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9
Album Review

Daggerboard & The Skipper: Daggerboard And the Skipper

Read "Daggerboard And the Skipper" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


For those who think they can tell an album's sound by its cover, think again in the case of Daggerboard and The Skipper. That cover art seems to have come from the walls of an inner sanctum of a Pre-Columbian pyramid. So what kind of music will that be? It is hard to find information on this release. Daggerboard seems to consist of the workings of percussionist/songwriter Gregory Howe and trumpeter/flugelhornist/songwriter Erik Jekabson, of Throttle Elevator Music fame, ...

5
Album Review

Roscoe Mitchell: Dots - Pieces For Percussion And Woodwinds

Read "Dots - Pieces For Percussion And Woodwinds" reviewed by Mark Corroto


While Dots, a solo recording by Roscoe Mitchell, is divided into nineteen separate tracks, this entire hour plus recording might be best consumed as a single unit. Mitchell's use of silence here is as essential as the woodwind notes blown and the percussive objects struck. One track leading into the next might be marked by silence, but that soundlessness communicates the recurring themes of this outing. Mitchell, active since the 1960s, has performed solo both alone and as ...

3
Album Review

Throttle Elevator Music: Final Floor

Read "Final Floor" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki


Final Floor marks the last stop of a band that one might say never really was. Throttle Elevator Music was the name given to a jazz-punk studio cooperative project organized and operating from 2011 through 2017 around saxophonist Kamasi Washington, drummer Mike Hughes (aka “Lumpy") and composer and guitarist Gregory Howe. Howe also founded and serves as producer and engineer for Wide Hive Records, the label that recorded and distributed their music. He notes on the back jacket ...

7
Album Review

Roscoe Mitchell with Ostravska Banda: Distant Radio Transmission

Read "Distant Radio Transmission" reviewed by Mark Corroto


Sometimes music makes you want to become a better dancer, or maybe even a better lover. With Roscoe Mitchell's music, you can't help but aspire to be a better listener. The co-founder of the Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians creates sounds that transcend jazz, new classical, and avant-garde musics. With Distant Radio Transmission he presents music that he previously recorded (solo or in small improvising groups) and reworked for a 33-piece orchestra, ...

13
Album Review

Roscoe Mitchell with Ostravska Banda: Distant Radio Transmission

Read "Distant Radio Transmission" reviewed by Karl Ackermann


Roscoe Mitchell, a co-founder of the AACM and Art Ensemble of Chicago, continues to discover new intersections of jazz, classical and avant-garde music with Distant Radio Transmission. As he approaches eighty years of age Mitchell has waved off time and tradition, reinventing the AEoC brand with the orchestrated--sometimes operatic--We Are on the Edge: A 50th Anniversary Celebration (Pi Recordings, 2019), a project that bore little resemblance to the group's historical discography. On this album, he draws on past compositions to ...

4
Album Review

Erik Jekabson Sextet III: One Note At A Time

Read "One Note At A Time" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky


By the time One Note At A Time's first two songs have finished, it's been made abundantly clear that trumpeter Erik Jekabson appreciates a groove as much as he values space. The opener—"Days of Haze"—provides an introductory shot of adrenaline in the form of a tight, funk-framed blues, and “Dusk," in contrast, looks to open vistas, with longer lines and a less-is-more attitude reflecting the liminal spirit in its name. Foreshadowing what's to come, those early offerings prove complementary through ...

7
Album Review

Phil Ranelin: Phil Ranelin Collected 2003-2019

Read "Phil Ranelin Collected 2003-2019" reviewed by Chuck Koton


One day, in Indianapolis in 1948, a nine year old Phil Ranelin made a fateful visit to his paternal grandmother's home. She was a real music buff and that afternoon, before she went to do some work out back, she told young Phillip, “Any of these records, feel free to play 'em and see what kind of music you like. Just don't scratch 'em!" That afternoon, Phillip discovered “everything from Big Maybelle to Charlie Parker." A couple of ...

94
Album Review

Roscoe Mitchell: Discussions

Read "Discussions" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


Saxophonist, composer, supreme improviser and a seminal artist for modern times, Roscoe Mitchell's (AACM, Art Ensemble of Chicago) illimitable inventiveness shines forth on this outing that encompasses a 20-piece orchestra, bridging experimentalism and counterbalancing song forms with nouveau classical music applications. The final piece is seemingly derived from a New Orleans slang expression “Who Dat," which is a mind-bending 22-minute opus. Commencing with somber strings and crosscutting percussion patterns, James Fei's synth articulations signal impressions of nature, paralleling ...

2
Album Review

Throttle Elevator Music: Retrorespective

Read "Retrorespective" reviewed by Phillip Woolever


Besides being a well-played selection of powerful music, this is an exciting, top-tier timepiece offering insight on the development of star saxophonist and composer Kamasi Washington a few years before he exploded onto the musical landscape. This release is not actually the most recently recorded work by the project's initial group, who played together most extensively around 2011-12. Washington's rise was no fluke, as this effort proves again and again. He developed chops in some fine ...

8
Album Review

Larry Coryell: Heavy Feel

Read "Heavy Feel" reviewed by Doug Collette


Only the most most skilled and confident musicians can record a sterling album in two days but if anyone qualifies for inclusion in that category, it's Larry Coryell. A veteran of no small renown, albeit somewhat under the radar compared to peers like John McLaughlin, the former leader of the Eleventh House radiates the surety of a master on Heavy Feel, all the while maintaining the distinctive sound of his guitar that hearkens straight back to influential titles from early ...


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