Jazz Articles about Skull Session

About Skull Session

Album Review

The appropriately named Skull Session burns with the passion of a great jazz band. Leader/guitarist Jeff Plotz writes loose, gritty tunes that break wide open. The scent of Ornette lingers at times, but this quintet plays it a way all its own. His use of improvised melodic invention, rather than shock and noise, has Plotz superficially resembling Joe Morris on his first instrument. Ironically, Morris handles the bass chores, resisting timekeeping for time traveling. With drummer Luther Gray handling several ...

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Album Review

Skull Session: Rise Above

Read "Rise Above" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
August 8, 2004

Do punk and free jazz cross paths? There are some who would argue unquestionably yes. Guitarist Nels Cline, for example, often combines a raw unschooled edge and sense of reckless abandon with a far more developed harmonic sensibility. So, too, does guitarist Jeff Platz, whose background in the late '70s in Cleveland, Ohio was with a variety of punk bands. But even as he pursued a more combative rock style, his attention turned more and more towards free jazz and ...