Six Picks
October 2024: Vinyl Special
by Pat Youngspiel
Each of the following six recordings has been issued in a state-of-the-art vinyl pressing that does justice to the quality of the music it contains. In an age where the physical medium is in radical decline, these editions can be considered reminders of the additional value a work of art is given, when one can hold it in their hands, also admiring the editorial work that goes into its creation. There are no re-issues among these albums, but exclusively freshly ...
Continue ReadingSpecial Clean Feed Records Edition
by Pat Youngspiel
For this Six Picks special, we're taking a closer look at selection of the fine recordings released by the Lisbon, Portugal-based Clean Feed label in 2023. There are many idioms in improvised music and the avant-garde today still leaves plenty of room for new discoveries, which is clearly in evidence here, Vine Leaf Tales Of Senses Clean Feed 2023 Try listening to the first couple of bars of “Tale One," the almost half ...
Continue ReadingOctober 2023: An Improvised Paradise
by Pat Youngspiel
The Angelica Sanchez Nonet Nighttime Creatures Pyroclastic Records 2023 One rarely gets to hear the contra-alto clarinet--an instrument mainly developed in the 20th century with a range extending downwards to the lower E-flat (concert G-flat), sometimes even a D or a C. On the introductory title cut of Nighttime Creatures, however, it is in plain sight, roaring through the stumbling avant-garde piece with its thunderous register like a bull in a china shop. Only here, ...
Continue ReadingAugust 2023
by Pat Youngspiel
PJEV-Kit Downes-Hayden Chisholm Medna Roso Red Hook 2023 With the third release on his Red Hook label it is becoming increasingly clear that producer Sun Chung isn't trying to box his label's musical output into any specific jazz styling or avant-garde field of experimentation, but rather that music can and should be regarded as exempt of any semiotic stigmatization. After the powerful piano solo statement of Masabumi Kikuchi on Hanamichi (2021) and the award-winning electro-acoustic ...
Continue ReadingMay 2023
by Pat Youngspiel
Isaiah J. Thompson The Power of the Spirit Blue Engine Records 2023 Since finishing second in 2018's Thelonious Monk competition, pianist Isaiah J. Thompson has established a particularly convincing profile as one of New York's most promising keyboard artists, while his recordings have been at home on Jazz at Lincoln Center's label ever since his 2017 debut, Handful Of Keys. The Power Of The Spirit can be considered the pianist's most original statement to date, ...
Continue ReadingJanuary 2023
by Pat Youngspiel
Masaki Hayashi Group Blur The Border S/N Alliance 2023 In contrast to its sister-label Nagalu Records, Shinya Fukumori's S/N alliance is devoted to music and musicians outside of Japan, bringing idioms from classical music and improvised streams under one roof, to be shared across borders. And pianist Masaki Hayashi's Blur The Border fits right on the cusp of those idioms--too through-composed and arranged, with traits from European classical music, to simply be considered ...
Continue ReadingNovember 2022
by Pat Youngspiel
Ayanda Sikade Umakhulu Afrosynth Records 2022 There's both a satisfying sense of ease and a certain expressive urgency to the catchy melodies that South African drummer Ayanda Sikade spins around the minimally designed, extensively repeating structures on Umakhulu. Take the bluesy gospel concept behind opener “Medantsane" for example: Simon Manana's saxophone wraps the main melodic theme closely around a lush I-IV-V cadence with Nhlanhla Radebe following step in warm vibrating root movements. Sikade's ...
Continue ReadingAugust 2022
by Pat Youngspiel
Binker Golding Dream Like A Dogwood Wild Boy Gearbox Records 2022 A place where folk, gospel and jazz meet in tuneful harmony with each other is a place where the likes of Keith Jarrett and Pat Metheny spent some of the most original and prolific years of their lives, bringing forth timeless classics like Belonging (ECM, 1974), My Song (ECM, 1978) or 80/81 (ECM, 1980). It's also the place where the British ...
Continue ReadingApril 2022
by Pat Youngspiel
Remboato Remboato Nagalu 2022 After pianist Koichi Sato's Embryo—praised in a recent Six Picks issue not only for its musical excellence but also for the elaborate packaging and presentation that Shinya Fukumori's Nagalu label offers— Remboato is the Japanese label's second outing of the year and features a remarkable acoustic quartet made up of guitarist Kazuma Fujimoto, pianist Sumire Kuribayashi, bassist Toru Nishijima and label-boss Fukumori himself on drums. Expanding on the delicately lyrical ...
Continue ReadingMarch 2022
by Pat Youngspiel
Jun MiyakeWhispered Garden Enja Records / Yellowbird Records 2022 Leaving the hazy Lost Memory Theatre (Enja, 2013, 2015, 2018) behind and moving on to the equally shrouded Whispered Garden, Paris-based trumpeter, composer and sound-architect Jun Miyake introduces us to a musical magnum-creation, his newest, that seems to encompass everything from the composer's darkest desires to his most outrages fantasies, but in the gentlest possible way. Miyake does this with a deep understanding for manifold ...
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