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Bridge 61: Journal
by Chris May
Ken Vandermark plays rather like William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac wrote in the heat of their automatic writing experiments. Each writer would consume industrial quantities of recreational drugs--mainly speed and psilocybin, a Jedi-only combination with the kick of mule--sit down at a typewriter, and become the conduit for a best-selling masterpiece which would write itself, allowing ...
Ingrid Laubrock & Liam Noble: Let's Call This...
by Chris May
Though she's frequently heard on soprano saxophone, which she uses throughout this vividly painted little masterpiece of a disc, bandleader and composer Ingrid Laubrock has probably made her biggest impact as an instrumentalist on tenor. On the most recent release by her own band, Forensic (F-IRE, 2004), and in live performances with her own quintet and ...
The Heritage Orchestra: The Heritage Orchestra
by Chris May
Here's something wonderful and totally unexpected, an out-of-left-field, feel-good sonic surprise... The Heritage Orchestra is a 45-piece symphony orchestra with an average age of 25, featuring jazz soloists and rhythm section, mixing classical orchestration with Hollywood and TV soundscape stylings and a splash of nu-soul. It's an exuberant and invigorating romp. The band was put together ...
Finn Peters: Su-Ling
by Chris May
On Su-Ling, his acoustic band's debut album, F-IRE Collective founding member Finn Peters is thinking big. The scope of stylistic influences is broad, and his arrangements are nuanced to suggest a considerably larger lineup than a quintet. At its most immediate, the album is reminiscent of the orchestrated tracks on Wayne Shorter's Alegria (Verve, 2003). Gorgeous ...
Various Artists: London Is The Place For Me 4: African Dreams & The Piccadilly High Life
by Chris May
Honest Jons' exemplary archival collection of London-recorded Caribbean and African music from the '50s and '60s continues with this fourth, irresistible volume. After the third album's single-artist focus on the seminal Nigerian-expat bandleader Ambrose Adekoya Campbell, the series returns, for the moment anyway, to the broader spectrum of the first two volumes--taking in Trinidadian calypso, South ...
Soil & Pimp Sessions: Pimp Master
by Chris May
If Pimp Master sounds like anything that came before it, it sounds like Sonny Clark's Cool Struttin'--but performed by a group of late twentysomething Tokyo musicians who attack the tunes like they've ingested enough speed to affect the outcome of the Superbowl. And they don't fucking care if you know it. Welcome to gonzo-hard ...
Pinski Zoo: After Image
by Chris May
Pinski Zoo burst onto the British delinquent-jazz scene in the early '80s, around the same time as Neneh Cherry's Rip Rig & Panic. Rip Rig & Panic sweetened their avant-garde jazz content with vocals, guitars, songs with hooks, and some savvy rock and roll image building. Pinski Zoo, by contrast, made no concessions to the broader ...
Grant Green: Live At Club Mozambique
by Chris May
A previously unreleased live session, Live At Club Mozambique captures Grant Green at the start of his final, groove-driven decade. By this time, fame and dope had taken a heavy toll on the guitarist, who'd downsized to Detroit, where Club Mozambique hosted one of his regular gigs. Blue Note, now without Alfred Lion, pulled out several ...
Tenor Badness: Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp, Gato Barbieri
by Chris May
During Albert Ayler's performance at John Coltrane's funeral on June 21, 1967, Ayler described Coltrane as the “father," Pharoah Sanders as the “son," and himself as the “holy ghost." The remark generated as much fury among the jazz establishment as Ayler's incendiary--and still howlingly divine--music, but the description, so far as it went, was spot on. ...
Ben Monder: Excavation
by Chris May
There may be five years and several thousand miles between them, but Ben Monder's Excavation is the mirror image of Bright Side, the most recent album by Austrian guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel. It's a dark mirror, though, cracked and clouded. Both discs feature technically phenomenal musicians, each an adventurous improviser who gives equal weight to precisely arranged, ...
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