Results for "La Monte Young"

La Monte Young

La Monte Young is an American avant-garde artist, composer and musician, generally recognized as the first minimalist composer. His works are cited as notable examples of post-war avant-garde, experimental, and contemporary music. Young is especially known for his exploration of drone music. Born October 14, 1935 in a log cabin in Bern, Idaho, La Monte went to high school in Los Angeles. During this time he played saxophone in a group with Billy Higgins, Dennis Budimir and Don Cherry and with various other musicians. To continue his education, he relocated to Berkeley, where he met life long friend and collaborator Terry Riley

Jaimie Branch: Fly Or Die Fly Or Die Fly Or Die ((World War))

by Chris May
October 8, 2023

As the malign forces of Amerikkka gather for their 2024 assault on truth, justice and democracy, an assault from which, if it is successful, there may be no peaceable reversal available four years down the line, the American jazz world should hang its head in shame. Denunciations of and opposition to the rise of domestic neo-fascism ...

Vilhelm Bromander: In This Forever Unfolding Moment

by Chris May
September 15, 2023

Ornette Coleman's haunting “Lonely Woman" is becoming something of a 2023 soundtrack. At the time of writing, we have had memorable versions from Kahil El'Zabar's Ethnic Heritage Ensemble on Spirit Gatherer (Spirit Muse), and Kurt Elling and Charlie Hunter on The Iridescent Spree (Edition), plus another couple of efforts about which the less said the better. ...

Bog Bodies: Bog Bodies

by Chris May
December 8, 2022

Formed in 2015, Bog Bodies is an international trio comprising tenor saxophonist Robert Stillman, guitarist Anders Holst and drummer Sean Carpio. The band moves freely between the composed and the improvised, the abstract and the figurative, and the acoustic and the electronic. Is it jazz? Is it La Monte Young-inspired drone? Is it noise? Is it ...

RedGreenBlue: The End And The Beginning

by Chris May
August 7, 2022

RedGreenBlue sound like they have emerged from the same synapse-snapping dope bunker that La Monte Young and Jon Hassell exited with their Theatre Of Eternal Music in the 1970s, whacked out on opium, hashish and mescaline, dazed but not confused. RedGreenBlue may or may not indulge in the same psychotropic self-medication as their Lower East Side ...

Nik Bartsch: Entendre

by Chris May
March 7, 2021

Back in 2006, Swiss composer and keyboard player Nik Bärtsch's ECM debut, Stoa, recorded with his group Ronin, sounded like the album James Brown might have made if he'd appointed Steve Reich musical director of his backing band, The J.B.'s. Simultaneously cerebral and on the good foot, it was minimalism, Jim, but not as we knew ...

Chris May’s Best Releases Of 2020

by Chris May
December 7, 2020

Not the best year for live gigs in London, but Dele Sosimi's Afrobeat Orchestra just made it under the wire, lighting up the Jazz Cafe in late January. Rather like Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Sosimi's band has form as an incubator of young talent. A recent star in the making was trumpeter Ife Ogunjobi, who has ...

Muriel Grossmann: Reverence

by Chris May
June 16, 2020

Since the late 1990s, the Spanish island of Ibiza has been synonymous with two things: electronic dance music and 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine aka MDMA or ecstasy. Austrian-born saxophonist Muriel Grossmann has lived on Ibiza since 2004 and her intense wall-of-sound style of astral jazz suggests she is familiar with both those pillars of Ibizan nightlife. ...

Jon Hassell: Words with the Shaman

by Chris May
April 21, 2020

Jon Hassell is best known as the creator of Fourth World music, an acoustic-electronic blend of jazz, minimalism, drone, ambient, traditional African and Asian instruments and harmolodic signatures. Hassell has defined Fourth World as “serious music with transcultural appeal and a smile." He unveiled the concept on his debut album, Vernal Equinox (Lovely Records), in 1977. ...

Jon Hassell / Farafina: Flash Of The Spirit

by Chris May
January 20, 2020

The trumpeter and keyboard player Jon Hassell is often labelled a practitioner of ambient music. This is a misconstruction resulting mainly from Hassell's encounters with Brian Eno, who is widely perceived as ambient's originator. Hassell's oeuvre, a technologically enabled fusion of western and non-western musics which he calls Fourth World, is a wholly different kettle of ...