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Jazz Articles about Nels Cline

9
Album Review

Mars Williams: An Ayler Xmas Vol. 4: Chicago vs. NYC

Read "An Ayler Xmas Vol. 4: Chicago vs. NYC" reviewed by Mark Corroto


For more than a decade, Mars Williams has been making (to borrow a phrase) Christmas music great again. He does so by exchanging the saccharine for the sublime, intersecting holiday classics with the music of Albert Ayler. Born out of his Chicago Ayler repertory band which can be heard on Witches And Devils At The Empty Bottle</em> (Knitting Factory Records, 2000), Williams applied the Gospel and spiritual nature of Ayler's methodology to Xmas music. While the eponymously titled first volume ...

14
Album Review

The Nels Cline Singers: Share The Wealth

Read "Share The Wealth" reviewed by Mark Sullivan


Guitarist Nels Cline has led the Nels Cline Singers since 2002. While they have sometimes had guest performers on their recordings, the core band has been a trio of Cline, drummer Scott Amendola and bassist Trevor Dunn (originally Devin Hoff). This album expands the group to a sextet with the addition of saxophonist Skerik, keyboardist Brian Marsella and percussionist Cyro Baptista. The experimental ante was further upped by the fact that they had never before played together in this combination, ...

1
Radio & Podcasts

Something Blue

Read "Something Blue" reviewed by Patrick Burnette


For the last of our four-episode examination of discs we missed from various best of 2010's lists (and that's almost, but not quite, rapping, isn't it?) it's all about “something blue." Or, in this case, something Blue Note. One entry on Avant sneaks in on the basis of its title, so at least it's not a Blue-opoly. In pop matters, Mike takes a minute to slag off Laura Marling and Elliot Smith while Pat wonders if a much more talented ...

15
Album Review

The Nels Cline Singers: Share The Wealth

Read "Share The Wealth" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic


A work of pummeling beauty, exhaustion and exhilaration await at the end of genre rogue guitarist Nels Cline's upheaval Share the Wealth, eighty minutes of magical, maniacal, free jam composition that, in perhaps a few more years down the line--if the line makes it past Election Day--we'll argue stands right up there with such and such album of equal fire and fury. Time, to which we've become too nervously accustomed, is tense, and everyone's cranked to ten or ...

6
Album Review

Bobby Previte, Jamie Saft and Nels Cline: Music from the Early 21st Century

Read "Music from the Early 21st Century" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki


Music from the Early 21st Century presents music captured during a brief trio tour by keyboardist Jamie Saft, guitarist Nels Cline and drummer Bobby Previte, performing completely improvised music. “Fundamentally, it's based around the classic organ trio formation--drums, Hammond organ and guitar," Saft explains. “But it just blows up the language to so many different universes." “Captured during a brief trio tour" doesn't do justice to this wild, ravenous sound. Trapped and caged like a snarling animal seems ...

7
Radio & Podcasts

A Jazz Immuno-Booster: Part 1

Read "A Jazz Immuno-Booster: Part 1" reviewed by Ludovico Granvassu


We may still be months away from developing vaccines to tame the threat that COVID19 poses to our bodies. But given the centrality of the mind-body connection for our physical well being, we should not forget that we continue to have music to support our minds during these challenging times. So I have reached out to the very people that have been providing us with this life-line, musicians, and have asked them to share one song they rely ...

10
Album Review

Satoko Fujii Orchestra New York: Entity

Read "Entity" reviewed by Karl Ackermann


As she did in 2019, pianist/composer Satoko Fujii—an artist at home in many formations—opens the new decade with an orchestra recording. Entity, from Fujii's Orchestra New York, is the eleventh release from the ensemble that has remained largely intact for almost twenty-three years. It is an all-star collective that includes saxophonists Oscar Noriega, Ellery Eskelin and Tony Malaby, trumpeters Natsuki Tamura and Herb Robertson, guitarist Nels Cline and drummer Ches Smith. Entity has its moments of tranquility but ...


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