Digital

Steel Bridge Trio

2015

""It seems everything he plays is well, musical. These pieces reflect a mature composer and a sensitive player." "This is brilliant stuff." —Mark Corroto, All About Jazz"

Diskaholics Anonymous Trio

2001

"The trio creates a pulsing, massive and monumental sound. Free-jazz, noise, electronic ambience, drone music and punk all mixed. The result of these three titans clashing together is an intense blow-out. Raw, grandiose and brutally beautiful. The album features three long improvisational tracks: "Three Collectors of Bird Note", "Totally Gump (Gump Completist)", & "Yellow Label Silence". Cover art by Thurtson Moore and Kim Gordon`s daughter Coco Hayley Gordon Moore."

Made to Break

2016

"Dispatch From The Sea highlights the unique interplay between Vandermark and Kurzmann. Surprisingly, their interaction is quite physical given that Kurzmann plays only on a laptop, often a confrontational one, sometimes Kurzmann even takes the subversive role of deconstructing the loose architecture of this piece and suggesting a futuristic one (Eyal Hareuveni, The Free Jazz Collective)"

Atomic / School Days

2008

"This is wonderful fun to hear. This is not boundary-shifting music, nor does it aspire to great artistic achievements. But it's a great performance by a band (or is it two bands?) that really starts benefiting from playing a lot together. I would love to see this band perform live."

The Ex

1980

"This is prime stuff. It's primitive when compared with their current wide-ranging output, but even then they were embellishing their their scratchy politico-punk with some interesting instrumental touches. Morse code keyboards, a chipped-flint guitar sound, distorted vocals, and the rhythm section's implacable forward motion make this worth a listen even if you don't care what they had to say."

The Ex

2001

"Dizzy Spells is good. Oh, it's damn good, all right. The Ex are experts at effectively jarring dissonance, but they're not just noisy, either; they're well versed in creating musical chaos. Granted, melody isn't too common, but when it does show up somewhere in the din, it's all the more welcoming. —Spencer Owen, Pitchfork"

The Rempis/Daisy Duo & Guests

2018

"Dodecahedron is the pair's third duo recording, and it follows Second Spring (Aerophonic, 2014) and Back To The Circle (Okka, 2005). Both discs are taken from live performances. Disc one is made up of three duets between Rempis and Daisy, while disc two adds a third guest on each of its nine tracks. -Mark Corroto, All About Jazz"

Resonance Ensemble

2015

"“Double Arc” is the culmination of projects conceived by Ken Vandermark written for the large working group the Resonance Ensemble. An assemblage of influences as wide ranging as film scores, 50’s NYC composers, 60’s free jazz, 70’s African funk, etc., “Double Arc” is an epic work that is creatively stimulating, foot stomping, and at times maddening music."

AALY Trio?/?DKV Trio

2002

"Built on a recording chassis similar to Ornette Coleman’s seminal Free Jazz the disc divides the trios along the convenient demarcation of stereo channels."

Bradford / Gjerstad / Nilssen-Love

2012

"Legendary West Coast cornetist Bobby Bradford meets two Norwegians - drummer Paal Nilssen-Love and multi-reedist Frode Gjerstad - for a live performance at Klub Dragon in Poland. A free outing, the 6 tracks are relatively short, with "Pitaya" the longest at 11 minutes. The dialog is often quite subtle and well informed, using extended techniques and unusual twists and turns that are fascinating to follow. Which isn't to say that the trio doesn't fire up some serious power playing at points, but these three masters find their true language in intelligent interaction, of which there is no end to in these wonderful recordings. Highly recommended."

The Vandermark 5

1997

Ig Henneman, Jaimie Branch, Anne La Berge

2019

""... Three eccentric sketching women who succeeded in converting the concert hall into a spectacle with a drowned diesel engine on a race track, although it did not turn into a crazy fair. No, it was primarily an ode to the ingenious freedom, an intensely varied and colorful performance that was permeated by fun and games, but one of the kind that made your feelers and imagination run wild by its fresh originality, abrasive delicacy and unpredictable coherence." - Guy Peters, Enola Magazine "

Ken Vandermark & Paal Nilssen-Love

2002

Ken Vandermark & Paal Nilssen-Love

2004

"“Dual Pleasure 2” , a complex and grroving piece of independent underground jazz. A clash between the highly influential and innovative Chicago and Scandinavian jazz scenes that started in 2000 when the group "School Days" was formed. One year later they started FME, a trio with bass player Nate McBride. After this it seemed very natural to define a duo. Vandermark and Nilssen-Love use free improvisation as a means to explore all levels of dynamics, density, rhythm, timbre, form and tonality. The results of their work are experienced as intense, exhilarating, and boundary breaking music with a brutal beauty."

Rempis/Lopez/Packard

2019

"By expanding his pool of collaborative constellations, Chicago reedist Dave Rempis has found a variety of contexts in which to explore his fiery improvisational aesthetic. And there’s no shortage of heat produced on The Early Bird Gets, his first recording with the trio of New York bassist Brandon Lopez and Chicago percussionist Ryan Packard. -Peter Margasak, Down Beat"

Ken Vandermark & Nate Wooley

2014

"What struck me immediately about the show was just how full and vibrant of a sound they were able to create with just the two horns. No doubt a great deal of this had to do with their compositional approach - melodies and counter melodies stretching out the musical fabric between them, creating an atmosphere as much as actual notes and tones - but then toss in the sheer virtuosity of their playing and it is quite an ear opening experience. I picked up the CD at the show and am pleased to report that what I heard from the stage is captured wonderfully on this album (Paul Acquaro, The Free Jazz Collective)"

The Ex Orkest

2001

"Rock bands and orchestras -- here's a worrisome cliché usually signaling the beginning of the end for a group of musicians getting too full of themselves or already on the nostalgia bandwagon. Of course, none of that applies here, for two main reasons. The first one is the Ex -- not your run-of-the-mill punk band, this Dutch institution has always been keen on collaborating with wide-ranging artists. The second reason is the orchestra convened here: 20 of Amsterdam's finest and most daring experimental musicians, from Palinckx's singer Han Buhrs to members of the ICP Orchestra (and of course all then-current members of the Ex, including Luc Ex). Obviously, Een Rondje Holland is not for every Ex fan, but those fond of the group's previous collaborations with Buhrs, Han Bennink, or Tom Cora will probably find it at least interesting. On the other hand, followers of the Dutch avant-garde scene who are usually put off by the Ex's punk rock but enjoy the ICP Orchestra, Splinks, or even Palinckx should definitely give this album a try."

Evan Parker / Sylvie Courvoisier

2014

""Even though the duo can get confrontational, they also know how to turn their dueling into fun and communicate the pleasure they take in playing with each other." - Alain Drouot, Down Beat"

Joe McPhee & Daunik Lazro

1991

"This duo digs deep into the spirit of a particular night in France and calls out of it the entire improvisational tradition from Duke Ellington (whose “Come Sunday” is featured here) to Steve Lacy (whose “Pearl Street” is played movingly) and the host of time periods in between… This is an astonishing record. Period"

The Vandermark 5

2004

"Seven releases down the road from 1997's Single Piece Flow, Vandermark's flagship quintet continues to serve as a vehicle for his original compositions, which span the range from hard-swinging bop to funk to energy music and the great uncategorizable beyond. The dedicatees on Elements of Style include John Gilmore, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Glenn Gould, and Max Beckmann, to name a few. As might be expected, the connections are not necessarily all that obvious, but not much about what Vandermark does is obvious, anyway."