Jazz Articles
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The Necks: Bleed
by Rob Garratt
There is a diverting theory that modernist developments in the visual arts were mirrored in the evolving language of jazz: the rigid melodies of classic swing analogous with the formal representation of realism; the harmonic blurring of modalism an impressionistic step towards ambiguity; and the breakdown of order that came with free jazz the divisive audio equivalent of abstract expressionism. It is a compelling if imperfect notion: Jackson Pollack's “action painting" was famously fueled by his jazz LP ...
Continue ReadingSteph Richards: Power Vibe
by Mike Jurkovic
Fire music. Free jazz. Third stream. Fourth stream. Avant improv, noise chamber blues, and whatever the meta and hashtags say it is, this sextet of loose cannons knows better and holds all the cards. Imagine for a moment what the reaction might be if your facial muscles suddenly, involuntarily, started to freeze, leaving you without expression and, without your art. Trumpeter Steph Richards, a halcyon force on the expanding concepts of free music, responded by making Power Vibe ...
Continue ReadingDarius Jones: Raw Demoon Alchemy (A Lone Operation)
by Mark Corroto
Saxophonist Darius Jones' solo recording Raw Demoon Alchemy (A Lone Operation) is the embodiment of the word unpasteurized. Captured in the fall of 2019, the music is raw and untreated. Maybe 'pure' is a better word here. The musician known for his muscular approach to the alto saxophone lowers the armored facade we all seem to wrap ourselves in these days. He delivers covers of five compostions, four from what he describes as “unapologetically Black" composers, Sun Ra}, Ornette Coleman, ...
Continue ReadingSteph Richards: Supersense
by Mike Jurkovic
With all the threatening weirdness and desperate surrealism that has become life in the USA, it makes absolute sense that Supersense, daring trumpeter/composer Steph Richards' third full length album, starts out like an encroaching invasion of ants, or microbes, or a disruptive, divisive, myopic political movement. As with such forward seeking rebels as Henry Threadgill, Anthony Braxton, David Byrne, Laurie Anderson and Yoko Ono, Richards' modus operandi is chiseled in the very foundations of the music itself. Never ...
Continue ReadingThe Necks: Three
by Mike Jurkovic
With their stubbornly spiky, hold-onto-your-hat mindset firmly rooted, a high fever runs wild on Three, The Necks' twenty-first release in its thirty-three year, unhindered-by-genre career. It starts like most of the trio's existential, kaleidoscopic excursions do: some minimalist point of blurred melodic frenzy is acted upon and the rest becomes an amalgam of theory and system... jazz, rock, industrial, whatever suits the moment. It can be irresponsibly reckless, remotely ambient, soulfully rewarding, cantankerous, glaringly indulgent or plain brilliant at any ...
Continue ReadingThe Necks: Three
by Mark Sullivan
Live performances by Australian free-improvising trio The Necks typically take the form of a single, slowly growing and morphing mass of sound. On recordings the musicians give themselves permission to sculpt the sound, so it is not a real-time document. Nevertheless their two previous albums Vertigo (Northern Spy Records, 2015) and Body (Northern Spy Records, 2018) both presented a single long track apiece, paralleling their live practice. This time the program is broken into three parts, each with its own ...
Continue ReadingJeremy Cunningham: The Weather Up There
by Jakob Baekgaard
The complex landscape of human emotions is still vastly uncharted, but every true work of art adds a little piece to the puzzle. This can be done in many ways, but it is rare that an album connects emotion with complex layers of memory, interpersonal relations, politics and societal structures. Nevertheless, this is what drummer and composer Jeremy Cunningham's album does. In a statement, Cunningham explains the background: “I wrote The Weather Up There to confront the ...
Continue ReadingNate Wooley: Columbia Icefield
by Don Phipps
Nate Wooley's Columbia Icefield begins with a dueling repetition of chords by bandmates Mary Halvorson and Susan Alcorn on “Lionel Trilling." The ambiguity generated by this back and forth is the perfect start to his album's shape-shifting music. Wooley's trumpet is both poetic and piercing. There's a sense of longing in his tone and it is amplified by his use of odd electronics which add texture and distortions to his lines or simply populate the background. Halvorson's twangs ...
Continue ReadingSUSS: Ghost Box - Expanded
by Mark Sullivan
The band SUSS first presented their “psychedelic ambient country instrumentals" on Ghost Box (Self Produced, 2018), a delightful and unexpected window into an eclectic ambient soundscape. That 35-minute session is expanded into nearly an hour here. The first seven tracks reproduce the original album in the original order. The group is a quintet whose members have worked in various capacities with Lydia Lunch, the B-52s, k.d. Lang, David Bowie, John Cale, Ed Sheeran, Wilco, Norah Jones, The War ...
Continue ReadingTom Abbs & Frequency Response: Hawthorne
by Karl Ackermann
Bassist and multi-instrumentalist Tom Abbs began his Frequency Response series in 2003 with Conscription (CIMP Records). The group--then a quartet--included tenor saxophonist Brian Settles and drummer Chad Taylor. Alto saxophonist Jason Candler, violinists Jean Cook and Jenna Barvitski are later additions to Frequency Response. On their long-awaited fourth album Hawthorne, Abbs again stands in as a one-man orchestra, playing bass, cello, piano, and tuba. Abbs, primarily known as a free improvisational bassist is also an accomplished filmmaker, having ...
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