Rolling Jazz Thread 2021

^ The Chris Speed trio is so good--have given those two recent albums on Intakt plenty of listens over past small handful of years.

Speaking of Astral Spirits, the two opening tracks of this new Rob Frye sound great--slowed-down birdsong melodies (Given that all three members are part of this band, maybe a missed opp to call themselves Bitchin Birdies?): https://astralexoplanet.bandcamp.com/album/exoplanet

This Pitchfork review of Sonny Sharrock's Ask the Ages is kind of a mixed bag. On the one hand, there's a lot of solid analysis of the record and good insight into Sharrock himself. On the other hand, to give Last Exit no more than a glance, and to ignore 1970's Monkey-Pockie-Boo and 1986's Guitar entirely, seem like pretty big oversights.

BTW, Real Gone Records put out a 2CD live Herbie Mann set, Live at the Whisky 1969: The Unreleased Masters, in 2016, that features a lot of Sonny (and Linda!) Sharrock; in addition to Mann's material, they got a mid-set interlude where they played a couple of pieces from Black Woman. Well worth digging up if you can find one.

lol can’t even tell you how many times i’ve pitched a sunday review of ask the ages

I don't bother pitching there anymore. Total silence every time.

I don't know why I had trouble appreciating Ask the Ages, I like Sharrock and Sanders otherwise. I found the drum sound clattery, but I liked Iron Path, also produced by Laswell, and that is mostly clatter!

Ethan Iverson sight-reads a number of standards from the original sheet music (thread):

*sight-read from the sheet music* No 1. "Stella by Starlight" (Victor Young & Ned Washington) #ivershow pic.twitter.com/Z3W5pLrWSy

— Ethan Iverson (@ethan_iverson) April 22, 2021

ha it really is "Sun Beans"

I like that Rob Frye record, and the Wadada Leo Smith record. I have to say, the 2021 subscription deal that Astral Spirits were running at the end of last year has shown to be a really great investment, will subscribe for next year too.

Just heard a version of “Cherokee” that was arranged like “Soulful Strut” and found out it was by this artist, these artists: https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/kamasi-washington-makaya-mccraven/Event?oid=19053645

is this where we're discussing the Arooj Aftab? It's very nice.

we were talking a little on the rolling outernational thread, but I am swooning for this one right so: Arooj Aftab

Thanks, that's lovely.

Some intriguing descriptions here, and I find Nezelhorns is an ensemble that demonstrates a harmonious nature, even when it feels like they’re coming apart at the seams especially relatable--time to take the plunge:
https://daily.bandcamp.com/best-jazz/the-best-jazz-on-bandcamp-april-2021

both of the sons of kemet singles are great but "to never forget the source" is best of the young year material.

agreed, at this point I'm in trying not to get too hyped mode wrt that album

Listening to that Silent Room record right now. It's gorgeous, exactly what I want right now.

big moon dog energy from sons of kemet

I know Evan Parker is an insane conspiracist, but my illegal download of the record with Natural Information Society is doing me really well this morning into afternoon. Really great record.

You should probably buy that despite the covidiot aspect because both Abrams and Eremite are doing good work and could probably use the dough, and also it's one of the best albums of the year

covidiocy as a justification for piracy = dud

Holding out in the hopes of a domestic CD issue.

there was an interview with Alexander Hawkins in the freejazz blog where he talked quite a bit about working with EP but no questions or mentions of the covidiocy. And then in the same blog a 5 star review of EP's latest album with also no mention of it. Quite odd really considering another reviewer fretted at great length over if he was even correct to be reviewing a Jerimiah Cymerman album with a title taken from a longread by some beyond the pale right-wing blogger arsehole.

$15 USD for four digital files? In my world, that's known as highway robbery. I support the label and I've supported Abrams in other ways by buying other records.

OTM!

I wouldn't give a fucking ha'penny to Parker.

That price is insane, but Abrams is a good dude and deserves support, imo. Of course I'm assuming that even collaborating with Parker will have folks looking at him askance, but this set was recorded two years ago.

I know Alexander Hawkins is definitely not an idiot of any stripe and I wouldn't judge him for working with Parker, and his contribution to his last album very good tbf.

The Broken Shadows (Berne/Speed/Anderson/King) digital reissue that Phi1 unperson typed about upthread on April 23rd is now up on Bandcamp for pre-order, and does indeed sound great to these ears: https://intaktrec.bandcamp.com/album/broken-shadows

Poet Anthony Joseph has a really good album with a jazz band coming out on Friday with the awesome title The Rich Are Only Defeated When Running For Their Lives; Shabaka Hutchings plays on two tracks.

https://anthonyjosephofficial.bandcamp.com/album/the-rich-are-only-defeated-when-running-for-their-lives

Recorded an hour-long interview with Wadada Leo Smith for my podcast today. A great conversation; I'll post it in about two weeks.

Cool! Looking forward to it.

Recorded an hour-long interview with Wadada Leo Smith for my podcast today. A great conversation; I'll post it in about two weeks.

That's great. Yesterday I discovered this interview from 2011. Someone should write a Primer on him for The Wire, as there are so many records to choose from.

Yeah, I did a cover story on him for them in 2009 but he's put out an absolute flood of material since then.

Drummer Jim Black's piano trio released an album in 2020 and it's sick:

https://jimblackintakt.bandcamp.com/album/reckon
https://open.spotify.com/album/4EQYsloQ9MVJ5YIlbDMxwu?si=WidwJ7jkQqezOsIjVV0Vtw

I wish all the recent Wadada material was available in the States without paying import prices. Most of the new material (box sets, collaborations, etc) on TUM looks super enticing but I can't afford physical copies of any of it.

ImportCDs.com has good prices on a lot of his stuff.

Going back through the Jim Black catalog today, the ones with Marc Ducret and Hank Roberts are really nice. Sort of avant Americana.

Those guys are all part of the Tim Berne Expanded Universe, so I should probably give a listen.

Welp, somebody just sent me Sacred Ceremonies, and I've so far given up, after the first six tracks: Graves is of course the ideal collaborator, constantly (but never obtrusively) spinning fresh ideas around and behind the trumpet, but a lot of times I wish he'd challenge or just bust through these repetitive, frequently draggy-ass lines---at first it works as contemplation, but then what the heck, not nearly fuck, zzzz. Maybe I'll try some more of it.

Reading about Curtis Fuller on FB, that he was some kind of word class punster, some kind of combination of JBL and Yogi Berra, if I may.

Listening to more Wadada on bandcamp (think I may have already mentioned his cogent contributions to my beloved https://harriettubman.bandcamp.com/album/araminta):
from The Year of The Elephant, by Wadada Leo Smith's Golden Quartet, here is the robustly Milesian work-out,

1.Al-Madinah 10:01

Malachi Favors Maghostut - bass
Wadada Leo Smith - trumpet & flugelhorn
Jack DeJohnette - drums & synthesizer
Anthony Davis - piano & synthesizer
https://wadadaleosmith.bandcamp.com/album/the-year-of-the-elephant

And a couple of lively, warm, distinctive, sometimes exploratory, always emblematic free jazz trips w Braxton:
from Organic Resonance:
1.Tawaf (Cycles 1-7) 11:48
https://wadadaleosmith.bandcamp.com/album/organic-resonance
Now you might think 11:48 that feels more like 4 would be enough, not pushing your luck--but personally, I find that the variety (incl. some lyricism and dog-keening) certainly benefits from added time, and vice-versa, of course---goes into second plane of my attention sometimes, but pulls itself back into the foreground, often enough:
from Saturn, Conjunct the Grand Canyon in a Sweet Embrace:
1. Composition No. 316 28:4
Wadada Leo Smith - trumpet, flugelhorn
Anthony Braxton - saxophones
https://wadadaleosmith.bandcamp.com/album/saturn-conjunct-the-grand-canyon-in-a-sweet-embrace

Almost as long as that last one, but tensile and interactive with no claustrophobia---think the strings are my faves here, but he's always responsive, and I'm always ready for those drums to jump in and out---really good live sound too:

Taif: Prayer in the Garden of Hijaz 27:57

Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith - Trumpet
Anthony Brown - Percussion
Del Sol String Quartet
https://othermindsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/om-live-taif-prayer-in-the-garden-of-hijaz

I've been listening to some of his and Henry Kaiser's Yo Miles! tribute-based band albums, reissues and first releases, both on Cunieform's bandcamp pages: they're fun, not trying to beat Miles at his own game, but appropriately employing some of his and crew's more conversational approaches--shrewd-to-incisive comments from the guitars, bass, and keys for inst, w 0 bravura asshole Fusion solos, from them or anybody else---in fact, it's not really about solos, for the most part, although Greg Osby's alto and John Tchicai's soprano and tenor do provide tasty rations of such, and Smith flexes reflections of translucent punctuation.

This is a (non-Cuneiform?) collection of band originals from (then) OOP albums---current fave is the wah-wah shuffle, "Who's Targeted?", which also takes evasive action, and Smith also gets bluesy as hell on his hovering intro to "Miles Star."
https://henrykaiser.bandcamp.com/album/yo-miles-shinjuku
participants on this and/or other Yo Miles! bandcamp albums also include:
Kaiser, Mike Keneally and Chris Muir on electric guitars; Michael Manring on bass; Steve Smith on drums; Karl Perazzo on percussion; Tom Coster on keyboards,and sometimes Zakir Hussain on tabla, Dave Creamer on guitar, and the ROVA Sax Quartet (though I've yet to hear ROVA).

Isaiah Collier & the Chosen Few's Cosmic Transitions (Album of the Day on Bandcamp today) is a super Coltraney — it was recorded on the anniversary of his birth last year, at the Van Gelder studio — spiritual jazz disc. Despite the recording location, it has the sound and feel of a self-released LP from the early '70s. Muddy bass, super echoey drums, post-Sanders/Ayler sax, chanting... this will definitely give many listeners flashbacks to this or that Holy Grail artifact they bought on overpriced Italian vinyl in the late '90s or early '00s. If you buy the digital version, as I did, you get the album divided into four tracks, but you also get it as a single 56-minute piece, which is apparently how it's meant to be heard.

My intrepid jazz buddy John Wojtowicz has sent me the bandcamp link to Lucky Man, the recently released soundtrack/audiodoc version of the 2010 film, which tracks Vietnam War vet Billy Bang's return to the country, traveling all through it, playing and talking with local musicians and maybe others--- I gotta see the whole thing for context, but it all comes into focus right away, and in effect completes a trilogy, following his Vietnam: The Aftermath, which I think first came out in 2002, and is like it says here:

As a belated document of his traumatic experience as a soldier in Southeast Asia, Vietnam: The Aftermath was a painful but cathartic album for free jazz violin great Billy Bang to make. Joined by fellow Vietnam vets including tenor saxophonist Frank Lowe, trumpeter Ted Daniel, drummer Michael Carvin, and "conductionist" Butch Morris, Bang paints a harrowing picture of the conflict on "TET Offensive." But employing Asian folk melodies like rays of sunshine through the darkness and sturdy bop lines as friendly arrows pointing the way back home, he offsets visions of death and destruction with humane insight and saving humor (then and now, there's nothing like a little '60s-styled "Saigon Phunk" to prop a grunt up). Bolstered by some richly textured ensembles, Bang rips off some of his most impressive and stirring solos. The contributors also include pianist John Hicks and flutist Sonny Fortune. --Lloyd Sachs

Frank Lowe, Bang's frontline partner in the Jazz Doctors, died before Vietnam: Reflections (2005), but it has James Spaulding, with guest Henry Threadgill on flute, joining Daniels, Hicks, Carvin, Morris,Carmen Lundy, Rob Brown, plus Vietnamese singer Co Boi Nguyen and Nhan Thanh Ngo on the 16-string dan tranh. As with The Aftermath, we get an intersection of post or late bop and Asiatic asssociations (which John says he always though of Bang's violining as having, way before he knew about any of these albums; I think it has something to do with his bluesiness too). They also perform some Vietnamese melodies, and--not seeing the credit on "Doi Moi," but it's one on of my favorite ballad tracks by anybody ever, and a poignant countercurrent to the rest of Reflections's dance thus far.

On screen, Lucky Man climaxes with a new arrangement of "Mystery of the Mekong," from The Aftermath, now performed with the Hanoi Symphony Orchestra: it's rich, dark, profuse, surefooted, river delta music for sure---but here, it's not the grand finale, it's track 4, dig.

Along the way, Bang's flying strings get matched by marching folk bands, and "Jungle Lullaby" starts nighty-night and then everybody goes wild as dreams, for a while, also into two shots of "New Saigon Phunk," rippling and loping. "Song For Don Cherry" is another good 'un, and can Bang keep up with the stone lithophone of "Dan Da"? It rings like a bell, but not too often and not too chime-y, and so far I prefer it to vibes---come back and start over, Gary Burton.

Incisive speed bums incl. excerpts of a Vietnamese woman on how her father changed after the War (with music far in the background, and what I'd hoped was an tape artifact turning about to the kind of engine still associated with war footage), and Bang in little spills of his own lifelong coming to grips. (This particular project was three years before he died.)
https://bbemusic.bandcamp.com/album/billy-bang-lucky-man

Here's a reasonable take on the music, incl. in context of the movie, with backstory to it and relevant aspects of Bang's life: https://www.allaboutjazz.com/lucky-man-billy-bang-bbe-records

incisive speed *bumps*, not "burns."

I interviewed alto saxophonist and bebop diehard Charles McPherson the other week; the results are in my new Stereogum column, along with reviews of the new Jaimie Branch, Sons of Kemet, James Brandon Lewis, and other albums.

Nate Smith is playing an outdoor show here next month with his band, looks like that will be my first post-COVID show (where I'm not playing)

Enjoying the 'new' Bheki Mseleku (studio recording from 2003). I'd not heard him before: solo piano, big rolling sound, Jarrett by way of Johannesburg.

https://tapestryworks.bandcamp.com/album/beyond-the-stars

https://annawebber.bandcamp.com/album/idiom

new Anna Webber album!

Good Dave Holland trio track: "Mashup," from Another Land("Nonstop" would have been an apt title too):https://editionrecords.com/releases/another-land/