October 2024: Vinyl Special

Each of the following six recordings has been issued in a state-of-the-art vinyl pressing that does justice to the quality of the music it contains. In an age where the physical medium is in radical decline, these editions can be considered reminders of the additional value a work of art is given, when one can hold it in their hands, also admiring the editorial work that goes into its creation. There are no re-issues among these albums, but exclusively freshly recorded music that spans everything from more traditional ideas of jazz to more contemporary electronic musings, including both master improvisers of a more experienced generation, (Kenny Barron, Bill Frisell and Andrew Cyrille) and younger talents who are stirring up the scene with cutting-edge original music.

Kenny Barron
Beyond This Place
Artwork Records
2024

With Kenny Barron still working at the height of his craft and creativity, Beyond This Place sees the piano master partnered up with a generations-spanning quintet featuring Johnathan Blake on drums, Immanuel Wilkins on alto saxophone, vibraphonist Steve Nelson and bassist Kiyoshi Kitagawa in a set of originals snatched up from across Barron's decades-spanning discography, plus a cut from Blake and the standard "The Nearness of You." The latter opens the album in a romantic fashion and introduces the many qualities of the band from the top: Wilkins' striking alto timbre (sounding better here than on some of his own records), Barron's uniquely impressionist voicings and gentle soloist touch and a rhythm section that seizes each moment with elegance and conviction. When the vibraphone enters the picture for "Innocence"—the title track taken from Barron's 1978 LP for Wolf Records—the group is complete and, with eloquent interplay, sounds like an intimately familiar combo that has been doing this forever, fluctuating between keen balladry and momentous swing. 2-LP Gatefold Edition.

Bill Frisell, Kit Downes, Andrew Cyrille
Breaking The Shell
Red Hook Records
2024

This release on the Sun Chung-led Red Hook label is another spellbinding affair that roars with innovation. And as in the above-mentioned project, the group is comprised of multiple generations of innovators. Bill Frisell continues to increasingly deconstruct the electric guitar to its most extreme traits, conjuring tapestries of sound with loop and freeze pedals, cutting through the fabric with deep distortion or putting gentler brush strokes on canvas with an almost unaltered, dry string quality. His investigations are met in mid-air by keyboard wizard Kit Downes, here on pipe-organ, who hovers above and between Frisell and the pointillist cymbal strokes of Andrew Cyrille. The drone vibrations of "Kasei Valles" are shattering to the bone, "El" conversely is a beautiful exploration of the trio's lyrical qualities and includes a subtly noticeable guest performance by cellist Lucy Railton. The folk background of some of the tunes is transfigured, turned into something utterly new and otherworldly. Single-Sleeve Edition.

Superposition
II
We Jazz Records
2024

The drummer Olavi Louhivuori-led quartet Superposition made quite the waves in the international press with its debut recording for We Jazz records in 2020, and on this follow-up the Finnish group only refines the qualities that made their first strike so remarkable. In alliance with saxophone players Linda Fredriksson, and Adele Sauros as well as bassist Mikael Saastamoinen, Louhivuori presents lyrical grooves alongside free explorations, fusing stylistic traits inspired by the likes of Ornette Coleman or Dewey Redman with chamber folk aesthetics to amount in its own idiosyncratic design. Energetic blasts like "Huia" bring the saxophone dualism to the fore, shedding special light on two Finnish reed-naturals of whom we will surely be hearing much more very soon. The urgency in some of this off-kilter, obliquely pulsating grooves is palpable. Single-Sleeve Edition.

Asher Gamedze
Constitution
International Anthem
2024

After Dialectic Soul and Turbulence and Pulse comes Constitution, arguably Cape Town, South Africa-based Asher Gamedze's most ambitious outing to date. Having assembled the largest ensemble for any of his studio-dates yet, dubbed The Black Lungs, and presenting a long-track with a running time of over 15 minutes alongside the almost 40-minute title track and several shorter exhibitions, Gamedze thematically tackles the Black Consciousness movement, which has occupied most of his work to date, and goes down a rabbit hole of musical possibilities. The drummer notes how, "the ensemble experience of study and struggle is the basis of my thought and everything I try to do in this mad world." The ensemble features soprano Tina Mene, whose prominent vocal performance guides the proceedings with a certain urgency and flamboyancy, to some degree recalling the contributions of singer Asha Puthli on Ornette Coleman's Science Fiction (Columbia, 1972). This is music in constant motion, with the piano chords droning, percussion layers expanding and contracting, horns blowing in and out of proportion as the sonic density expands and decreases in patient, space-savoring expansiveness. The title track alone is a beast to take in, with alto and tenor saxophones wailing to a fierce soprano as more voices join in a choir, forming a perpetual continuum that ebbs and flows like tidal waves across troubled waters. 2-LP Gatefold Edition.

Black Diamond
Furniture Of the Mind Rearranging
We Jazz Records
2024

The Chicago creative scene continues to be graced with many innovative minds—maybe a lasting effect of what the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) brought to the table in the late '60s and afterwards—and Black Diamond, co-led by the horn duo of Artie Black and Hunter Diamond, is no exception. On the their debut for the Finnish We Jazz label, the group offers an expansive 2-disc set of quartet music seemingly inspired by the groovy lyricism of Yusef Lateef on the one hand and the free furor of Ornette Coleman on the other. Both leaders being multi-reedits—swapping saxophones for clarinets then moving on to flutes---, their stylistic reach covers large sonic landscapes, from more intimate acoustic chamber jazz ruminations to full-throttle groove monsters, where the rhythm section of double bassist Matt Ulery and Neil Hemphill on drums propel the ensemble forward, making for a cooking swing-combo. There is an experimental twist to the session, culminating in two, album-concluding long-form duo improvisations that find Black and Diamond seemingly molding their saxophones into pipes of an organ. Their sustained glares are layered on top of each other, overtones adding to a frequency spectrum that could fill a church. 2-LP Gatefold Edition.

Anna Butterss
Mighty Vertebrate
International Anthem
2024

No bassist of late is quite as in demand in today's improvised scene as the Australia-born and L.A.-based Anna Butterss—certainly not in the US. Besides their studio and live work with more popular acts like Phoebe Bridgers, Jason Isbell or Andrew Bird, recently Butterss could be heard on label-mates Daniel Villarreal and Jeff Parker's recordings, in addition to getting the SML quintet off the ground with the group's debut record released this year, also on the International Anthem label. Just months after that debut, Butterss presents their second leader-date Mighty Vertebrate, which shares much in common with SML, sonically and in regard to its line-up. Saxophonist Josh Johnson and guitarist Gregory Uhlman return here and add their idiosyncratic voices to a funky blend of groove, electronic experimentation and jazzy melodic and harmonic inclinations. Sometimes it almost sounds like a jazz-combo accidentally fell into a '90s Nintendo Game Boy, with complex and syncopated melody lines, on guitar and saxophone, woven into washing synthesizer-chord blocks on top of groovy, rubbery bass foundations. It is all so fauvistic-cubistically colorful, like neon signs drenched in the sun-set at Times Square. Single-Sleeve Edition.

Tracks and Personnel

Beyond This Place

The Nearness of You; Scratch; Innocence; Blues On Stratford Road; Tragic Magic; Beyond This Place; Softly As In A Morning Sunrise; Sunset; We See.

Personnel: Kenny Barron: piano; Immanuel Wilkins: saxophone, alto; Steve Nelson: vibraphone; Kiyoshi Kitagawa: bass; Johnathan Blake: drums

Breaking The Shell

Tracks: May 4th; Untitled 23; Kasei Valles; El; Southern Body; Sjung Herte Sjung; Two Twins; Cypher; July 2nd; Proximity; Este a Székelyeknél.

Personnel: Bill Frisell: guitar, electric; Kit Downes: pipe organ; Andrew Cyrille: drums

II

Tracks: Clouding; Clashes; Huia; Elfvik; Superseven; KMT; Angel Oak; To Dream; Uuz nousee.

Personnel: Olavi Louhivuori: drums; Linda Fredriksson: saxophone; Adele Sauros: saxophone; Mikael Saastamoinen: bass

Constitution

Tracks: Find Each Other; Determining Facts; Antagonism; Elaboration; Constitution (Pt. 1); Constitution (Pt. 2); Destitution; High Land. New Home; Melancholia; Deposition: A Song for the Dialectician.

Personnel: Asher Gamedze: drums; Tumi Pheko: trumpet; Fred Moten: poet / spoken word; Sean Sanby: bass; Garth Erasmus: alto saxophone; Jed Petersen: tenor saxophone; Ru Slayen: percussion; Athi Ngcaba: trombone; Tina Mene: vocals; Fred Moten: words; Nobuhle Ashanti: piano; Sean Sanby: bass;

Furniture Of the Mind Rearranging

Tracks: Carrying the Stick; Dovetail; Seen; Zoetic; Jayber Crow; Mantis; Say to Yourself; Under the Garden; Furniture Of the Mind; Lost Motion; Catlett; Mycelium; Motor Neurons.

Personnel: Artie Black: tenor saxophone, bass clarinet; Hunter Diamond: tenor saxophone, flute; Matt Ulery: double bass; Neil Hemphill: drums

Mighty Vertebrate

Tracks: Bishop; Shorn; Dance Steve (feat. Jeff Parker); Ella; Lubbock; Pokemans; Breadrich; Seeing You; Counterpoint; Saturno;

Personnel: Josh Johnson: alto saxophone, effects; Gregory Uhlmann: guitar, effects; Ben Lumsdaine: drums, percussion, guitar, lap steel, drum programming; Anna Butterss: upright bass, electric bass, guitar, synths, flute, drum machine; Jeff Parker: guitar (on "Dance Steve")

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