Rolling Jazz Thread 2021

I was trying to find something else from him many years ago, literally stumbled onto that video. Continually wows me.

https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/never-is-enough

just what I needed tonight ... a new Thumbscrew album.

It's really good; I wrote about it on Friday.

I think it's great that one of the most impressive + out there modern jazz trios of the moment have a track called Emojis Have Consequences!

Hope it is good, was disappointed by The Anthoy Braxton Project: maybe should listen some more, but so far pretty bland, especially her, esp, compared to the Braxton-Chabbourne set I'd recently listened to while posting about, and everything else I've heard by Braxton himself.

Listened to that Blue Note Re:Imagined record with LDN musicians; it's all a bit tasteful and wine bar-y but still some good stuff.

― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, February 25, 2021
Yeah, and you might prefer Kaleidoscope, on Soul Jazz Records, which is even more The Sound of Young London, but doing their own compositions, a wider and sometimes deeper range (haven't heard the digital, but the CD, I know, also the vinyl, I'm told, have very vivid sound, and delving booklet, pretty much a book). It led me to a lot of good 2020s and 2109 releases by K contributors on bandcamp and YouTube.
Discussions of some of these artists and albums can be found on the shape of acid jazz to come: MOSES BOYD's Dark Matter and
A catch-all thread for the current jazz scene in London, including Shabaka Hutchings, Yazz Ahmed, Moses Boyd, Nubya Garcia, Camilla George, Theon Cross, Zara McFarlane, Daniel Casimir, SEED Ensemble,
(and some mentions on RJ 2020 and before)

Those four sample tracks from the Thumbscrew on Bandcamp are fantastic! Added it to my cart right away.

Yeah, I was totally sold 20 seconds in.

Jazz drummer Ralph Peterson Jr., who had been battling cancer for six years, has died. I've heard him on countless records, but only saw him live once, in January 2020, subbing for Billy Hart with the Cookers. It sounded like an avalanche. He was very much of the Art Blakey/Elvin Jones school of jazz drumming; if you were the bassist who had to stand next to him, you might as well just mime your part, because no one was going to hear you.

Fuck, I didn't know he had cancer. He was one of my favorites, this record is a classic in my book:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6MwTVkgY4o

You can only get away with playing like that if you're the leader, but I f'in love it.

Yeah, that's an amazing record; I mean, just look at that band. They made three albums together, and they're all hard as hell.

For those of you who crave Dutch jazz, this is a recent initiative of a series of 50 concerts with 130 different musicians. Ian Cleaver is a musician to follow as he's only in his twenties but already a veteran. This is a video with guitarist Jesse van Ruller.

Something different: this Anthony Coleman album was announced on Twitter by Marc Urselli, but otherwise hard to find (if you use the search function of Bandcmap it won't show up).

The current episode of the NY Times Popcast is all about jazz, with a ton of discussion of Immanuel Wilkins, Georgia Anne Muldrow, various International Anthem releases, and much more. It's hosted by J0n C@r@m@n1c@, who I think is one of the worst big name music critics, but his guests are Giovanni Russonello and Marcus J. Moore, who are both great.

http://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/02/arts/music/popcast-jazz.html

I've always had a blind spot where The Second Great Quintet is concerned: something about the way Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock interact in *this* context, like they encourage each other towards inertia, compared to Miles, Tony Williams, Ron Carter---what are yall's favorite albums by this group, that might get me out of this rut---? I want to believe.

I like Nefertiti best of the studio records I've heard, the heads are very memorable even if the improvisations can get abstract.

Yeah, I'd rank them:

1) Nefertiti
2) Miles Smiles
3) the quintet half of Water Babies
4) the quintet half of Filles de Kilimanjaro
5) E.S.P.
6) Sorcerer
7) Miles in the Sky

The live stuff on the Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel box, Miles In Berlin, and Vol. 1 and Vol. 4 of the Bootleg Series is often better than the studio albums (except for Nefertiti, which really is a masterpiece). Maybe start there.

So this just happened:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CVa1dkkXcY

Not sure what I think yet.

Yeah, I don’t love that. There are two songs with Iggy on the album, and I’m not super into either one. The instrumental stuff, some of which has as many as four horns, is better. In general, though, I kinda feel like Dr. Lonnie’s just running out the clock at this point.

Yeah. In general don't tend to like jazz versions of rock tunes unless they are kind of skronky or at least dig a deep soul jazz groove. This didn't seem to change it up enough.

Prefer this Gabor Szabo vesion, for instance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvFs7OhT1BI

https://www.bricartsmedia.org/events-performances/bric-jazzfest-0

My 2nd quintet faves are Miles Smiles and Filles, with selected tracks from the rest. Maybe I'll make a playlist. :)

That would be good, thanks to you and others above. So far I'm thinking it's my prob with acoustic Herbie in general, in any decade/century. I played one of those Legal-in-Italy CDs (from before Media Lord Berlusconi became PM), Double Image(Moon, 1989), live in Paris, 1969, and here Shorter's effective enough, switching back and forth from tenor to soprano, rattling along between Miles and Chick Corea, with Dave Holland and Tony Williams prividing subway momentum--but then on Paris, France(Moon, 1990), live, 10-01-64, the full Second Quintet, Shorter and Hancock are back to being the blurry center I remember from xpost Water Babies and others, although in this case it may be in part the recording quality (which the other players push through).

However, will check the other live sets recommended, also Nefertiti,E.S.P., and Sorcerer---I did like Filles, but maybe because don't think there was any acoustic Herbie: he played electric piano on the first (?) session, later Corea played acoustic and electric.

Ok, without spending too much time on it, here's my stab at a 2nd quintet playlist:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/45Y69BdICHVVCe0NWXKkIS?si=l-pRLCUERGqcLGTRa__-eA

Tbh Water Babies is a blind spot for me, so nothing from that, I'll be rectifying that though

I'm still getting deeper into that Hafez Modirzadeh album there is about the detuned pianos and his very rich and light artistic touch to playing that really appeals to me.

*something*

Thanks, Jordan!
Re jazz and rock, aside from Gabor Szabo and say Steve Marcus and Larry Coryell giving the Beatles a double shot of freewheeling, usually seems to work better when jazz strategies and of course attitude bring out rock appeal in originals, more than covers.
For instance, another formerly Legal-In-Italy set, Two Miles Live (Discarios, 19??), live in Vienna 11-05-71---boot sites usually say: Wiener Konzerthaus, Vienna (Austria)
Österreischer Rundfunk radio broadcast (B+)

Miles Davis (tpt); Gary Bartz (ss, as); Keith Jarrett (el-p, org); Michael Henderson (el-b); Ndugu Leon Chancler (d); Charles Don Alias (cga, perc); James Mtume Forman (cga, perc)
Yeah, The Lost Septet, never as a full line-up, in the studio at the same time, apparently. Here. Miles draws dry ice and other smoke from the fractive frictions of wah-wah, Echoplex, pitch controls, whatevs, revealing puassing patterns on the inner surfaces of his glass headpiece, also for instance JK's organ sustains metallic sheets which his electric piano hand taps more patterns into, while Gary B's alto and soprano go for microtones from the slaugherhuas, Henderson's bass is bruise as much as blues, drums are all around the town, in a supportive way---Disc One has a *bit* more variety, segmentation; Disc 2 grabs me by the back of neck right off and don't let go.

revealing *passing* patterns, that is (incl indentations)

*KJ*'s organ

That first Count's Rock Band album to which you are referring, Tomorrow Never Knows, is incredible. Believe Xgau wrote something about how it represented something of a Road Not Taken for fusion.

yeah, and while I'm at it, *slaughterhaus*

Here's a reunion version of that band with only those two guys you mentioned, haven't listened to the whole thing yet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHJn1A-LfUY

Oh, here is the title cut from the original album, still sounds grebt!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGT5kHpmH78

Thanks!! Yeah, xgau liked young Coryell a lot, and btw even though he and the other Free Spirits disowned their s/t studio album, fw by suits, Live At The Scene, which came out in 2011, with notes by Bob Moses, who was in or from high school with those dive flights were recorded by a single overhead mic, I think he says, is a lot of fun.

*when* those dive flights were recorded.

Oh, looks like the Free Spirits LP, which I always picture w just their name, actually was titled Out of Sight and Sound: the last part was right, but not as the suits intended us to think.

Here's something Xgau wrote that discussed Coryell: https://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/rock/jazz-71.php

Yeah like how he starts out kinda mumblecore and stoned and wry and otherwise self-involved and (that was a weird year for sure) builds to finale of last two grafs (though still kinda low-key re passing mention of Devotion but think he got more excited when he came back to it later), and will have to check Gato's Fenix, don't recall that title at all.

His later Consumer Guide comments on Coryell releases reflect my impression that he turned out (at least for a while) to be one of those gifted guitarists who could play in a wide variety of styles, and seemed to drift through all of them: here's an album of Texas blues, here's some things I heard in Brazil, here's some bop--cool, but why not just listen to the originals? Maybe he found enough direction for momentum of interest later, I dunno--but oh that youth---I really didn't like most of what got tagged as fusion, but even what I've heard of garish period elements on Eleventh House albums have winning exuberance, just letting it fly in the Face ov Thee Master or whatevs (whether he got into Scientology or numerology or macrobiotic heroin, didn't matter then, not while platters were spinning)

Wonder how his album with Emily Remler is (or was there more than one)?

Somewhere I read a description by Robert Wyatt of a club show where Coryell tried to "duel" with Hendrix, and Hendrix wiping out Coryell's playing with a single power chord.

The Lady Coryell album is a confounding, barely listenable mess.

Believe he had some kind of obsession with Hendrix so not surprised at that story.

The Coryell/Hendrix story is told by Robert Wyatt in Charles Shaar Murray's Crosstown Traffic. Coryell got up to try to cut Hendrix at a club, on the erroneous assumption that his thorough harmonic knowledge and bebop chops would put him over. So after Coryell finished, Hendrix got up, went bowOOWWWW, and as Wyatt put it, "just erased the last ten minutes. It was like walking into a blowtorch. The fool!"

Looool.

I like the Coryell stuff in high school when my friends and I were played tasteless jazz-rock-jam band gigs and it sorta legitimized it, but have no desire to go back to it now.

The early stuff was fun, but that story (like another one about Johnny Winter jamming w Jimi) reminds me of when I went to an Eric Clapton concert in the late 70s, because Muddy Waters was opening. I was kicked back in stoned complacency, even okay with the record playing before the show started, Jefferson Starship or some shit---but his first note jabbed me out of my seat and fully awake for the whole set, quite an achievement---and the audience was as one in that. Clapton, opening with "Badge," was able to capitalize on this, as long as he played the hits and FM-familiar album tracks---but his non-jazz, complicated-as-"complex", sort of prog-blues treks, with Albert Lee, maybe, got crickets in response, although I (still stoned) liked it pretty well. But, maybe especially because this was the Age of Punk in Tuscaloosa, with students blasting "Rock Lobster" and Ramones from their hovels, Mud's music seemed much more timely than that of the younger EC.

First track of this is real feel-good stuff, I dig. out today on Astral Spirits.

https://quinkirchner.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-pro-musica

His album from last year was fantastic. I'll have a listen to that later.

Kevin Whitehead on new Julius Hemphill box: he warns of zig-zag roughness, but def. recommends--really appealing excepts, may have to buy:
Hemphill was a founding member and principal composer for the World Saxophone Quartet. The Boyé Multi-National Crusade for Harmony features seven discs of newly released music from his archives.
stream, download:https://www.npr.org/2021/03/05/973981703/crusade-for-harmony-surveys-the-life-work-of-saxophonist-julius-hemphill

Dutch guitar player Anton Goudsmit has a new release scheduled later this month, but they did a video stream from the Bimhuis with a new band. The music sounds more introverted than his other output (kind of Frisell-ish maybe), but there's a lot going on harmonically/rhythmically.