Rolling Jazz Thread 2019

The sample track from the new Rez Abbasi is p cool. He's still mining the same intricate South Asian-jazz fusion territory and gets good results. Mrdangam/ghatam/kanjira as well as drum kit : https://rezabbasi.bandcamp.com/album/a-throw-of-dice

He’s not wrong.

Really love this one from Samuel Prather.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PJmCT0Ykio

Any Frode Haltli fans here? Border Woods is quite lovely, probably my favourite thing he's done since Passing Images.

wikipedia says that somebody found a copy of the second album by hasaan ibn ali, previously believed to have been destroyed in a late '70s warehouse fire? and that it might be released? god i would love to hear this!

Bumming about Harold Mabern

George Coleman's got an album coming out next week that's probably Mabern's final studio session, unless there's stuff in the vault or other things that haven't been released yet. It's just called The Quartet, on Smoke Sessions, and it's all standards.

https://soundcloud.com/highnote-savant-records/bookendz-from-blue-dawn-blue-nights

latest Wallace Roney album is well cool

this came out in June. solo piano. it is astonishing.

https://akitakase.bandcamp.com/album/hokusai

(duo piano on track #3, with Schlippenbach playin in, which is actually how I ran across this)

her Thema Prima album is p great as well

https://krisdavis.bandcamp.com/album/diatom-ribbons

new Kris Davis album Diatom Ribbons has some nice vox from Esperanza Spalding, a turntablist, the voice of Cecil Taylor talking about how music saved his life on the opening track.

Got a podcast interview with her going up on Friday.

Cool.

Feel like maybe I put the whammy on Harold Mabern by suggesting that you interview him.

Stephen Haynes / Damon Smith / Matt Crane / Jeff Platz – “Theory of Colors”

^^^
exquisite album is this, when a track came on from a shuffle i thought i was listening to some prime Sunny Murray or Spontaneous Music Ensemble or something .. beautiful stuff.

https://ollihirvonen.bandcamp.com/album/displace

new Olli Hirvonen album is nuff good! The McLaughlin/Coryell comparisons are fair but a lot of other interesting influences are in there.

yesssssssssssss... https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/fly-or-die-ii-bird-dogs-of-paradise

Going to see Branch perform today - free outdoor concert in some crappy little park near Houston Street. It's with her other group - Luke Stewart (of James Brandon Lewis's trio) on bass and Mike Pride on drums.

Wow, that Jaimie Branch.

(not a huge fan of the trumpet playing tbh, but everything else is great)

dunno if people rate him as classical, jazz, experimental or what but i LOVE travis laplante and he has a new album out at the start of next month
https://travislaplante.bandcamp.com/album/human

NYC premiere show in the LES on 11/7
http://www.galeriezurcher.com/spip.php?page=article&id_article=1622

Wiil check it, thanks!
Speaking of bandcamp, all of xpost Taylor Ho Bynum 9-tette's The Ambiguity Manifesto is on there now:
https://taylorhobynum.bandcamp.com/album/the-ambiguity-manifesto
Was going to name particular favorites, but even/especially the longest tracks, at 17:18 and 18:25, make it pretty hard to do---maybe the finale, "unreal/real (for old music," for the blend of moods, vibes.

Some of it might be too relaxed, though (not a whole track, but here and there within---few edits wouldn't hurt, seems like)(but that's a first impression)

Yeah, that Bynum record is really good. I caught the record release show at the Jazz Gallery, which given the personnel and their relative busy-ness was likely to be a rare event. It was a blast.

Makaya McCraven just played a very good set with Jeff Parker of Tortoise at the Lodge Room in Los Angeles.

The best song was the first, an unreleased track called "In These Times," which sounded like a collaboration between Steve Reich and Eddie Hazel.

new yazz ahmed is fantastic.

Finally getting to Christian Scott's Ancestral Recall, discussed way upthread: instantly smitten by brittle impassioned brave climbing (because brittle might break) in this our distressed time and space and place(s), major within minor and vice-versa, orbits within orbits (nature's way and more contributed by mankind, for better and worse):idealism and experience and inquiry and reflection, but not imitation; assimilation of African diaspora incl. electric Miles and bits ingested by Radiohead and maybe Sigur Ros, and yes trap music and sounds like he might be listening to Jlin. "Reverse Flugelhorn" might be the way he (dropping the brittle) pushes against the grain, re expected mellowness of that instrument, while mining its riches, somewhat like Red Rodney (as heard live late in his life and on disc).
Main reservation (on first listening): toward the end there's a repetition of effect, where he's maybe too much the heroic herald---I'd like more of that divine interaction w Elena P. on "Before," please, and why is she only on this one track (OMG Logan Richardson on "Songs She Never Heard"!), and especially waiting for him to assimilate himself or shut up a little on the ironically titled "Double Consciousness." But then the pressure he puts on Saul Williams, during title track finale, that works, like most of the album does.
Right now I'm thinkin' it's in my Top Ten, and here's that link one more time, might as well:
https://christianscott.bandcamp.com/

Tension of looking out and drawing in, maybe especially re and via this century's cyber-connections and isolation. But you could say that about so many things of course. I haven't given him Top Ten blessing quite yet.

Yeah, the Christian Scott is my second favorite jazz album of the year, after Anna Webber. One I never really liked was that The Comet Is Coming album, but I'm loving the EP! It's a really well composed and dynamic suite of music.

Does the Christian Scott feature a great deal of spoken word?

https://noahpreminger.bandcamp.com/releases

this is my fave Noah Preminger album so far, episodic 48 minute jobbie that sort of reminds me of Zorn's Spillane. Kris Davis and Rudy Royston are in the band.

xp
Not sure what constitutes a "great deal" but while it's a prominent element on some tracks, it probably only takes up like 15% of the album (lol maybe idk). fwiw I think Williams' spoken word stuff is easier to get on board with than the kinda dated flow of the one rap. All that said, this is easily one of my albums of the year, and if you're at all curious, it's worth checking out.

Am I the only one who likes the Resavoir album? It's on International Anthem and is this superb blend of styles, at times it reminds me of Phil Ranelin and one track is very much in the Tortoise/Chicago Underground lineage. Really beautiful stuff!

Hmmm… I might check it out then. I find spoken word unreasonably off-putting in music (I hate words tbf).

vox on jazz albums are generally awful reedy vocals or some god awful community workshop spoken word bad poetry type shite. as soon as I hear one or the other I won't listen to it again.

Ha, I skipped through one track that had a lot of spoken word, but otherwise, I really liked the new Jaimie Branch in an immediate way.

Kris Davis is a recent honourable exception by using tapes of a Cecil Taylor interview to good effect and using a proper singer on her latest album.

Forevergirl is a really good vocal jazz track from Christian Scott:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MObfOsPra_s

I also liked the spoken word opening of the Comet is Coming EP :)

I haven't gotten around to listening to the EP, but the spoken word stuff on the Sons of Kemet album is great (and I am as allergic to the idea in general as you all are). It helps that it's closer to stuff like Linton Kwesi Johnson than 90s slam poetry. It is interesting how much it seems to be part of the new generation's approach, I assume due to their roots in community arts workshops and the like (?)

The Resavoir album is nice, ty.

Agreeing With Others Dept.:

Resavoir, Jaimie Branch, Kris Davis, and The Comet Is Coming are all really good. So's the new Yazz Ahmed, which came out Friday.

new Tomeka Reid Quartet w/Mary Halvorson is good as well.

Oh, I'll look for that.

me too!
Haven't taken in his lines yet, but I like the way the sound of Saul Williams's voice fits, no bombast or mumblecore, also like Branch's voice on https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/fly-or-die-ii-bird-dogs-of-paradise--but on both albums, there are some words in there, so if you don't want any, you're out of luck. "A luuuv song, for assholes, and clowns," a lullaby. Will check other recent mentions on here; so far y'all have steered me right.

Yazz has a bit of spoken word on a track, but it's about two minutes long and not too distracting.

And I love the Comet Is Coming EP as much as the album. Also has a non-corny spoken word track!

did someone already link Ben Flock's Mask Of The Muse on here? it might have been a burning ambulance review linked on here. it's probably a bit trad for some but it's so dreamy and lush I'm total sucker for it.

erroneous apostrophe there it is Flocks!

I wrote about it for Stereogum in August. It is nice.

Ben Flocks, Mask Of The Muse (West Cliff)
This is a fascinatingly weird, not-quite-retro album by an up-and-coming saxophonist. Flocks, along with guitarist and producer Art Chersky, keyboardist Frank LoCrasto (who’s worked with Jeremy Pelt), bassist Martin Nevin, and drummer Evan Hughes, tackle a collection of songs that aren’t standards, but are old, and associated with singers ranging from Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra to Sam Cooke, Roy Orbison and Patti Page. The arrangements are a little bit soul jazz, a little bit hard bop, and a little bit lounge-act, but there’s also an edge of weirdness to them, like something out of a David Lynch movie. The consistency of the mood is what makes the album really special; it’s like you’re hearing it in a dream. The band’s version of Sam Cooke’s “Smoke Rings” features gentle guitar and organ, and a slow-dance beat, over which Flocks’ tenor floats like he’s playing a 1950s prom.

The Yazz Ahmed is nice, but I'm not totally convinced by it. Apart from the second half of 2857, that is absolutely amazing! It's not like there's only room for one middle eastern inspired jazz album, but I did prefer Maurice Loucas 'Elephantine' from this year.

more great community-workshop-angry-spoken-word jazz: the Irreversible Entanglements album from a couple of years ago

Yeah, unperson turned me onto that upthread, when I was omg at Moor Mother on Art Ensemble of Chicago's We Are On The Edge---her Analog Fluids of Sonic Black Holes is out Nov.8