Rolling Jazz Thread 2021

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/

new to me, on International Anthem so better check it out:
More Energy Fields, Current
by Carlos Niño & Friends
Tagged in label notes as 10 pristine gems of collaborative communication helmed by the Southern Californian sage, elegantly presented in his unique “Spiritual, Improvisational, Space Collage” style. And sounds like the improvisational part might feed and respond to the Space Collage: it's more jazz than set piece, like the tracks, never too long, might be scooping up something along the way, lighting in the bottle and vice-versa. Wonder if they play live, with loops, maybe? (I imme

Listening on headphones, I keep getting aerial glimpses of the Pacific Coast Highway, interspersed w more time in little caves and coves: an intimate, though airy, small group sound, always incl. Niño (percussion, sound design, editing, mixing) and I think always Jamael Dean on keys, with others sometims on drums, tenor and/or flute, synths, and voices (on one track: wordless ones, don't worry, of Laraaji and Sharada). Shabaka Hutchings, Dntel, Adam Rudolph, Aaron Shaw, a bunch of others, coming in and moving on, at least for a while, never too many at once.

First one to command my attention was "Nightswimming," then so many of the others that I gave up on linking a favorite in addition to the whole thing:
https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/more-energy-fields-current

Niño’s previous album on IA, Chicago Waves, is live if you’re curious! I think I described it as more like ambient/new age than jazz on the IA thread but I liked it a lot

Will check, thanks! Ambient/New Age usually puts me right to sleep, but this got me more awake.
Also, this one has *kind* of a DePlume vibe, or related appeal,anyway, but maybe earlier in the day or evening, and a little more spare?
https://alabasterdeplume.bandcamp.com/

I had been wondering about this — the 3CD version has been out of print for a long time and fetches absurd sums on Discogs, and there was a rumor that something big was coming.

BLUE NOTE ANNOUNCES JULY 30 RELEASE FOR LEE MORGAN - THE COMPLETE LIVE AT THE LIGHTHOUSE
AN EXPANSIVE COLLECTION OF THE LEGENDARY TRUMPETER’S EPIC 1970 ENGAGEMENT AT THE HERMOSA BEACH, CALIFORNIA VENUE
PRESENTING ALL 12 SETS OF MUSIC HIS QUINTET RECORDED OVER 3 NIGHTS
AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER AS 8-CD & LIMITED-EDITION 12-LP ALL-ANALOG 180g VINYL SETS

Blue Note Records has announced a July 30 release date for Lee Morgan The Complete Live at the Lighthouse, an expansive collection that presents for the very first time all 12 sets of music the legendary trumpeter’s quintet with saxophonist Bennie Maupin, pianist Harold Mabern, bassist Jymie Merritt, and drummer Mickey Roker recorded during their historic engagement at The Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach, California from July 10-12, 1970. Originally released 50 years ago in 1971 as a 2-LP set, and later expanded to a 3-CD set in 1996, this definitive edition produced by Zev Feldman and David Weiss will be available as an 8-CD set and a limited-edition 12-LP all-analog 180g vinyl set that encompasses 33 performances including more than 4 hours of previously unreleased music that lets the listener relive the experience of being in the club for every exhilarating moment. Watch the unboxing video here. A previously unreleased version of Mabern’s composition “The Beehive” from the 2nd set on Saturday, July 11 is available now to stream or download.

Both physical formats are accompanied by an enlightening booklet featuring new interviews with Bennie Maupin and the last extensive interview with Jymie Merritt before his passing last year; essays by Jeffery McMillan (author or Delightfulee: The Life and Music of Lee Morgan) and Michael Cuscuna; statements from Jack DeJohnette, Wallace Roney, Nicholas Payton, Charles Tolliver, Eddie Henderson, Dave Douglas, and others; previously unpublished photos by Joel Franklin and Lee Tanner; as well as a statement from Morgan’s family. The audio was mixed from the original ½” 4-track tapes by Steve Genewick at Capitol Studios with LP mastering by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio and 180g vinyl manufactured at Record Technology Inc. (RTI) in Camarillo, California. CD mastering was done by Robert Vosgien at Capitol Studios.
Bennie Maupin, saxophonist
“Right from the beginning, we developed such a heart-to-heart connection with each other. I think that’s really reflected in what we did. It was just about being in the moment and capturing the moment, and we did that.”

Jymie Merritt, bassist
“In a sense, it is holy music. And that was the thing I felt throughout the performances at The Lighthouse, this was totally uncompromised music in terms of the way it went down.”

Don Was, President, Blue Note Records
“’Live at the Lighthouse’ probably gives us the clearest picture of where Lee Morgan was headed and, as such, is a record of monumental importance.”

Zev Feldman, producer
“‘Live at the Lighthouse’ is an all-time desert island disc for me and to be ushering in a complete edition of this magnitude—each set, night-by-night just like if you were at the club witnessing it live—is nothing short of a dream come true. This was one of the very first projects I wanted to pursue when I came to Blue Note. I had prior knowledge that there was 4-plus hours of unissued material sitting on the shelves, but I didn't realize how great it was until hearing it all. Just as these musicians worked to create a recording that would stand the test of time, we made every effort to create a package that would serve that legacy.”

PERSONNEL:
Lee Morgan – trumpet, flugelhorn
Bennie Maupin – tenor saxophone, flute, bass clarinet
Harold Mabern – piano
Jymie Merritt – Ampeg bass
Mickey Roker – drums
Jack DeJohnette – drums (on "Speedball" from Friday, July 10, Set 4)

Original recordings produced by Francis Wolff

TRACK LISTING:
*previously unissued

Friday, July 10, 1970
Set 1
Introduction by Lee Morgan (2:06)
The Beehive (12:51) *
Introduction (0:20)
Something Like This (12:43)
Yunjana (14:28) *
Speedball (4:34) *

Set 2
I Remember Britt (16:45) *
Introduction (0:19)
Absolutions (21:55) *
Speedball (3:46) *

Set 3
Introduction (0:33)
Neophilia (18:52) *
Introduction (0:47)
416 East 10th Street (11:46)
The Sidewinder (12:49)
Speedball (0:53)

Set 4
Introduction (0:30)
Peyote (13:23) *
Speedball (11:55)

Saturday, July 11, 1970
Set 1
Aon (13:47)
Introduction (0:21)
Yunjana (17:32) *

Set 2
Introduction (0:14)
Something Like This (11:46) *
Introduction (0:28)
I Remember Britt (14:25)
Introduction (0:47)
The Beehive (15:23) *
Speedball (7:00) *

Set 3
Neophilia (19:18) *
Nommo (17:44)

Set 4
Peyote (11:24) *
Absolutions (22:28)

Sunday, July 12, 1970
Set 1
Introduction (1:37)
Something Like This (15:39) *
Introduction (0:29)
Yunjana (16:07)

Set 2
I Remember Britt (16:19) *
Absolutions (19:35) *
Speedball (0:27)

Set 3
Introduction (1:19)
Neophilia (18:59)
Introduction (0:46)
The Beehive (15:11)
Speedball (1:59)

Set 4
Peyote (9:27)
Nommo (19:19) *

Absolutely my favorite Morgan record, and one of my favorites by anyone, ever. I've pretty much committed the 3CD set to memory, and I cannot wait for this box.

My grandfather dubbed me a bunch of cassettes of his jazz records back when I was in high school. One was this but it was either unlabeled or mislabeled, and I spent years wondering who made Neophilia.

Universal Music's webstore (which includes Blue Note stuff) is running a sale and I was able to pre-order the Lee Morgan box for $60 - free shipping - using the code SUMMER25.

Thanks! here's a chunk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NB3yDSbc1yc

This Anthony Braxton interview is...something. I don't even want to pull out any quotes. Just read the whole thing.

Wow, I just listened to his version of "Desafinado". It's very nice but I've never heard him play anything nearly this comparatively straight-ahead before. (I'm not an expert on his catalogue.) Probably won't buy a 13-disc set but I'm eager to hear more of these.