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Matthew Shipp Quartet: Sonic Fiction
by Karl Ackermann
The ESP-Disk label simultaneously has released two distinctly different leader dates from Matthew Shipp. Zero is an excellent solo piano album, and here, we have Shipp's namesake quartet on the ten-track Sonic Fiction. The shared deference and camaraderie in this free-spirited outing allows for an appreciation of even the slightest details and distinctions--elements that can easily ...
Matthew Shipp: Zero
by Jakob Baekgaard
Playing improvised solo piano is essentially a conundrum. Where do you start and when does a form emerge? Music begins as sounds and a composition could be the shaping of those sounds, but what about silence and the thing that comes before sound? Avantgarde-composer, John Cage, famously framed the sound of silence on his composition “4'33" ...
Gordon Hyland: NEVER DIE! by \\livingfossil//
by Dan McClenaghan
The debut disc Never Die, by the Toronto-based collective, \\living fossil//, opens with a reverberant industrial hum, a droning metallic guitar sound that announces a distinctive and compelling group aesthetic. Saxophonist Gordon Hyland is the ringleader, though that isn't not apparent from listening. He and his cohorts have created a distinctive approach of echoing saxophone--sometimes two ...
Verneri Pohjola Mika Kallio: Animal Image
by Roger Farbey
Animal Image is the remarkable soundtrack for the documentary film of the same name by the Finnish visual artist Perttu Saksa. Although the movie's duration is twenty eight minutes, the score composed and recorded by fellow Finns Verneri Pohjola and Mika Kallio actually runs to just north of thirty seven minutes, but any shorter would have ...
ECV: Sticks and Stones
by John Kelman
While a somewhat common secondary instrument for primarily electric guitarists including Vic Juris, Pat Metheny and Adam Rogers, there are but a handful of jazz six-stringers alive today who make the nylon-string acoustic guitar their main axe. Despite being known to pick up a warm-toned hollow body electric guitar when the need arises, Ottawa, Canada-based Roddy ...
Hal Galper Quartet: Cubist
by Dan McClenaghan
Count pianist Hal Galper as another veteran rising like the brightest of stars into a compelling late career zenith. An alumni of saxophone great Phil Woods' 1980s group, Galper found his inspiration of late with an exploration of the Rubato Style of playing, with its flexible approach to tempo and the disassembling of melodies and putting ...
Blicher Hemmer Gadd: Omara
by Roger Farbey
Recorded live in 2016 at various venues including London, UK, Odense, Denmark and Kiel, Germany, this is a very appealing organ trio album. The overriding ambiance of this live album recalls the late Jimmy Smith at his grooviest. Take for example the rocking blues of Willie Dixon's “My Babe" which motors along with a characteristic vibrancy. ...
Kit Downes: Obsidian
by Mark Sullivan
British jazz pianist Kit Downes has been previously heard on ECM on drummer/composer Thomas Stronen's first Time Is A Blind Guide album (2015). But in his early years Downes sang in a cathedral choir and took organ lessons. He recently returned to the pipe organ in a series of experimental projects with saxophonist Tomas Challenger, who ...
Amao Quartet: Improcreations
by Tyran Grillo
The Amao Quartet, hailing from southern Brazil, consists (at the time of recording) of guitarists Glauber Kiss de Souza, Daniel de Souza Mendes, Pedro Guerreschi Paiva, and Igor Dornelles Mendes (since replaced by Dino Beghetto). “Consists" is key, as the quartet follows the archaic definition of the word--meaning “to exist together"--to determine the flow of information ...
Michael Waldrop: Origin Suite
by C. Michael Bailey
Percussionist and big band leader Michael Waldrop has had a very successful relationship with composer Dr. Jack Cooper, late of the University of Memphis, Berlin, and parts unknown. Waldrop attended the University of Memphis for his master's degree (helming Cooper's Jazz Orchestra of the Delta) before completing his doctorate at the University of North Texas. Their ...
