Jazz Articles

Spinifex: Beats The Plague

by Mark Corroto
January 24, 2022

Finally, a band of brothers retaliates against the coronavirus. The scientists and the anti-vax antipodes have had their day. Time for some partisan guerrilla action. Okay, maybe just a pipe dream, but these nine tracks by the Amsterdam based Spinifex deliver a much needed counterattack to this diabolical infective agent. Recorded in June of 2021, Beats The Plague is the band's seventh release. It follows Soufifex (TryTone, 2019) where the band looked East for inspiration from Sufi music. ...

Spinifex: Soufifex

by Vitalijus Gailius
April 12, 2019

The Amsterdam-based sextet Spinifex—well known for their passion to cross stylistic borders, tight irregular structures and robust improvisational eruptions—still continue their journey through different musical traditions. On their fifth full-length album, Soufifex, the ensemble flee the European musical tradition and turn their faces to the Oriental world, i.e. to the Sufi, mystical Islamic belief and practice in which Muslims seek to find the truth of divine love and knowledge through direct personal experience of God, a musical heritage which is ...

DUMItRIO: Proverbe

by Karl Ackermann
June 15, 2017

DUMItRIO's debut album Future Nostalgia (Self-produced, 2014) combined elements of jazz, rock, classical, electronic and Eastern European music. Proverbe, while still rooted in diverse influences, is more focused and holds together in its consistency. This new collection generates a captivating atmosphere, informed by Romanian folk music and buttressed by the readings of native proverbs and unstructured improvisations. The versatility of the musicians adds to the subtle variety of moods, making each piece a fresh start.George Dumitriu leads the ...

AVA Trio: Music From An Imaginary Land

by Karl Ackermann
June 14, 2017

The recently formed AVA Trio has a distinctly original sound that blends the musical influences of the Mediterranean, Middle-East and Western jazz on their debut recording Music From An Imaginary Land. The three young musicians play original compositions that owe more to jazz than to global influences but they incorporate their native heritages, along with somewhat unusual instrumentation, to form some unique ideas. Bassist Esat Ekincioglu is Turkish and though still in his twenties, has worked in pop, ...

Lisa Cay Miller: 682/681

by Karl Ackermann
May 5, 2017

Canadian pianist Lisa Cay Miller has been playing her instrument since the age of four, later taking up flute as well. Her divergent intermingling of improvisation, avant-garde and classical music has been on display in two previous projects with the improvising cellist Peggy Lee. On her unique 682/681, abstract improvisation rules across twenty-two vignettes. The title is a reference to KLM flight numbers between Miller's Vancouver base and her frequent collaborations in the Netherlands.Miller gathered ten Amsterdam colleagues ...

C.B.G: Les Indignés

by Karl Ackermann
May 3, 2016

The acronym “CBG" is the proxy for the Celano/Baggiani Group. The improvisational group is based in the Netherlands and has been active for more than ten years. Guitarist Guillermo Celano and drummer Marcos Baggiani have been the mainstays in a rotation that has experienced a number of personnel changes as they have veered between quartet and quintet formations across six albums. On Les Indignés, CBG assumes the smaller-size combo. The core members are joined by bassist Clemens van der Feen ...

Oğuz Büyükberber/Tobias Klein: Reverse Camouflage

by Karl Ackermann
March 26, 2016

Outside the classical genre, clarinet duos are not common but Turkish native Oğuz Büyükberber and German, Tobias Klein, each play an assortment of clarinets including the lower octave bass and contrabass versions. Along with the more familiar Bb instrument, the two musicians cover a full spectrum of woodwind sounds. Both artists, now residing in The Netherlands, are brought together on Reverse Camouflage by the Amsterdam-based TryTone label.The program consists of structured compositions and improvisations with three of the ...

Michael Fischer / Marcos Baggiani: bAgg*fisH

by Eyal Hareuveni
May 9, 2014

The duo bAgg*fisH--Austrian saxophonist and violinist Michael Fischer, and Amsterdam-based Argentinian drummer Marcos Baggiani began working together in 2003. The two were determined to redefine the sonic options of such a duo, blurring the conventional distinctions between muscular free jazz, post-rock, psychedelic dramas and noisy outbursts. The duo's music is wrapped in an experimental, risk-taking envelope, mischievous, driving rhythms, and poetic resonance. Both Fischer and Baggiani are experienced improvisers--Fischer conducts the Vienna Improvisers Orchestra and Baggiani ...

Spinifex: Hipsters Gone Ballistic

by Eyal Hareuveni
February 26, 2014

The Amsterdam-based group Spinifex--named after a tough Australian species of grass--is a modular collective of Dutch musicians. The Spinifex quintet that released its debut, the aptly titled Hipsters Gone Ballistic, is a part of a collective that includes the Spinifex Orchestra (that released its debut Triodia back in 2008 on Karnatic Lab Records), Spinifex Tuba Band and Spinifex Indian Spin. The quintet distills elements from all the above mentioned outfits, contrasting extremely tight, irregular structures and ...

Man Bites Dog: Okno

by Eric J. Iannelli
July 17, 2004

"Jazz music," writes the French novelist Françoise Sagan, “is an intensified feeling of nonchalance." While this amusing little paradox might be contestable when applied broadly across the genre--isn't Coltrane's convulsive, rapturous later work the direct opposite of nonchalance?--it is certainly apparent throughout Okno, the third album from the Amsterdam-based outfit Man Bites Dog.

On Okno, MBD rarely bullies the listener into paying attention, but rather engages him by subtle means--that compelling intensity behind the casual detachment. “Strijklicht," for ...