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Vinnie Sperrazza Apocryphal: Hide Ye Idols
by Troy Collins
Forward-thinking drummer Vinnie Sperrazza has proven to be an exceptionally creative and magnanimous bandleader; Hide Ye Idols expands well beyond the imaginative inroads made on Apocryphal, his impressive 2014 debut for Loyal Label. Conveying a distinctive group sound, the original lineup featured on his first album--alto saxophonist Loren Stillman, guitarist Brandon Seabrook, and bassist Eivind Opsvik--returns, now a touring unit with a namesake evoking its origins. Produced by Paris Monster's Geoff Kraly and mastered by Kneebody's Nate Wood, this modernistic ...
read moreEivind Opsvik: Overseas V
by Karl Ackermann
Like his first four Overseas albums, Eivind Opsvik's Overseas V defies conventional descriptions. The New York resident, of Norwegian roots, has developed a peculiar style that marries experimental avant-garde with the folkloric traditions of the North Country. This had been particularly evident on IV when Brandon Seabrook's mandolin and Jacob Sacks' harpsichord meet up with Tony Malaby's saxophone and Kenny Wollesen creative percussion. The cultural clash manages to succeed as a new entity. The quintet personnel remain the same, but ...
read moreEivind Opsvik: Overseas V
by Troy Collins
Norwegian-born bassist Eivind Opsvik has been a mainstay of the Downtown scene since his relocation to New York over two decades ago. Starting in 2003, he began issuing a series of sequentially numbered instrumental albums under the banner Overseas, which have featured some of Gotham's finest musicians. Bolstered by the improvisational mettle of his longstanding bandmates, Opsvik's accessible tunes draw melodic, harmonic and rhythmic inspiration from popular music, rather than traditional jazz.Overseas V incrementally ups the ante from ...
read moreVinnie Sperrazza: Apocryphal
by Dave Wayne
An understated but highly-skilled and insanely versatile drummer in the vein of Kenny Wolleson, Jeff Hirshfield, and Paul Motian, Vinnie Sperrazza has been turning up on all sorts of interesting recordings over the past half-decade or so. Co-leader of 40Twenty with Jacob Sacks, Jacob Garchik, and Dave Ambrosio, Sperrazza is also in a trio with Sacks and bassist Masa Kamaguchi, and is one fourth of Hush Point; a brainy collaboration with veteran trumpeter John McNeil and alto saxophonist Jeremy Udden. ...
read moreKarokh: Karokh
by Eyal Hareuveni
Karokh is the name of new Norwegian experimental rock band featuring unique vocalist Ina Sagstuen from the anarchistic outfit Skadedyr, guitarist Christian Winther, bassist Magnus Skavhaug Nergaard and drummer Jan Martin Gismervik. All three form trio experimental-improvising Monkey Plot. (Winther and Nergaard also play together in Ich Bin N!ntendo, trumpeter Thomas Husmo Litleskare, who leads his own quartet, along with two synthesizer players. Karokh's debut album was recorded after extensive touring since the bands inception in 2010 ...
read moreEivind Opsvik: Overseas IV
by Troy Collins
For the past decade, Norwegian-born, New York-based bassist Eivind Opsvik has been leading his venerable Overseas ensemble through a variety of musical terrain, first heard on their self-titled 2003 Fresh Sound New Talent debut. Overseas IV, the second Overseas album to be released on Opsvik's own Loyal Label, features a stripped-down version of the original line-up, albeit one more expansive in its range of musical expression. Inspired in part by Sofia Coppola's 2006 film Marie Antoinette, this fourth recording from ...
read moreSeabrook Power Plant: Seabrook Power Plant II
by Troy Collins
Guitarist Brandon Seabrook is one of the most imaginative six-string virtuosos currently operating in the fertile Brooklyn scene. His enviable talents have been featured in an eclectic variety of projects since the mid-1990s, including Beat Circus, Naftule's Dream and the Peter Evans Quartet, with an extremely percussive technique on tenor banjo adding further mystique to his idiosyncratic artistry. The shrewdly named Seabrook Power Plant is his flagship power trio, featuring his brother Jared on drums and regular Evans' collaborator Tom ...
read moreJeff Davis: We Sleep Outside
by Troy Collins
The tightly knit Brooklyn scene has yielded a number of exceptional ensembles in the past few years, including Michael Bates' Outside Sources, Kris Davis' Quartet, Jon Irabagon's Outright!, Kirk Knuffke's Quartet, Eivind Opsvik's Overseas, the RIDD Quartet and Tone Collector. The common denominator uniting these various bands is drummer Jeff Davis, a former student of pianist Art Lande and trumpeter Ron Miles. An inventive improviser partial to unconventional textures and unpredictable rhythms, Davis' capricious creativity and alert responsiveness have made ...
read moreOpsvik & Jennings: A Dream I Used To Remember
by Robert Iannapollo
Over the past five years, bassist Eivind Opsvik has gained a considerable reputation around New York as a strong, resourceful jazz bassist. He's been tapped by the likes of Tony Malaby, Paul Motian and Kris Davis for their groups. His own ensemble Overseas (currently Malaby, Kenny Wollesen and Jacob Sacks), with three albums to date, has impressively shown his jazz credentials as an instrumentalist, composer and arranger. He's a player who's comfortable with all of the post-John Coltrane/Ornette Coleman permutations ...
read moreSeabrook Power Plant: Seabrook Power Plant
by Stuart Broomer
Seabrook Power Plant seems like a plausible name for a (sometime) power trio that features two brothers named Seabrook, guitarist-banjoist Brandon and drummer Jared (bassist Tom Blancarte is the third member), but one's sense of the band changes with the knowledge that there's a controversial nuclear power station in Seabrook, New Hampshire that bears the same name. It suggests more than mere protest; instead there's a sense in this music of inescapable intimacy with processes of decay and contamination, from ...
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