DKV Trio + Joe McPhee
The Fire Each Time
NotTwo
“LIMITED ADVANCE ORDERS BEING TAKEN NOW: Not Two Records presents, "The Fire Each Time," a 6 CD boxset of recordings from the DKV Trio with Joe McPhee as a guest, and dedicated to James Baldwin. The music was recorded during the quartet's tour in Europe which took place in November of 2017, and at shows in Chicago and Milwaukee from December of that year. These performances are historic in many respects: the DKV Trio (with Hamid Drake [drums], Kent Kessler [bass], and Ken Vandermark [reeds]) has only recorded with other musicians on three occasions in its two decade career (with Joe Morris on "Deep Telling" [Okka Disk, 1999; with Mats Gustafsson, Paal Nilssen-Love and Massimo Pupillo on "Schl8hof" [Trost, 2013], and with The Thing ["Collider," Not Two, 2016]); also, this is the first time all four musicians have worked together as a band; and the material documented over the six concerts included in the collection features performances of Joe McPhee's compositions (like "Nation Time") as well as completely improvised music generated by the participants. ”
Paal Nilssen-Love
New Brazilian Funk
PNL Records
“FOR PREORDER NOW: For the Roskilde project (now to become a steady band) he put together a Norwegian/Brazilian combination that proved to be especially potent: Bass-player Felipe Zenicola is a new figure on the scene of improvised music and is mostly known for his work with Chinese Cookie Poets. Guitarist Kiko Dinucci has been active the last years as a leader and songwriter of the group Metá Metá and has received noticeable recognition in Brazil and Europe. Then there’s percussionist Paulinho Bicolor, a rare figure in the Brazilian music scene, who adds a special ingredient to the stew: the Cuíca – which is actually a friction drum, but mastered by Bicolor in a completely idiosyncratic way. Paulinho is also a frequent guest with Nilssen-Love’s 15-piece band, Large Unit. Rounding off the line-up Nilssen-Love included what is his longest musical parter: Norwegian saxophone player Frode Gjerstad, a legend of Norwegian free improvised music who asked Nilssen-Love to play with him at the age of 16, a collaboration that now has lasted 28 years. The pair usually works in duo and trio constellations, so it’s a rare treat to hear such a solid musical pair as the gravitational center of this project. The “New Brazilian Funk” title can almost be read as tongue-in-cheek, as this really is not just free jazz on top of tropical grooves - this is the sound of five dedicated musicians coming together to make a completely new type of music. The Roskilde gig went down so well that not only is it being released on CD, it also became the birth of a regular group. ”
Paal Nilssen-Love
New Japanese Noise
PNL Records
“FOR PREORDER NOW: For the 2018 edition of the Roskilde festival in Denmark Paal Nilssen-Love was asked to put together two special projects. Nilssen-Love chose to put together two groups: The first was a Brazil-based band. The second was a Japan-oriented band, bringing together three giants of Japanese free jazz and noise music for the first time: Saxophone player Akira Sakata is the biggest legend of them all — since the 60s Sakata has left a permanent mark on Japanese music. With more than 200 recording credits to his name Sakata first made his mark with the Yosuke Yamashita Trio, and then over the years has gone on to numerous projects. Noise artist Kohei Gomi is best known for his Pain Jerk project, which since its foundation in the early 1990s perfectly encapsulates the classic Japanese noise sound, but also exhibiting a clearly personal style that has evolved over the years. Toshiji Mikawa has as the leader of his Incapacitants project since the early 80s shown an absolutely uncompromising dedicating the craft of pure noise music. Paralell to this he has been a member of the equally seminal Hijokaidan band. Very few artists in the field of noise music enjoys the kind of respect Mikawa does. To make a link to the other Roskilde project Nilssen-Love also added Brazilian guitarist Kiko Dinucci to the line-up, which of course shows the connection between the two bands, but also is a clear proofs of Nilssen-Love’s method of combining expressions and crossing musicial borders to kick the music forward. And with musicians from three continents it also shows that noise music is a global language. Play loud. ”
Ken Vandermark & Nate Wooley
Deeply Discounted II/Sequences of Snow
Audiographic Records, Pleasure Of The Text Records
“Ken Vandermark and Nate Wooley release their third recording as a duo, an LP entitled "Deeply Discounted/Sequences of Snow." Their first two albums, also released as co-productions between Audiographic Records and Pleasure of the Text, were critically acclaimed (East By Northwest [2014] received a 5 star review in the "Free Jazz Collective"; and "The New York City Jazz Record" stated that All Directions Home [2015] "showcases the strengths that have made the duo luminaries in their respective scenes."). In addition, their performance at Issue Project Room, Brooklyn, on May 16th, 2017 was heralded as one of the "Concerts of the Year" by "The New York City Jazz Record". This latest album is an exciting new statement from the duo, featuring long-form compositions for the first time, written specifically for the LP format and developed while touring in North America during 2017. Nate Wooley's piece, "Deeply Discounted II," is inspired by John Cage's "Cheap Imitation" which, in turn, was inspired by Erik Satie's, "Socrate;" Ken Vandermark's composition, "Sequences of Snow," is dedicated to the visual artist and musician, Michael Snow, and was influenced by several of Snow's experimental films, such as "Wavelength," "Dripping Water," "La Région Centrale," "So Is This," and "See You Later."”
Details in the Air (Ken Vandermark, Michał Górczyński, Mikołaj Trzaska)
Open Containers
Kilogram Records
“***** (5 stars) "The results of this superposition/mixture are spectacular! The set starts with a wonderful collective improvisation "Departure of the Birds"... [and the] set closes with "Calling from a Wooden Phone", another masterpiece of triologue. Difficult and complex record, but clearly extremely interesting for any possible fan of this kind of music. -Maciej Lewenstein, December 21, 2018 ”
Morris/Dadge/Wilcke
Rural Optimism
Bug Incision
“In March of 2018, during guitarist Joe Morris’ stay in Calgary (see bim-75 notes for the full story), he joined the Chris Dadge/Jonathon Wilcke duo on two occasions. The first was a live performance at a tiny and packed room in the Theatre Junction GRAND building in the heart of downtown Calgary. After a stellar set from Laura Reid and Mark Limacher, Morris played a short solo set, Dadge and Wilcke played a short duo set, then the latter three played as a trio; it was their first time playing together. Later that month, the three reconvened in Dadge’s basement studio, fueled by Richard Youngs’ vegetable curry, for this sparkling burst of playing. A relative minority of Bug Incision releases are studio-based affairs, but the added clarity and sonic precision on display here greatly benefits this music, which is chock of full of dense, pointillistic playing. Wilcke’s sax work moves from fluffy free-bop melodicism to strangulated smears of sound, bringing out some inventive comping moves from Morris. Morris strikes an impressive balance between Wilcke’s saxophonic abstractions and the kinetic, tactile playing of Dadge, who is clearly relishing the opportunity to interact with such a spiky playing partner. Bug Incision could not be more pleased to present (along with bim-75) this second fine document of Morris’ Calgary saga. (Notes by Benoit Hughes) ”
Joe Morris & Do Yeon Kim
Macrocosm
Glacial Erratic
“Do Yeon Kim is a masterful performer on the gayageum or kayagum, a kind of zither or harp from Korea. Joe Morris is the better-known performer here, playing guitar on this album. Their duo is an impressive and captivating example of incredible skill and a diversity of approaches from both players, including pointillistic improv, rich rivers of chords, languid moments of beauty, and moments where it's difficult to discern who's playing what. It may take several listens to embrace the "space" they occupy in performance, but the mix of exotic interplay and the fascinating challenge of hearing a unique combination of instruments that yields unexpected results draws in the listener. Morris and Kim are clearly captivated by their own playing, and their focus and flow in their dialogs keeps this album interesting from start to finish.”
The Thing
Again
Trost
“If you count The Thing’s collaborations with Joe McPhee, James Blood Ulmer, Ken Vandermark, Neneh Cherry, Barry Guy, Otomo Yoshihide, Jim O’Rourke, Thurston Moore and DKV Trio too, Again is their 20th album (including the compilation Now and Forever and the split album The Music of Norman Howard with School Days, another Gustafsson project). Literally speaking, The Thing have done it again. After 17 years in the same line-up (Mats Gustafsson on saxes, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten on acoustic and electric bass and Paal Nilssen-Love on drums) you might think that the band’s music has become predictable, that their mélange of free jazz, blues, rock and noise is actually a cul-de-sac because the musical options are exhausted. However, it isn’t. Though Again is the well-proved mixture of cover versions and original compositions, this time the focus is rather on jazz. The only cover, Decision in Paradise, is an old, rather conventional Frank Lowe piece. The Thing turn the tempo down considerably and a trumpet provided by Joe McPhee, the guest star on this track, transforms the falling lines of the original’s opening passage into painfully bruised sounds before Gustafsson strips the delicate melody to the bone (doing this, it reminds me of Gershwin’s “Summertime“). Bass, trumpet and saxophone dance around each other in slow motion and only after four minutes Nilssen-Love enters the game in order to give the piece more drive and tension. It’s the band’s typical way to take possession of a composition which is not their own. - Martin Schray (Free Jazz Blog) Full review here: www.freejazzblog.org/2018/06/the-thing-again-trost-records-2018.html ”