Jazz /
Filth Pharmacy
2004 release ** All music recorded at "Garaget", Solna, Sweden. Andreas Axelsson - percussion, drum machines, CD player; Herman Muntzing - flexichord, sampler; Martin Kuchen - soprano and baritone saxophone, found objects.
From The Diary of Dog Drexel
"The Diary of Dog Drexel" is a suite of five movements, each of which programmatically portrays an emotional state from the diary. One of the ideas behind "Dog" was to thoroughly blend improvised and composed elements. In the first four movements "Conflicted, Pissed, Bummed, and Agitated" there are at almost all times at least one thread of composition and another of improvisation. The balance between the elements shifts steadily. Muddying the waters further is that many of the extended techniqu…
Octante
2005 release ** Limited edition of 200 copies. "The Iberian trio of Fages, Barberan and Costa Monteiro have been working together in Barcelona for long enough now to have developed a distinct language of tension, scraped metallic dynamics and a rough, textural abrasiveness. A trio with a great, off-kilter and unexpected instrumentation (there can’t be many acoustic turntable/ engines, trumpet and accordion trios kicking about Barcelona – although it’s a while since I’ve been there) they build lo…
The butterfly and the bee
Following the success of their very first performance together at the 2004 FREEDOM OF THE CITY festival (heard on Emanem 4215), Roger Smith and Louis Moholo-Moholo went into the studio to record some more. Their second meeting went so well that they recorded enough duo improvisations for a complete CD. The resulting music is heard complete, with Smith on Spanish guitar and Moholo on augmented drum set.
Grammar
2004 release ** "The cast of players includes cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, the newest member of Vandermark 5 (plus Wilco, Terminal 4, The Boxhead Ensemble, Pillow, and the Peter Brotzmann Chicago Tentet, to name just a few); Lou Mallozzi, a sound artist from Chicago who lists Mats Gustafsson, Jaap Blonk, Sebi Tramontana, Michael Zerang, and Guillermo Gregorio as collaborators; and Portuguese violinist Carlos Zingaro, who has partnered with the likes of Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, George Lewi…
+
The saying goes that, given typewriters and an infinite amount of time, a roomful of monkeys could write the complete works of Shakespeare. By that logic, if the same chimps were given a table-full of consumer electronics and a couple of hours, they would likely produce a decent album of electronic, improvised music. I feel safe in guaranteeing, however, that it wouldn't be anywhere as compelling and listenable as the new recording by this quartet of highly developed mammals known as poire_z. Ov…
Dentro
Somewhere between Musique Concrete and a kind of abstract improvisational work, using extended techniques and electrification that disconnects sound from any recognisable source. A fascinating first record that sits between studio improvisation and extensive post production processing composition.
Music + one
2006 release ** Music + One, created in collaboration with Myles Boisen, is a collection of solo improvisations that is meant to be played along with by improvisers. The instructions given to the participants before recording were simple: improvise for 3 to 4 minutes, as if you were playing music with your shadow. This was to allow room for others to improvise with the recording. To test this, we invited the musicians to play along with one of the tracks at the 21Grand Performance Space & Art Ga…
Number nine
Two Toronto musicians and a visitor from London formed this trio that has worked on both sides of the Atlantic. Group improvisations on acoustic guitar, alto saxophone and percussion that cover the whole gamut from dense high-energy to sparse interactions.
Hidros One
2025 stock A composed improvisation, or possibly the other way around – this is one way of describing the music played by Mats Gustafsson and the Nu Ensemble, a multinational group of improvisational musicians.
The saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, born in 1964, became interested in improvisational music at an early age, inspired by among others the German Peter Brötzmann and the Britt Evan Parker.
The Nu Ensemble was a loosely structured, irregularly convened radio and concert project built around …
Leopardo
Leopardo is a solo recording by the Portuguese guitarist Manuel Mota, who might best be described as a somewhat more fluidly lyrical Derek Bailey. Lovingly recorded on solid body electric guitar, his improvisations have the spiky quality associated with the elder statesman of the freely improvised guitar, but Mota's lines sound as though coated in oil, possessing a slipperiness and liquidity that peeks back at Portuguese traditions. There are very few extended effects employed, the guitar string…
In::tension:.
About I n : : t e n s i o n : 'Since a very young age, I have always been attracted to journeys and traveling to places not known to me. Last year, I watched a film from Mongolia about a dog. Once the dog dies, its soul is free to travel and wonder through landscapes and memories as a disembodied spirit. Each part of I n : : t e n s i o n : . is part of a longer journey, where you can hear, sense and discover different memories that a wandering soul revisits. Percussive, intimate, visceral, ritu…
The wilisau suites
1993 release ** "Those who have appreciated through the years the many talents of bassist Kent Carter (in the bands of Paul Bley, Carla Bley or Steve Lacy for instance), have secretly wished that one day he would lead his own band. Since Mister Carter has always been a very personal and inspired soloist, one would think that his conceptions ought to be extended to the size of an orchestra. With the Kent Carter String Trio, this wish comes through, and our hopes are more than satisfied. The Willi…
s/t
ErstLive is a new series of releases from Erstwhile Records, documenting notable live sets associated with the label. The discs are designed to simulate a concert experience, each in the same template design using two colors chosen by the musicians involved, with a photo of the concert on the back cover. Each will be in an edition of 800 CDs and not reprinted. The initial releases will be chosen from the AMPLIFY 2004 festival which took place in Cologne and Berlin in May 2004. ErstLive …
Between
"between", for me is about the tension and space between objects, and how we might occupy this area, to reside if you like between the conventions, to locate the flexibility that comes from de-theorizing the dogmas. It seemed to me as if Toshi and I were navigating a route through a familiar part of town, where each of the buildings stood for and represented expectations, styles, outcomes and histories. We wanted to resist entering the buildings and to stay between. The cover art and photo attem…
Weather sky
That said, "Weather Sky" is another thing altogether. Bruno Meillier invited Toshi to play a duo concert in St Etienne with AMM's no-concessions table guitar master Keith Rowe, and took them into the studio the day after to record for Erstwhile. Sensitivity to pitch is less important here (Rowe, remember, hasn't tuned his guitar since the early 1960s): the album's three tracks are real slow-burners. Rowe can be agile and aggressive when he wants to, but his preferred working method is to lay dow…
The world turned upside down
A document of a performance last autumn at Parisian Improv spot Instants Chavires, in which Günter Müller is flanked by two very different but distinctive users of the electric guitar. On one side of the stage is Keith Rowe, who's worked for half a lifetime to unsettle the boundaries between music and noise. On the other is the restrained presence of Taku Sugimoto, whose crabbed phrases waft above the shifting timbral networks laid down by the other two. The trio's music is dominated by rasps an…
Forlorn green
The press release is disingenuous in describing "Forlorn Green" as "lo-fi": even if Jason Lescalleet's work involves tapeloops using cheap recording gear and "trashed" speakers, his digital reworking and mastering is painstakingly perfectionist and perfect. Recorded in four different locations in the Boston area (a church, a gallery, an art school and the local Twisted Village record store) and crafted in Lescalleet's studio with what can only be described as loving care, the sonic alchemy of …
Perfect fit
2003 release ** "Justin Bennet, Anne Wellmer and Stephie Buttrich fuse minimal electronica and free improvisation in a set of 16 warped and lovely songs."
