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213

News: Recording

Roswell Rudd - Blown Bone (Emanem)

August 3, 2010

Martin Davidson, proprietor of Emanem, has long made it a custom to include helpful “File under:" tags on his releases to aid harried record shop clerks in correctly identifying contents. Blown Bone, a reissue of a 1979 Japanese-only Philips platter, carries the colorful signifier “Jazz (Free/Blues/Latin)," a definite first in the commonly free improv-focused catalog and ...

News: Recording

Kalaparusha McIntyre Quartet - Extremes (Cimp)

August 3, 2010

A fine line separates eccentricity and error in improvised music. Saxophonist Kalaparush McIntyre, surreptitiously having dropped Maurice, is a personification of the subjective tightrope between the two. McIntyre rightly holds elder statesman status as an aged member of the AACM, though his four decade plus career is comparatively slight in the discographical department. His last ensemble, ...

103

News: Recording

John McNeil - East Coast Cool (Omnitone)

August 3, 2010

Temperature tags have long since fallen out of fashion as codifiers for coastal jazz differences. But damn if trumpeter John McNeil hasn't struck pay dirt, intended incongruities aside, with East Coast Cool, his third outing for Omnitone. The primary source of inspiration for the project lies in the corpus of the classic pianoless Gerry Mulligan and ...

145

News: Recording

Scott Fields Freetet - Bitter Love Songs (Clean Feed)

August 3, 2010

Mordant wit and caustic self-deprecation have always been reliable elements in Scott Fields' creative expression. From the pithy brickbats of semi-fictional critic Hugh Jarrid to the admirable, if puzzling, practice of publishing pans right alongside praises on his website, the guitarist has never shied away presenting the whole package of his persona, prickly pear portions and ...

156

News: Recording

Trio X - Air: Above and Beyond (Cimpol)

August 3, 2010

The “X" can now do double duty as a Roman numeral in reflecting this improvising trio's decade together as a unit. On this latest offering, they cop a page from the Vandermark playbook: Four out of the seven pieces carry dedications to fellow musicians. The extended opener “Fried Grapefruit" celebrates Henry Threadgill, starting as a porous ...

127

News: Recording

Phil Minton - No Doughnuts in Hand (Emanem)

August 3, 2010

Phil Minton's music practically mandates first person response. Burying the “I" in a review is a hard thing to do from the onset. Reaction to his work is frequently polemical with one person's vocal abuses occupying the same aural space as another's expansions. Minton doesn't appear to be especially bothered either way by potential controversy. His ...

137

News: Recording

Byard Lancaster - Personal Testimony (Porter)

August 3, 2010

Originally circulated on Byard Lancaster's Concert Artists label in an extremely finite pressing, this 1979 solo manifesto is among the rarer Philly 'free jazz' artifacts. Filing it under that loose genre heading feels slightly suspect as jazz is only one of the stylistic kegs tapped in its creation. Lancaster folds in African, Asian and Native American ...

141

News: Recording

Von Freeman - Vonski Speaks (Nessa)

August 3, 2010

"Did you have your Wheaties?" So inquires tenor saxophonist Von Freeman of his drummer Michael Raynor in the playful spoken preamble to the concert on Vonski Speaks. Freeman's been figuratively eating that Breakfast of Champions for years, erasing any adverse assumptions about his octogenarian age with an improvisational acumen and stamina that's indicates only minimal signs ...

154

News: Recording

Lin Halliday - Where or when (Delmark)

August 3, 2010

Here's an old favorite that I didn't even realize was in need of re-pressing prior to receiving the promo. Saxophonist Lin Halliday is in certain senses the Herbert Huncke of jazz, a hard luck magnet and itinerant who could bring sporadic savant-like genius to his art. Numerous are the tales of Halliday's self-sabotaging ways, his brushes ...

102

News: Recording

One Track Mind: Gary Moore "Enough of the Blues" (2001)

August 3, 2010

By PicoThere's plenty of blues rock guitar gunslingers out there who only understand the blues as filtered by the likes of Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page. Irish six string specialist Gary Moore has gone much further back than those guys to get his knowledge of the blues form, and it comes out on his ...