Jazz Articles

Cat Power: Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert

by Doug Collette
December 10, 2023

There have been some splendid tributes to Bob Dylan and his singular songcraft in recent years, specifically Bettye LaVette's Things Have Changed (Verve, 2018) and Chrissie Hynde's Standing in the Doorway (BMG, 2021). But, stirring as both of those are, neither is as ambitious or eccentric as Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert. The woman born Charlyn Marshall has traveled quite the arc of a thirty-plus year career, so perhaps covering the setlist of ...

Wyatt/Atzmon/Stephen: '...for the ghosts within'

by John Kelman
January 4, 2011

Wyatt/Atzmon/Stephen...for the ghosts withinDomino Records2010 Since emerging in the mid-1960s--first as part of the nascent Canterbury scene with the psychedelic Wild Flowers and post-Dadaist-turned-free jazz-rockers Soft Machine; but then, after a tragic accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down, an increasingly astute and distinctive singer/songwriter--Robert Wyatt has managed a truly rare thing: to build a career that has reached near-legendary status, despite still feeling somehow underground and cult. Wyatt releases ...

Kieran Hebden / Steve Reid: Tongues

by Ian Patterson
March 2, 2007

There is a natural symmetry in the pairing of sampler/electronics improviser Kieran Hebden and drumming troubadour Steve Reid. Reid's credits run from Fela Kuti to Sun Ra, James Brown to Miles Davis, and Archie Shepp to Arthur Blythe. Hebden, a fan of avant-garde and free jazz (particularly Pharoah Sanders), has remixed tracks by artists as diverse as Badly Drawn Boy, Black Sabbath and Steve Reich. It is safe to say that both musicians share a certain sense of adventure, and ...

Four Tet: Remixes

by James Taylor
September 30, 2006

Kieran Hebden's latest release as Four Tet, the moniker he has recorded under since disbanding the late-'90s post-rock group Fridge, is a double-disc collection of remixes. While a remix album may seem superfluous in the catalogs of many artists as young as Hebden, Remixes in all actuality serves as a stellar introduction to one of the brightest young talents in electronic music today and is an essential and timely addition to the Four Tet collection.

Remixes compiles two different approaches ...

Kieran Hebden & Steve Reid: The Exchange Session Vol. 2

by Chris May
June 4, 2006

Imagine John Coltrane's Africa/Brass during its most intense and primal passages, and you're getting some idea of what The Exchange Session Vol.2 sounds like--but with a truckload of electronic juju replacing the horns. This is spontaneously created electro-acoustic music at its rawest, most beat-centric and most pile-driving.

Steve Reid has been a presence on the experimental, world music and otherwise alternative edges of the jazz life for over forty years. Coltrane was one of the few legends he never actually ...

Kieran Hebden and Steve Reid: The Exchange Session Vol. 1

by AAJ Staff
April 2, 2006

These two wide-ranging musicians met less than two years ago, but they seem to have already forged a strong working relationship. Steve Reid, whose drumming pedigree goes all the way back to high school practice sessions at John Coltrane's house, has worked with a dizzying variety of prominent musicians from Miles Davis to Fela Kuti and James Brown--and, yes, the Rippingtons. His discography runs well into the hundreds. Electronics specialist Kieran Hebden, a comparative youngster in his mid-20s, is best ...

To Rococo Rot: Hotel Morgen

by AAJ Staff
June 1, 2004

When you consider abstract electronica, it's important to remember that its abstraction works on a sliding scale. The architects of jumbled beeps and clicks stand to the left of drum-n-bass groovemeisters, but there's a whole lot of meat in between. To Rococo Rot is meaty in exactly that way: experimental without becoming an exercise in frustration, affable without becoming soft. Nine years after getting together in Berlin, the trio of Robert Lippok, Ronald Lippok, and Stefan Schneider return with their ...