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Morgan Ågren
Yelena Eckemoff: Rosendals Garden
by Tyran Grillo
A garden is one of civilization's gentlest fictions, a piece of earth coaxed into pattern while still permitted to breathe beyond the gardener's intentions. That tension between cultivation and freedom animates Rosendals Garden, pianist and composer Yelena Eckemoff's 23rd album since 2010. The project, animated as always by a vivid personal concept, distills her travels through Sweden into something more elusive than an itinerary. Each destination enters as a physical place and emerges as a chamber of consciousness, steeped in ...
Continue ReadingYelena Eckemoff: Rosendals Garden
by Doug Collette
Rosendals Garden is yet another chapter in Yelena Eckemoff's ongoing historical narrative devoted to people and places both real and imagined. Recorded in 2024 at RMV Studio, Stockholm, Sweden, by engineer Linn Final, with mixing and mastering by Stefano Amerio, the audio is as colorful and detailed as the musicianship and the packaging. Remarkably, there has never been a sense of hurry in the playing of keyboardist Eckemoff and her two bandmates. During the luxuriously slow build-up of ...
Continue ReadingRaoul Bjorkenheim, Bill Laswell and Morgan Agren - Blixt (2011)
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Something Else!
Sounding something like neo-prog meets outjazz, the music of Raoul Bjorkenheim, Bill Laswell and Morgan Agren is just as interesting for what it does as what it doesn't do. For all of the joys of their ear-melting inferno “Black Whole," the opening cut on Blixt, this power trio is also more than capable of downshifting into brilliantly coiled moments like “Shifting Sands Closing Hour," with its mysterious far-east feel. They dash through the rumbling angular mysteries of “Moon Tune," but ...
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Morgan Agren/ Trey Gunn/ Henry Kaiser - Invisible Rays (2011)
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Something Else!
If there is any musician today who embodies the musical spirit of Robert Fripp, it must be his former King Crimson band mate, Warr Guitarist Trey Gunn. There are certain musical sensibilities that set Robert Fripp apart from other guitarists out there—mostly a serpent-like determination to strike at, and only at, the exact right moment, but also heavily dependent on a zen-like honor for space and silence that few other musicians in rock really grasp. Gunn has studied all of ...
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Raoul Bjorkenheim, Bill Laswell, Morgan Agren - Blixt (Cuneiform, 2011) ****a1/2
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Free Jazz by Stef Gijssels
By Paul Acquaro I suppose that Blixt is best described as a rock power trio. Working with industrial strength rhythms, thickly distorted leads and dark enveloping bass, the trio moves through a series of tough minded improvisations bracketed by short heads. However, as tough and stormy as the tunes may get at times, the musicianship and sensibilities of all involved provide enough nuance and sophistication to keep even the heaviest moments buoyant. That being said, the album begins with a ...
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Bill Laswell, Raoul Bjorkenheim and Morgan Agren - Blixt (Cuneiform, 2011)
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Music and More by Tim Niland
Blixt, the jazz fusion/progressive rock trio of Bill Laswell on bass, Raoul Bjorkenheim on guitar and Morgan Agren is a powerful one filled with tricky lead statements and intricate improvisational sections. Laswell is famous as a legendary producer and musician on the “downtown" improvisational scene in New York city, while Bjorkenheim, late of Finland (an improvisational hotbed all its own filled with great composers and musicians) has had his profile rise with tenures in the fusionesque band Krakatau and The ...
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