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Jonathan Bratoeff Quartet: Between Lines
by Chris May
While it's most talked about right now for the thrilling fast-forward postmodernism of Pete Wareham's Acoustic Ladyland and Sebastian Rochford's Polar Bear, this album from French-born guitarist Jonathan Bratoeff is a reminder that London's F-IRE collective is neither monochrome nor monolith, but a multicoloured assembly of individuals and aesthetics. The twenty or so musicians at the ...
Ted Nash & Odeon: La Espada De La Noche
by Chris May
Best known for his work within straight-ahead classic jazz--from early apprenticeships with the Lionel Hampton and Quincy Jones bands through today's collaborations with Wynton Marsalis--Ted Nash has used his Odeon projects to show another, more outward looking and, some might say, more interesting and innovative aspect of his musical interests. With Odeon, Nash weaves tango (and ...
Partisans: Max
by Chris May
Longer established than their Babel label mates and fellow London radicals Acoustic Ladyland and Polar Bear--and several light years closer to the straight-ahead tradition than either--in energy and attitude Phil Robson's and Julian Siegel's Partisans are very much on the same side of the barricades. Here, in their first album since '00's Sourpuss, they cook up ...
Hans Koller: Wild Roses
by Chris May
Composer/orchestrator/pianist Hans Koller's most groundbreaking achievements to date have been his big band projects, which have picked up and carried forward in the UK the playful and quirky iconoclasm of the late, marvellous Loose Tubes. Mentored early on by veteran experimentalist Michael Gibbs, and building too on Gil Evans' textural inventions, Koller's big bands--which feature emergent ...
Acoustic Ladyland: Live at The Spitz
by Chris May
Acoustic Ladyland Live at The Spitz London May 14, 2005 By 9.00pm--fully two hours before Acoustic Ladyland hit the stage, which they would do like an attack formation of B52s carrying armed love warheads (that's slash and burn amplification, off-the-meter energy levels, and a big throbbing gumbo of rock riffs, punk attitude ...
Various Artists: Rump Comp Volume One
by Chris May
As a means to an end--the end being the creation of new sonorities and new approaches to composition and performance--electronica is an interesting technological development. Wibutee's Playmachine and Polar Bear's Held On The Tips Of Fingers, to take two very different recent examples, are rich and convincing evidence of its relevance to contemporary jazz. As an ...
Shrimp Boat: Speckly
by Chris May
An almost-lost masterpiece of American songwriting, first released in '89 out of Chicago in a limited edition of a thousand vinyl copies, and otherwise unknown and unavailable until this CD edition, Speckly is on the face of it a strange album for AUM Fidelity to release. Not only is it a reissue, but it is in ...
Fred Frith: Eleventh Hour
by Chris May
A really lovely and absorbing double CD set which documents Fred Frith's growing fascination with and mastery of composition for strings, from “Lelekovice" in '90 to “Allegory" and “Fell" in '01. It's not remotely jazz, but it is very fine music indeed, and anyone with an interest in new music should find much to enjoy and ...
Pata Masters & Kua Etnika: Pata Java
by Chris May
The latest world music project from Cologne-based saxophonist/bandleader Norbert Stein finds his jazz/new music Pata Masters quintet in Java, collaborating with Djaduk Ferianto and his eight-piece Kua Etnika gamelan. Previous Pata Masters albums have documented the band's explorations of Moroccan and Brazilian soundscapes. The Indonesian gamelan has enchanted Western musicians since the late nineteenth ...
Acoustic Ladyland: Last Chance Disco
by Chris May
Another revolutionary and heartening jazz-is-reborn manifesto from the F-IRE collective of young London bands--and by a mile the most extreme to date. At times closer to thrash metal and grindcore than jazz as it's usually defined, and acknowledging the presence of Pig Destroyer and Dizzee Rascal in the world around it, Acoustic Ladyland is either an ...
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