Jazz /
Mosquito/See trough
On the one hand, they seem to be releasing too many CDs - on the other, they are so different and so good you really need to have them. This time they offer two long pieces, both exquisite, of which Mosquito is, in my opinion, destined for greatness. Since the demo arrived in the office it's been on continuously. Minimal, with every sound perfectly imagined and perfectly placed, it achieves almost total timelessness. Essential. (label info)
The boys
Sound-track to the prize-winning movie. The Necks break with convention here and put several shorter pieces on one CD. All gems and all pared back to the reiterative imperfection that is the Necks' unique and glorious signature. This a band that seems to be coming into its golden age. Prodigious music and highly recommended.
Drive by
FINLLY RESTOCKED! For the last 40 years the Logos Foundation in Gent has featured, produced and supported a vast programme of experimental music. One of its most distinctive projects is the massive robot orchestra - a huge and growing array of invented instruments - all of them Goldbegeresque physical constructions that produce internally generated acoustic sound, programmed and played through computer driven mechanical processes... Here they have been programmed to play a broad concert o…
Aether
RESTOCKED! Another remarkable performance from a group that has no peer and belongs to no genre or movement. Minimal in an essential and structural sense, they succeed where more formal attempts founder, in re-forming subjective time in a way that is genuinely gripping and as far from theoretical as great interpreters can get. Applying extraordinary technique in a remarkably discrete way, they here transfigure a single chord over a long duration, imperceptibly arriving far from their st…
Hanging gardens
Completely unique, stunningly musical, technically impressive & breathtakingly simple. The Necks have defined an endlessly productive area of performance that is at once both minimal and gripping, obvious yet profoundly subtle. Easy to say, hard to achieve. It can take time for a group with a completely original idea to find its public & The Necks have been pursuing this one for over a decade in their native Australia - but it doesn't age, it just matures.
Jason KHAN, Utah KAWASAKI, Ailack
Tetuzi Akyiama: tape delayed electric guitar ; Jason Kahn: analogue synthesizer, percussion ; Utah Kawasaki: dismanteled roland synthesizer, cell phone. Recorded on 22 April 2004, Tokyo, Japan. 'No less than six new releases on the Creative Sources label, placing the label right in the centre of improvised music. East meets west on the disc of Tetuzi Akiyama (tape-delayed electric guitar), Jason Kahn (analogue synthesizer and percussion) and Utah Kawasaki (dismantled roland synthesizer and cell …
Points and Slashes
Over the past decade, Swiss-based Günter Müller has collaborated with many of the most prominent Tokyo-based musicians, recording CDs with Otomo Yoshihide, Taku Sugimoto, Sachiko M, Masahiko Okura, and Toshimaru Nakamura. Points and Slashes is the latest of these, a duo collaboration with guitar wizard Tetuzi Akiyama.It's impossible to pin down Akiyama, a musician of diverse interests and activities, with a brief description. He has been playing electric guitar since he was 13, and formed his fi…
Nuits de la fondation Maeght Vol. 2
Part two of Sun Ra's 1970 appearance at the Fondation Maeght. An important document for this innovator of jazz. Improvisation, percussion, Afro rhythms, mysticism, and the occult -- all this and more is what the Sun Ra universe is made of. One of the most mysterious and fascinating figures in the history of jazz. Many potential listeners may be initially dismayed at the seeming discord that is inherent in the free and avant-garde subgenres. For them, Nuits de la Fondation Maeght, Vol. 2 might be…
Nuits de la fondation Maeght Vol. 1
Nuits de la Fondation Maeght, Vol. 1 (1970) is the first of two releases capturing Sun Ra and the Arkestra at Saint Paul de Vence, Côte d'Azur, France, in August of 1970, on what was their first European excursion. As a rule, free and avant-garde jazz are a decidedly acquired taste. However, for discerning palettes, these installments present the aggregate at their absolute pinnacle in terms of performance and inspiration. The four works included here offer a wide variety of styles and approache…
The Issue at Hand
The musicians who perform together on this CD are as unlikely a group of individuals that you are ever likely to find. Yoshikazu Iwamoto brings a cultural past that has deep aesthetic roots in Japanese Buddhism, while John Tilbury's classical European training brings a sensibility that has matured through contract with cultivated traditions of learning and discipline. Eddie Prévost by his presence draws everything together into an indivisible whole, through responses that have been honed from ye…
We are everyone in the room
"Two improvising laptop trios, Stilluppsteypa hailing from Iceland and Chicago's TV Pow, met for the first time in the fall of 2000 and embarked on a week-long tour, captured in part on this recording. As in most successful examples of this genre, the musicians mesh into a whole wherein individual accomplishments are impossible to quantify. The range of sounds and depth of detail produced by this sextet are remarkable, from the quietest clicks and rattles to deeply sonorous hums and ratchetings,…
Hooky
Virtually the whole of the 1976 Montreal solo concert -- one of his best -- including the complete Tao cycle and several other pieces, one of which ('Hooky') is not on any other record. Reissue of half of Quark LP 9998 with over 50 minutes of previously unissued material from the same concert.
Saxophone special +
Music for four saxophones (Steve Lacy, Evan Parker, Steve Potts & Trevor Watts) with guitar (Derek Bailey) & synthesizer (Michel Waisvisz). Plus highlights from an earlier London concert by Lacy, Potts, Bailey, Kent Carter & John Stevens. Improvisations on original compositions. Reissue of Emanem 3310 (plus an extra piece from the same concert) and the better half of Emanem 304.
Weal & woe
If you have only heard the more recent, understated recordings of this giant of the soprano saxophone, you may wonder what all the fuss is about. Just listen to this seminal album and you should understand right away why Lacy is such a formidable force. The initial eight tracks are a reissue of the first LP issued by Emanem, which was Lacy's first solo recording. Each is a gem: radical, accessible, and fascinatingly offbeat. One uses a random radio selection as a backdrop, another mimics duck wa…
In a sentimental mood
A collaborative CD released in 1996 on incus, featuring former Skullflower guitarist Stefan Jaworzyn and saxophonist Alan Wilkinson. Recorded by Giles Perring at the Red Rose Club, February 27, 1996. Drums of passion (22.11), My psychotic Valentine (15.01), David Murray dons a cunning Alan Wilkinson disguise and blags his way onto a bill at the Termite Club (11.33), Excerpts from a typical hard bop blowing session (10.49), Give a man a saxophone and he'll end up playing jazz (14.23). GREAT!
Crevulations
A sequence of piano and tenor saxophone free improvisations recorded in concert at the Appleby Jazz Festival in 2004. "Looking for an unlikely pair? Here you have it: Stan Tracey, a pianist on his way to be an octogenarian, with a track record that makes the British mainstream jazz community proud, teaming up with Evan Parker, one of the best and most extreme free improvisers of his generation (which is a generation younger than Tracey), adored in avant-garde circles but still largely ignored by…
Suspensions and anticipations
A sequence of free improvisations -- eight duos, two piano solos & one tenor saxophone solo -- recorded at Gateway Studios. Recorded 9/28/03. 62 minutes.
Mouthpiece
"Outrageous sounds produced by a workshop orchestra directed by John Stevens - an SME-type improvisation; instrumental & vocal drones; a mechanically rhythmic yet unpredictable piece; and an all-out improvisation featuring non-vocal mouth sounds, vocal sounds & instruments. The exact line-ups on each of these ensemble pieces are not known (apart from the leader on cornet), so they are not given." (Emanem)
Quintessence 2 (1973-4)
2nd volume. The unissued duo works by Stevens (cornet, voice, percussion) and Watts (ss) are way out and an invigorating reminder of the outlandish possibilities of free improvisation, especially "DAA-OOM" ("a loose composition inspired by the music of both the central African pygmies and Albert Ayler -- even 23 years later, the rawness of these pieces is somewhat startling." -- Martin Davidson).
Frameworks
Three different groups in performances utilising frameworks devised by John Stevens sending the music into unexpected areas. From mid-1968 there is the unusual line-up of JOHN STEVENS (percussion), NORMA WINSTONE (voice), KENNY WHEELER (fluegelhorn), PAUL RUTHERFORD (trombone) and TREVOR WATTS (bass clarinet) in a wide-ranging half-hour sequence. Another half-hour sequence features the superb 1971 quartet of STEVENS (percussion & voice), JULIE TIPPETT (voice & guitar), WATTS (soprano sax) and RO…