SNAKELUST (to kenji Nakagami)
HAIRYBONES
Massimo Pupillo (b), Paal Nilssen-Love (d), Peter Broetzmann (ts),
Toshinori Kondo (t),
Recorded live in Lisbon, at the 2011 edition of the festival Jazz em Agosto, “Snakelust” is the most fantastic upbringing, to this date, of the newest Peter Brotzmann’s electric project, Hairy Bones. The band with Toshinori Kondo, Massimo Pupillo and Paal Nilssen-Love is what you would expect crossing the music played by Last Exit, his assault brigade completed by Sonny Sharrock, Bill Laswell and Ronald Shanon Jackson, with the one more recently presented by Die Like a Dog, also including Kondo, but with William Parker and Hamid Drake filling the iron-solid rhythm section. There are some substantial differences, anyhow: a more pronounced punk / metal edge of the Aylerian kind of free jazz offered to our ears. No wonder, knowing that bassist Pupillo comes from the noise-jazz Italian group Zu and that Nilssen-Love is the propulsive motor of The Thing, Mats Gustafsson’s mix of the new thing and the stoner rock aesthetics. The documented concert was voted by Portuguese critics as the last year’s very best – now it’s your time to judge.
PLATFORM 1
TAKES OFF
Joe Williamson (b), Ken Vandermark (ts), Magnus Broo (t), Michael Vatcher (d),
Steve Swell (tb)
Julius Hemphill really has a noble heir in Marty Ehrlich, and the fact that this multi-reed player includes a cellist in his quartet makes us remember Hemphill’s association with the great Abdul Wadud. Ehrlich’s first recording of his Rites Quartet for Clean Feed, “Things Have Got To Change”, contrasted his compositions, both rhythmic and reflective, with never- before recorded pieces by Hemphill. Ehrlich’s new recording with his Rites Quartet, “Frog Leg Logic”, presents a broad canvas of original compositions that further define his concept for this ensemble. The stylistic range of this new CD goes deep in its approach to the post-bop tradition and the Blues, bringing out the exquisite lyricism in Ehrlich’s writing, the timbral associations of the instruments and the improvisational, free-form flights of the soloists. Once more,Marty Ehrlich has in trumpeter James Zollar a contrasting force, and it’s a wonder to hear both in conversation. They push each other further down the road, keeping things alive and moving. Ehrlich reunites with his long-time colleague Hank Roberts on cello, who sounds at times like a third horn, a guitar, a kora, and a voice far off in the wilderness. Roberts combines with drummer Michael Sarin to make a compelling stew of rhythmic energy. “Frog Leg Logic” takes on a sound and direction that is old and new at once. Take the leap and listen.
THE FISH
MOON FISH
Benjamin Duboc (b), Edward Perraud (d), Jean-Luc Guionnet (as)
If you identify alto saxophonist Jean-Luc Guionnet and drummer Edward Pérraud with the minimal and abstract free improvisation of the French band Hubbub, another project with their participation, you’ll be astonished with the hard driving, muscular music played by The Fish. Instead of textures and odd sounds only obtained by using extended instrumental techniques, we find in “Moon Fish” the broken phrasing and the polyrhythmic balance which defines Albert Ayler’s influence on the present day creative jazz. Not considering themselves (only double bassist Benjamin Duboc is more close to that legacy) to be jazz musicians, the members of this trio present us a kind of hyper-realistic creation: a more real version of free jazz than the “new thing” itself. Every time we sense that this is free jazz executed by outsiders, but the results couldn’t seem more authentic – and that’s the reason for the delicious strangeness of this proposal. It’s like free jazz is being reinvented…
HUGO CARVALHAIS TRIO
PARTICULA
Dominique Pifarély (v), Emile Parisien (ss), Gabriel Pinto (p), Hugo
Carvalhais (b), Mário Costa (d)
After the success obtained by his debut CD, “Nebulosa”, a couple of years ago, expectations were high regarding the next step to be walked by Portuguese bassist and composer Hugo Carvalhais with his fixed trio, including pianist and synthesizer player Gabriel Pinto and drummer Mário Costa. Here it is, and fulfilling entirely our most ambitious desires. Now, in “Particula”, instead of the American saxophonist Tim Berne as special guest, we have two French musicians of similar importance: the soprano revelation Émile Parisien, member of Daniel Humair’s New Reunion Quartet and a frequent Carvalhais collaborator on stage, and violinist Dominique Pifarély, a regular Louis Sclavis companion. Together, they very rarely form a quintet – more often, we find in this recording a series of quartets, trios, duos and solos, always presenting fresh and defying associations between pre-established structures and improvisation. With this second opus, Carvalhais confirms all the assumptions we made about his future. Remember this name, because certainly more will come.
TRESPASS TRIO
BRUDA BEDA
Martin Küchen (as/bs), Per Zanussi (b), Raymond Strid (d)
No, Martin Küchen isn’t a composer of programmatic music, conceived only to accompany silent movies, dancers or stage actors, but even if this wonderful Swedish saxophonist also had made music for theatre, dance and cinema, his main work in the fields of jazz and free improvised music has as a personal characteristic the particularity of telling stories. Or, at least, of presenting specific situations you can visualize. Each recording of the several projects lead by Küchen is, somehow, a narrative, and the new Trespass Trio album, “Bruder Beda”, is no exception. We’re told about a relative of his, Ernst Gerson, a Jewish German veteran of the World War I who became a Catholic monk, adopting the name Bruder Beda. When he decided to return to the secular world, when both the Nazis and the Zionist movement were growing, big troubles waited for him. The music has a narrative drive, telling us a story without words but with emotional depth. It’s like a film with sounds, enabling our imagination to build the details. There’s intense moments and there’s space, with the interposed silences adding more unquietness to the flux of events. Always combining economy of notes and restraint of expression, only going to the extremes when it’s relevant and necessary, this is another great accomplishment by Trespass Trio, With other words; Martin Küchen, Per Zanussi and Raymond Strid are back! Don’t miss this one: the sax, the bass and the drumkit cry, shout and sigh as if they were alive… Per Zanussi always present, an true anchor, he stands like an old beautiful tree in the middle of a newly erected garden… and Raymond Strid , a master of timbre and dýnamics, is sometimes forceful, other times delicate, but always strangely precise in everything he does. Highly recommended.