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Adam Bohman & Roger Smith: Reality Fandango
by Nic Jones
Roger Smith has, in common with other guitarists mining this seam of free improvisation, worked beyond the perhaps pervasive influence of Derek Bailey. Such are the dry, dynamically constricted soundscapes he fashions here in company with violinist Adam Bohman that a distinct instrumental vocabulary emerges. The music as such is documentation of a work in progress, ...
Lennie Tristano: Abstraction & Improvisation
by Nic Jones
Pianist, composer and educator Lennie Tristano's place in the history of the music seems anomalous from the vantage point of the twenty-first century. His music was arguably as iconoclastic as that of Charlie Parker's and Dizzy Gillespie's and equally of its time, but in contrast with that it can come across as colorless and one-dimensional. His ...
Graham Collier: Forging Ahead
by Nic Jones
British bandleader and composer Graham Collier is seventy this year. In the course of his career he has, perhaps, unusually become more expansive in his musical outlook, fashioning pieces for ensembles larger than those he was working with during the late 1960s and early 1970s, a period which is effectively the high water mark of the ...
Spontaneous Music Ensemble: Quintessence
by Nic Jones
Spontaneous Music Ensemble Quintessence Emanem 2007 The music on this two-disc set was originally reissued on two separate CDs some ten years ago, and this latest edition adds no additional material. That's of no real concern though, because what's here is one of the seminal recorded documents of ...
The Stryker/Slagle Band: Latest Outlook
by Nic Jones
The more time passes, the less often truly exceptional documents of the modern mainstream such as this one seem to come along. Guitarist Dave Stryker and alto and soprano sax man Steve Slagle have been working together for some time and there's abundant evidence of that here in their almost symbiotic understanding. Together they make for ...
Hugh Hopper: Hopper Tunity Box
by Nic Jones
In chronological terms Kevin Ayers and Hugh Hopper were the bass players in the most worthwhile editions of the British band Soft Machine, an outfit which, in the days before they became a fairly routine jazz-rock band, exhibited truly progressive ideals in terms of musical scope. Hopper left the band in 1972, and in August of ...
Graham Collier: Hoarded Dreams
by Nic Jones
Hindsight is arguably always a dubious benefit, but in this case it reveals that Hoarded Dreams just might be a touchstone for Graham Collier's music, more specifically the inventions for large ensembles that he's been fashioning for the last thirty-odd years. This disc was recorded at the Bracknell Jazz Festival in England in 1983, and Collier ...
Keefe Jackson's Fast Citizens: Ready Everyday
by Nic Jones
Here's another instalment of vibrant, stimulating listening out of Chicago, and as with the work of Ken Vandermark's various groups, this programme blurs the line between composition and improvisation to the point of extinction. The resulting music is the product of a highly cohesive group. Cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm seems to have adopted the recording ...
The Work: Slow Crimes & Rubber Cage
by Nic Jones
On the evidence here, The Work was a band whose music was informed by the visceral end of progressive rock and the energy and commitment of punk. The multi-instrumentalist line-up included Tim Hodgkinson, a former member of Henry Cow, a European band whose work in the progressive rock field was as singular as that of early ...
Dinah Washington: Evil Gal: The Imperious Dinah Washington
by Nic Jones
In these days of photogenic warblers putting out the standards with only a negligible grasp of individuality and little in the way of interpretive skill, Dinah Washington continues to put a smile on your face before she's even got through the first line of a song. Evil Gal is a trawl through the sides she cut ...
