Jazz Articles

Neneh Cherry & The Thing: The Cherry Thing

by Mark Corroto
June 4, 2012

The Scandinavian power trio of saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love named their band The Thing in 2000, after the Don Cherry composition from Where's Brooklyn (Blue Note, 1966). In their subsequent dozen or so albums, they have covered Cherry's music and that of Albert Ayler, Joe McPhee, and Duke Ellington. The Thing has also ventured outside the jazz idiom to perform music by The White Stripes, Yeah Yeah Yeah, PJ Harvey, and Cato Salsa ...

Arp: The Soft Wave

by John Kelman
September 22, 2010

In a time of home studios and digital media, the resurgence of interest in all things analogue has transcended simple nostalgia. To be sure, better analogue-to-digital conversions have improved almost exponentially over the early days of digital recording, to the point where most people can't tell the difference. Similarly, though digital sampling and synthesis has, in many ways, gone beyond the scope of early analogue synths, there are certain sounds that simply sound indefinably better from their original sources. Maybe ...

Mungolian Jet Set: We Gave It All Away...Now We Are Taking It Back

by John Kelman
August 22, 2009

Living in an alternate universe, where groove is paramount regardless of where it finds its inspiration, Mungolian Jet Set's debut, Beauty Came to Us in Stone (Jazzland, 2006), found its primary members--turntablist/sonic manipulator DJ Strangefruit, known in this dimension as Pål Nyhus, of Nu-Jazz progenitor/trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær's group until recently, and sound sculptor Reider Skar--creating sonic collages that defied any kind of easy categorization. The double-disc We Gave It All Away...Now We Are Taking It Back is a little ...

Meanderthals: Desire Lines

by John Kelman
May 27, 2009

While music of the dance floor is often mistakenly considered as lacking in substance--great beats, but nothing more--electronica artists and even cross-pollinating jazzers like Nils Petter Molvær, Bugge Wesseltoft, and Eivind Aarset are proving that it's possible to make music equally engaging for the mind and body. Certainly Wesseltoft's New Conception of Jazz Box (Jazzland, 2009) makes a strong case for music as weighty as it is booty-shaking. London's Idjut Boys (Dan Tyler and Conrad McConnell) and Norway's Rune Lindbæk ...

Original Silence: The Second Original Silence

by Andrey Henkin
March 19, 2009

There a certain amount of irony in calling a group Original Silence that brings together members of The Thing, Sonic Youth, ZU and The Ex. Mats Gustafsson (baritone sax, live electronics), Thurston Moore (guitar), Jim O'Rourke (electronica), Terrie X (guitar), Massimo Pupillo (electric bass) and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums) threaten the sound barrier just by being in the same room together. The supergroup's second live album continues the onslaught begun on The First Original Silence (Smalltown Supersound, 2007), ...

Lars Horntveth: Kaleidoscopic

by John Kelman
January 27, 2009

As a younger demographic increasingly accepts cross-pollination and challenges simple stylistic categorization, there's an increasing number of artists for whom defying boundaries has long since transcended conscious consideration and become, instead, an organic and completely natural modus operandi. Norway's Jaga Jazzist both regularly and successfully disregarded narrow confines and became, instead, something no longer resembling any of the markers that positioned it, while undeniably referencing the multiplicity of influences that made it such a popular group and launching pad for ...

Joe McPhee: Tomorrow Came Today

by Lyn Horton
January 20, 2009

Music and talking are two modes of expression rooted in human communication. Most of the time, the audible distinction is clear. Sounds are sounds and words are words: the medium makes no difference in how one hears the instrumentality of either. In the context of improvisation, reed player Joe McPhee and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love challenge the definition of both music and talking on Tomorrow Came Today by forcefully transforming the inflections of one into the other. There is no talking...only ...

Sunburned Hand of the Man: Fire Escape

by Joshua Weiner
November 14, 2007

Sunburned Hand of the Man is a loose collective of experimental musicians, centered around drummer John Moloney and bassist Robert Thomas, who have been hailed as leaders of the “new weird movement. Fire Escape treads the group's usual ground, harkening back to exploratory heavyweights of the 1970s such as Can, Popul Vuh and even the Grateful Dead. In a time when top selling rock and jazz musicians regularly incorporate electronic manipulation into their work, it doesn't even seem very “weird." ...

Cato Salsa Experience & The Thing With Joe McPhee: Two Bands And A Legend

by Eyal Hareuveni
May 20, 2007

Two Bands And A Legend Cato Salsa Experience & The Thing With Joe McPhee Smalltown Superjazz 2007

“Are you cramped? Can you find your mind? Can you shake your ass?" asks Sonic Youth's guitarist Thurston Moore in his liner notes to Two Bands And A Legend. The album is the second collaboration (after Sound Like A Sandwich, Smalltown Superjazz, 2005) between Norwegian/Swedish power jazz trio The Thing, Norwegian psychedelic quartet Cato Salsa ...

The Thing: Action Jazz

by Eyal Hareuveni
August 3, 2006

The Scandinavian trio known as The Thing--Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson and two Norwegians, bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love--seems to be rewriting the definition of its brand of brutal jazz. After being compared to Peter Brötzmann's early trios, being called a power jazz trio, and being compared to garage rock, The Thing has settled on the term Action Jazz to describe this delicious hell of a noise.

Action Jazz, recorded in Stockholm in December 2005, is the fourth ...