The crew responsible for Telepathic Mysteries will be familiar to anyone who has encountered drummer and label boss Federico Ughi's 577 Records. First among equals is veteran multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter, who serves as the focal point in a co-operative completed by Patrick Holmes on clarinet, Matthew Putman on keyboards and Hilliard Greene on bass. That same ...

Article: Album Review

Rachel Musson: I Went This Way

Read "I Went This Way" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
October 21, 2020

Let's agree that, by a consensus of one, Debbie Sanders recital of saxophonist Rachel Musson's thought-through and through-read play-by- metaphoric-play/lecture on improvisation gets annoying as all hell so quickly that one may find oneself searching madly for a bonus instrumental version. But the music on saxophonist Musson's I Went This Way is an ambitious, teasingly ambiguous ...

Article: Album Review

The Telepathic Band: Telepathic Mysteries, Vol. 1

Read "Telepathic Mysteries, Vol. 1" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
October 15, 2020

For a quintet grounded in free association, The Telepathic Band sure as hell sound like a disembodied orchestra tuning up to go rogue. Wafting from absolute to adagio a piacere (as they say in Italian or, as we say in our less romantic and crasser Anglo tongue, as they please), the seemingly indefatigable saxophonist Daniel Carter ...

Article: Album Review

Shifa: Live in Oslo

Read "Live in Oslo" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
October 1, 2020

A spectrum of subversive, seemingly sinister ambitions erupt upon entering the very vigorous other-world proposed on Live In Oslo, a true mind-meld of London's free-jazz highest order, led by saxophonist Rachel Musson, pianist Pat Thomas and drummer Mark Sanders known collectively as Shifa. Recorded at Oslo's Blow Out Festival in August 2019, the trio ...

Article: Album Review

TEST and Roy Campbell: TEST and Roy Campbell

Read "TEST and Roy Campbell" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
September 23, 2020

This archival recording does what it says on the tin, capturing trumpeter Roy Campbell Jr. (who died in 2014) with free jazz quartet TEST in a high octane live date from April 1999. These five are masters of the genre. TEST were the archetypal New York City underground band, who could be found in their heyday ...