Jazz Articles about Mats Gustafsson
About Mats Gustafsson
Instrument: Woodwinds
Article Coverage | Calendar | Albums | Photos | Similar ArtistsMoers Festival Interviews: Anguish
by Martin Longley
Anguish are born to be in Moers. This supergroup of the underbelly bleeds together from varying times, diverse sonic areas and different lands. Alternative New Jersey hip-hop roams into the realms of vintage Krautrock, causing distress during an inbreeding feast with the masters of free-Viking jazz. Two pairs of players apiece from Dälek and Fire! meet a founding Faust-father. Then they record for one of the finest jazz-adventuring labels, RareNoise, run by Italians in jny: London. Anguish made ...
read moreFire!: The Hands
by Sammy Stein
Rune Grammofon unleashed something special with the great music it has released over the past 20 years, and with The Hands it has surpassed itself. The Fire! trio, which consists of reedman Mats Gustafsson, bassist Johan Berthling and drummer Andreas Werlin, makes music which defies labels and classification. Now, going into a resting phase after ten years of making great music together, Fire! remains a force in jazz. Anything with Mats Gustafsson at the helm is likely to contain music ...
read moreThe End: Svårmod Och Vemod Är Värdesinnen
by Vitalijus Gailius
The End emerge as a massive collaboration among Norwegian baritone saxophonist Kjetil Møster, Swedish baritone sax hooligan Mats Gustafsson, Norwegian noise-jazz guitarist Anders Hana, the San Francisco-based avant-rock band Deerhoof drummer Greg Saunier and miraculous singer Sofia Jernberg. The quintet's debut “Svårmod Och Vemod Är Värdesinnen" manages to grasp several musical traditions. It sounds like a child that was born from extramarital affairs of New York no-wave, noise rock and free/avant-garde jazz. Such a collision between the aforementioned ...
read moreFire!: The Hands
by John Eyles
There are reasons to consider the 2018 release of The Hands as an important one for Fire! It was in 2008 that saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, bassist Johan Berthling and drummer Andreas Werlin first came together as a trio with the idea of a fresh approach to improvised music. Given the groups that the three were in at the time--Gustafsson in The Thing and others, Werlin in Wildbirds and Peacedrums, and Berthling in Angles--it was all too easy for Fire! to ...
read moreAll That's Jazz
by Phil Barnes
All That's Jazz Sammy Stein 198 Pages ISBN: 13: 978-0-9557670-9-8 Tomahawk Press 2017 Sammy Stein is a brave woman. Take that title--not just a riff on “All That Jazz" to cover a personal memoir of time spent in the jazz trenches but ALL that IS jazz. This is a book that in the author's words attempts to ..."share this wonderful music with as many as possible, to allow people to understand that jazz ...
read moreMats Gustafsson
by Vincenzo Roggero
If Mats Gustafsson's approach to music were to be described with a single adjective, it would have to be “intense." This applies to him both as a musician, as illustrated by over three decades of playing with stalwarts of the free and creative jazz scenes on both sides of the Ocean (Ken Vandermark, Peter Brötzmann, Joe McPhee, Derek Bailey etc.), and as a voracious crate-digger and record-trader with a two and a half ton vinyl cave in rural Austria. We ...
read moreMats Gustafsson: MG50 Peace & Fire
by Mark Corroto
Mats Gustafsson at fifty. Name another artist who has had this significant and widespread effect on jazz, noise, free improvisation, alternative rock, electronica, and free jazz. Besides John Zorn, that pool is quite shallow. Gustafsson's music seems to attract innovative players into imaginative situations. If you are a fan, this 50th birthday celebration recorded in October, 2014 at Porgy and Bess, Vienna is your personal slice of cake. If you know nothing about Gustafsson's music, this is a great introduction ...
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