National Home for $15 cash (a little extra for credit card purchases at Stormy). You can also get them through our paypal account:
newdetroitsounds@hotmail.com7/25 & 7/26 X! Fest with Terrible Twos, Fontana, Frustration, The Mahonies and more
8/6 Color List
8/13 Eric Rieman
8/15 Oluyemi Abdu Thomas
8/16 Jeff Marx
8/22 Frode Gjerstadt
From AGP:
The Avant Garde Project is a series of 20th-century classical-experimental- electroacoustic torrents digitized from LPs whose music has in most cases never been released on CD, and so is effectively inaccessible to the vast majority of music listeners today. This is wild stuff, so check it out if you’ve never heard this sort of music before. The analog rig used to extract the sound from the grooves is near state-of-the-art, producing almost none of the tracking distortion or surface noise normally associated with LPs.
AGP1-105 are now available for direct download in the archive at www.avantgardeproject.org
AGP106-109 and other recent AGP installments are also available at http://thepiratebay.org/user/loudav
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AGP110 is a transcription of an out-of-print CD containing Horatiu Radulescu’s Sensual Sky and Iubiri. Both works are for chamber ensembles and sound icon (a piano upended and played directly on the exposed strings). Winds dominate in the scoring, but with a greater variety of timbres than in Inner Time II, making these works somewhat more accessible. Both exemplify Radulescu’s approach of, “realisation by synthesis of the global sources of sound, living sound plasmas wherein all the micro-parameters possess an infinite number of micro-rhythms.”
These are gorgeous works, and a feast for lovers of microtonality. I cannot recommend them highly enough. Once again, this installment is brought to you by the AGP’s global network of Radulescu partisans. The torrent includes a PDF file with scans of the CD booklet notes in three languages.
06 - Sensual Sky [20:56]
07 - Iubiri [46:10]NOTE: To the best of my knowledge, this recording is currently out of print. If you know otherwise, please let me know ASAP, as I do not wish any artists to be deprived of the royalties that they so richly deserve.
The New York Sun writes about the move of New York’s music scene from Manhattan to Brooklyn.
Only a decade ago, what fans used to call the downtown jazz scene was thriving in the geographical zone that supplied its name: Lower Manhattan. A new club called Tonic had just opened at the site of a former kosher winery. The tri-level Knitting Factory was still presenting adventurous music in TriBeCa, and its founder, Michael Dorf, was producing a sprawling summer jazz festival. Smaller spaces such as Context, Alt.Coffee, Fez, and the Internet Café also hosted frequent performances, with a tilt toward the visionary, the improvisatory, and the creatively offbeat.
From AAJ:
04-Jul-08 Gato Libre
Kuro (Libra Records)
Reviewed by Budd Kopman04-Jul-08 Cosmologic
Eyes in the Back of My Head (Cuneiform Records)
Reviewed by Troy Collins03-Jul-08 Phil Minton
No Doughnuts in Hand (Emanem)
Reviewed by John Eyles03-Jul-08 Mark O’Leary/Wayne Horvitz/Dylan Van Der Schyff
FLUX (FMR Records)
Reviewed by Glenn Astarita03-Jul-08 Junk Box
Cloudy Then Sunny (Libra Records)
Reviewed by Jerry D’Souza
Monday Night Jazz in Bushnell Park get a preview.
Freshly resurrected from the dead, the free Monday Night Jazz Series in Hartford’s Bushnell Park opens its bold, cutting-edge, four-concert season Monday night, striking out in a new direction under its artistic director Joe Morris.
Its premiere headliner, the critically acclaimed, iconoclastic pianist Matthew Shipp, is one of the most creative musicians in this series devoted to practitioners of creative or cutting-edge music.
From Ground and Sky:
3 July 2008
New review: Budd, Harold - The Room
New review: Cale, John - 5 Tracks
Shadow review: Newsom, Joanna - Ys
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