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Nick Smart's Black Eyed Dog: Remembering Nick Drake
by Chris May
Back in the day, during his tragically short life ('48-'74), British songwriter Nick Drake couldn't get arrested. The country's folk-rock movement, of which he was perceived to be a part, was booming, and Drake had the support of its two most influential movers and shakers: Chris Blackwell, owner of Island Records, and Joe Boyd, producer of ...
Ezzthetic: Ezzthetic EP
by Chris May
London's F-IRE collective and label is a multi-coloured wonder, home without frontiers to a broad spectrum of innovative young British-based jazz-and-beyond talent including Acoustic Ladyland, Polar Bear, Ingrid Laubrock, Timeline, and Oriole. Electronica is increasingly being explored by F-IRE artists, but mainly in creative jazz contexts. This debut from the Ezzthetic quartet is a new strand: ...
Tony Bevan: Bruised
by Chris May
A magical and transporting, down by law, A-list masterpiece, bass saxophonist Tony Bevan's Bruised is among the very deepest and most rewarding albums to come out of the UK this year, performed by a joined at the head, heart, and hip, genre-busting, genius lineup. It's free improvisation, Jim, but not as we usually know ...
Tethered Moon/Kikuchi, Peacock, Motian: Play Kurt Weill
by Chris May
An album with a sake barrel of promise going for it but which doesn't ultimately hit the spot. It doesn't, for starters, serve up the kind of music which you might reasonably expect from its title. As with Tethered Moon's other themed albums--pegged on the music of Piaf, Hendrix, and Puccini--the source material on ...
Django Bates: Winter Truce (And Homes Blaze)
by Chris May
Ten years on from its original release, digitally remastered in a handsome Winter & Winter edition, Winter Truce (And Homes Blaze) isn't so much a candidate for re-evaluation as potent testimony to the controversy that surrounded maverick British bandleader and composer Django Bates in '95. The unfettered idiosyncrasy of the album--overflowing with new ideas and previously ...
Steve Reid Ensemble: Spirit Walk
by Chris May
An uber-visceral, trance-centric celebration of Great Black Music ancient-to-modern--mixing up free improv, Afrobeat, the astral jazz of Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane, North African Sufi music, early '70s electric Miles, chicken shack B3 grooves, Gil Scott Heron and the Last Poets, and more, all of it laced with real time electronica--Spirit Walk is serious mindbending business, ...
Ike Quebec: The Complete Blue Note 45 Sessions
by Chris May
It's hard enough finding any sort of jukebox in a bar these days, and as for one with some jazz on it, you can forget it, at least here in Inglan. But there was a time, in inner city US neighbourhood bars anyway, when both things were commonplace. The last gasp was the early '60s, when ...
Moondog: The Viking Of Sixth Avenue
by Chris May
While many modern music fans have heard of Moondog--his counterculture reputation and musical achievements have been celebrated by hipster and conservatoire musicians alike for over fifty years--relatively few have actually heard his music. Acquainted with and endorsed by Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Igor Stravinsky, and Artur Rodzinski in New York in the late '40s and '50s, ...
Lou Donaldson: The Artist Selects
by Chris May
Blue Note's new Artist Selects series presumably takes its cue from ECM's recent Rarum initiative: the tracks on the CDs are chosen by the artists themselves, who also write about them in the liner notes. Along with this set from Lou Donaldson, the first batch of albums includes collections by Freddie Hubbard, Kenny Burrell, and--from Pacific ...
Various Artists: F-IRE Works: Volume 2
by Chris May
The inventions and glories of London's F-IRE collective have been well documented here this year, and several tracks on this double-disc set--pieces like Polar Bear's “Fluffy (I Want You)," Acoustic Ladyland's “Remember," and Julia Biel's “Where Is She Now?"--revisit the highlights. The album also serves up a heap of new material, most of it from CDs ...
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