★Rogueart
Symbolic Reality
* 2020 Stock * Six compositions by pianist Matthew Shipp for his String Trio with violist Mat Maneri and double bassist William Parker, their first Trio record since 2001's "Expansion, Power and Release" (Hat), their long history of working together in a variety of configurations creating a near-telepathic link between the players over Shipp's sophisticated frameworks.
Urdla XXX
The dramatic act of this performance draws a deamhulatory line colouring each phase in the sound of the required instrument; large discursive logic intensity in the atmosphere appropriate to each segment. After his entry "City of Lyon"which sets the happening hic et nunc, the second piece "Art Dance"on alto clarinet is heard as a twirling questioning with changes of mood from anger to melancholy: bal(l)ade autumnal de Dakka Du Boo Yu", again on the clarinet,"Music is Sound, Sound is Music"thunde…
Magnetism(s)
"The music takes on short, fleeting forms: fading here, held and moody there, as though the improvisation encouraged skepticism of firm certitudes. The tightness of the discourse, however, demands enlightening energy and lucid tautness." (Jean-François Abert, excerpt from the liner notes)"We have already seen that in the history of the universe, such a spiral nucleus of sounds that subsides on itself and grows dense, that softens and dilates, that provides its exceptional energy of cohesion even…
Wild Red Yellow
The culmination of 11 years working on music for this band, Wild Red Yellow was recorded in 2011 by an expanded version of Larry Ochs Sax & Drumming Core. With very critical help from engineer Philip Perkins, Ochs then slowly mixed and edited the two soundscapes on this new 2017 release, dedicated to film-makers Julie Taymor and David Cronenberg. The Sax & Drumming Core was originally a trio of Ochs on saxophones and two drummers – Scott Amendola and Don Robinson. They released two CDs and toure…
Heads Or Tails
Two different duets between reedman Sylvain Kassap and percussionist Hamid Drake – one live, one studio – recorded six years apart, but sounding wonderful together in this double-length package! The first section is live – and features some very long, open improvisations – with Kassap on a range of clarinets, mostly in the bass range, plus chalumeau as well – as Drake opens up his drum kit with that special sort of magic that's made him a key percussionist in the legacy of rhythm-free drummers l…
Electric Ascension+Cleaning The Mirror
"In Rova's translation of Ascension into contemporary practice, Coltrane's Ascension remains as a great gift for the energy it presents, for the sheer unfailing intensity with which it fights toward its collective freedom. The original is a major work of art, not merely an episode but a larger process. Rova's substantial achievement consists in assuming the responsibility of Coltrane's great original, treating it not simply as a memento of liberation but as a tool for it as well."(Stuart Broomer…
An Air Of Unreality
"An "air of unreality" characterizes the best free improvisation. This performance-captured during last year's Vision Festival in Manhattan's Judson Church-definitely ranks among the best on record this year. Part of this unreality has to do with finding beauty and gratification in uncertainty, something that so often makes reality difficult to bear. Another part is transcendence, both of person and pedigree: the idea of a musician effaced by their instrument, and then by their creation. Music t…
Gain
"Illtet is here to cure one's ills while shaking up one's beliefs, to make you react, think, feel and not just sit still. Just listen!"(Rogue Art). Crossing NY and Chicago artists, the quartet of Mike Ladd on vocals & synth, Jeff Parker on electric guitar, Tyshawn Sorey on drums, trombone & electric piano, and HPRIZM/High Priest on synth create thought-provoking spoken environments of intense improv.
Soul Travelers
"So, listen closely, and savor the sounds: treat them with delicate abandon, indulge in their intricately measured poignancy; but don't forget to relax (a little) and enjoy: You are in the hands of a master soul traveler."(Steven Loewy, excerpt from the liner notes).
Trombonist Steve Swell is one of the stalwarts on the NYC free jazz scene as both a player & an educator. This studio recording from June 2015 features a top flight band comprised of Swell’s longtime collaborators (William Parker &…
13 miniatures for Albert Ayler
Would it be that when everything finishes that everything starts? Rather than a postlude or a coda, the five minutes a cappella by Joe McPhee on the tenor saxophone placed here in thirteenth position, sound like a song of love and hope coloured utopia which condenses the invisibility of lives which are here and then are no longer here.from the effervescence of an aviary where chirpings and warbling intersect (from Raphael Imbert, Urs Leimgruber, McPhee, Evan Parker and John Tchicai each sax seem…
Three compositions
Despite the compositions’ respective demands, Nicole Mitchell and Black Earth Ensemble fully and vividly represented Roscoe Mitchell’s varied means of creating chemistry between written and improvised materials. At every turn in the program, they played with a palpable sense of familiarity and ease with the composer’s vernacular and methods. They sounded like they’ve been playing this music every night for a long time. Bill Shoemaker, excerpt from the liner notes
Watershed
If the three compositions proposed by Denis Fournier have already been recorded, they merit to be here as resurgences, like scenarios encouraging the freedom of transformation without which free interpretation is nothing. “I often say that I don’t make improvised music, but that I improvise music. In other words, I put together there and then elements of my life, of my history, of my culture…” In other words, no structure commands the action. Every structure opens to the action (to sharing) whic…
Passages
Lawrence Butch Morris developed the concept of “conduction” to account for a mode of Instant Composition based on the creative freedom of the players stimulated by the gestures of a central conductor. AP/DP, with this cd, invent the practice of musical transduction. Just like the French language is not “translated” but transducted into Kamau Daáood’s unique prosody, DP’s cello does not “translate” the playing of a thumb piano, an oud or a kora: all of these instruments, all of their phrasings el…
Roots Run Deep
Nicolas Humbert and his co-author Marc Parisotto decided to make a further montage of the readings and songs for the album "Roots Run Deep". There are short stories and poems set to music, beautifully interwoven with the music Yusef Lateef had played during the shooting of the film "Brother Yusef". "I return as in a dream of a great American musician" says the old man in a great passage about Lester Young, as sounds and words melt into one song, drawing us closer to the aura of a great ja…
Spontaneous Suite For Two Pianos
A 4-CD box set of 9 "Spontaneous Sweets", elaborate, magnificent and melodic piano improvisations, recorded by Connie Crothers & David Arner performing in the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, NY. "It was magical from the beginning. The music seemed to create itself" "We trusted our spontaneity, our intuitive logic, our sense of form." "We had no set tempos, no preconception about soloing or accompanying." "We had no set themes or referents. What we did have was complete trust, i…
Velvet Songs (To Baba Fred Anderson)
"This 2 cd set recorded live at the Velvet Lounge a year before the legendary Fred Anderson passed away, is a fitting tribute by 3 Chicagoans to one of their own, the master tenor player, teacher, Velvet Lounge owner, advocate and AACM member, who has helped foster the musical scene in that city possibly more than anyone else. This artistic outing is a pilgrimage in sound taking us into the deepest recesses of this eclectic medium known as "jazz". These pieces conceived/composed by the 3 …
Numbers
A beautiful set of compositions from saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell, presenting works recorded in the 2000s with performers including Thomas Buckner, Stephen Rush, Nils Bultman, William Winant, &c - "In the 45 years since he recorded Sound, Roscoe Mitchell's music has steadily evolved and diversified, making the idea of a comprehensive one-disc survey an impossibility. However, as much as any album, the both/and nature of Roscoe Mitchell's music is vividly represented on Numbers." -Bill Shoemaker, …
Unknown skies
...Every trio without a piano, or without a drums, or as in this case without a double bass, gains in incline what it loses in “balance”. It only takes a little sometimes. Everyone plays at ease across. Everyone can split themselves. There are no more solos as solos but phases, circles of influence and predominance which do not last. The duos bind and unbind more clearly, the contrasts stand out better. The theme is no longer material to develop but, as in Unknown Skies, a lyrical and volatile s…
Conversations
William Parker has long taken an active role in the presentation of his own art (self-produced records/CDs, concerts, festivals, publications) and that of others. That initiative continues with this major work, an anthology of musician-to-musician interviews in the lineage of Arthur Taylor’s seminal “Notes and Tones”. Approximately 12 years in the making, “Conversations” has hallmarks of being a very personal project, spotlighting many musicians who are largely unknown to even avid fans of the…
Reggaeology
Following the stream of time and the dances of Kâli, the successive incarnations of Bindu, more a crew, sailing, outward bound, an elective community of musicians, than a defined group of people, divulge the logbook of navigation by Hamid Drake. A logbook of boarding sounds, which is not written but delimits and unlimits the narrative space where the drummer and percussionist freely circulate......The third Bindu, dedicated to a rapprochement between “jazz” and “reggae” – neither a recording of …