Jazz Articles
Our daily articles are carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. You can find more articles by searching our website, see what's trending on our popular articles page or read articles ahead of their published dates on our Coming Soon page. Read our daily album reviews.
Sign in to customize your My Articles page —or— Filter Article Results
Fractal Sextet: Sky Full Of Hope
by Mike Jacobs
Calling Stephan Thelen's music an extension of the Swiss Minimalist movement may have once seemed appropriate. However, in the years since his band Sonar and Fractal Guitar projects have come to the fore, that characterization has increasingly become inadequate. Proximity, influence, and linkages exist but Thelen's copious activities in the last decade show such a deepening of his root concepts coupled with an embrace of the new, the notion is virtually moot. One of the projects that most ...
Continue ReadingJ. Peter Schwalm & Stephan Thelen: Transneptunian Planets
by Dan McClenaghan
To get any further out than Transneptunian Planets, one would have to travel to the edge of the solar system. The title of the album— offered up by electro-acoustic composer J. Peter Schwalm and guitarist, composer & mathematician Stephan Thelen—refers to objects orbiting the sun in the far reaches, out beyond Neptune. Many of these objects may be news to those who do not follow the progress of astronomy; though, surely, everyone is familiar with Pluto—way out there, once a ...
Continue ReadingThree-Layer Cake: Stove Top
by Chris M. Slawecki
If nothing else, the trio of Mike Pride (drums, marimba, glockenspiel, bells, organ), Brandon Seabrook (guitar, banjo, tapes) and Mike Watt (bass) deserves a “truth in advertising" award, because Stove Top, their first collaboration, is precisely that: a three-layer instrumental cake. Stove Top began cooking when Pride appeared as a guest on Watt's podcast. Suspecting their musical connection, Pride recorded a series of drum tracks and sent them to Watt, who laid down matching bass tracks and then ...
Continue ReadingRed Kite: Apophenian Bliss
by Doug Collette
Even more so than on Red Kite's wholly excellent eponymous debut, the follow-up release, Apophenian Bliss, by this Norwegian quartet illustrates how fine are the lines between metal, prog and fusion music. The powerful dynamism this band commands generates thoughts of a more free-form version of the electric Return To Forever quartets, electric music for the mind and body that would be ideal as a soundtrack to an epic piece of sci-fi, while the disc's cover art (by Per Spjotvold) ...
Continue ReadingJo Berger Myhre: Unheimlich Manoeuvre
by Dan McClenaghan
Norwegian bassist Jo Berger Myhre is not new to the music scene—he has worked extensively with Nils Petter Molvaer's quartet, contributing to the trumpeter's Buoyancy (Okeh, 2016) and Stitches (Modern Recordings, 2021). But Unheimlich Manoeuvre is Myhre's first recording under his own name. In experiencing the artistry of a new (to a particular listener) musician, it is helpful to look toward his touchstones, and Moleavar is a strong one for Myhre. His music contains a similar blend of ...
Continue ReadingMagnet Animals: Fake Dudes
by Glenn Astarita
Its press release refers to this band as a “combustible beat-skronk" unit for its follow-up to the 2016 Butterfly Killer album, where guitarist Todd Clouser iterates his poetry under the semblance of a rebel using a small megaphone. It seems as if he could be on a corner somewhere in Greenwich Village, NYC., to forewarn the willing populace of dour sociopolitical issues, along with oddball humor and sober expressionism. Once again, Clouser and guitarist Eyal Maoz (who played with Lou ...
Continue ReadingJ. Peter Schwalm & Markus Reuter: Aufbruch
by Mark Sullivan
German electro-acoustic composer J. Peter Schwalm is probably best known for collaborating with Brian Eno on Drawn From Life (Opal, 2001) and other projects. More recently, he created How We Fall (RareNoise, 2018) and Neuzeit (RareNoise, 2020), the latter a collaboration with Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen. Touch guitarist and composer Markus Reuter has been prolific, recent releases including Truce (MoonJune Records, 2020), Nothing Is Sacred (MoonJune Records, 2020) and Shapeshifters (MoonJune Records, 2020), as well as Music Of Our Times ...
Continue ReadingJ. Peter Schwalm & Markus Reuter: Aufbruch
by Doug Collette
The first recorded collaboration between J. Peter Schwalm and Markus Reuter, Aufbruch, is one of those very rare and unusual albums that unobtrusively, almost surreptitiously, wends its way into the subconscious. It compels repeated and often frequent replays, not so much to comprehend the arcane sounds, but to simply become immersed in the moods and textures the two men generate. Synths, pianos, live treatments, programming and electronic percussion from the former interweave with the Touch Guitars, soundscapes and ...
Continue ReadingJ. Peter Schwalm / Markus Reuter: Aufbruch
by Dan McClenaghan
In 2020 electro-acoustic programmer/keyboardist J.Peter Schwalm paired up with Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen for the excellent outing Neuzeit (RareNoiseRecords), one of the year's standout discs. 2021 finds Schwalm collaborating with touch guitarist Markus Reuter, of Stickmen fame. The music this collaboration creates can be described as industrial sound-scaping mixed with noises welling up from deep Earth or emanating in from deep space, tectonic and galactic at the same time. “Wall of sound" is a phrase used to describe ...
Continue ReadingJerry Granelli: The Jerry Granelli Trio Plays The Music Of Vince Guaraldi & Mose Allison
by Chris M. Slawecki
Drummer Jerry Granelli, bassist Brad Jones and pianist Jamie Saft team in a trio that Plays Vince Guaraldi & Mose Allison to honor two of the most influentially lyrical and bluesy composer-musicians in jazz history. Granelli possesses deep personal insight into both principals. He landed in the drum chair in Vince Guaraldi's trio just as the title track to the pianist's 1962 landmark Cast Your Fate to the Wind was breaking out in the US singles charts and ...
Continue Reading
