Jazz Articles about Partikel

About Partikel

Album Review

Counteraction is Partikel's fourth album to date and their follow-up to 2015's String Theory. Without wishing to wrap this review up in a couple of sentences, it's probably their best to date and adopts their customary deployment of heterogeneous instrumentation--strings and reeds notably--and characteristically unorthodox structures. “Land And Sea" begins tentatively but soon leads into a short saxophone melody and onto a strident ensemble vamp redolent of King Crimson. “Scenes And Sounds" opens with a brief melee of ...

Album Review

Partikel: String Theory

Read "String Theory" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
May 6, 2015

A frenetic opening to the third album by Partikel augurs well for the rest of this hour-long recording and there's almost a reminiscence of Frank Zappa's Hot Rats in its intensity. Partikel here is augmented on this session by a string quartet. A jazz trio with strings? Yes, but not just any strings, these are strings on steroids. The quartet isn't a backing group but rather it plays an active role in providing vibrant harmonic and melodic counterpoint to the ...