Fred Frith, Darren Johnston, Everybody/s Somebody/s Nobody

We greet this day with a nicely put-together duet album of Fred Frith's guitar and Darren Johnston's trumpet on Everybody/s Somebody/s Nobody (Clean Feed 357). Johnston will be familiar to many for his trumpet and compositional stance, especially on the West Coast but also in Chicago. My blogs have encountered him frequently enough and nicely so. Fred Frith many will know as one of the premiere avant electric guitarists today, who can be counted upon to come through with excellent work whether on the avant rock or the jazz-improv sides of things.

The duet album integrates horizontal, subtle periodicity grooves with "modal" leanings and a bit of rock strength with more outside excursions, showing the fine structural sense of the two as spontaneous improvisers and compositionally oriented notemasters.

Eleven pieces have their say in a wide universe of substyles. They show the versatility and command of the two players and in the process give us all a fine listening experience.

These two are gold. And they really connect. Find out how by giving the album a close listen! Outstanding!

J. Peter Schwalm, The Beauty of Disaster

Contemporary music these days is like an open book. Every page offers you something potentially different and new, yet connected in a zeitgeist of what is in the air right now. Something of that uniqueness within a constantly shifting matrix can be heard very nicely on the recent album of ambient avant electrics by German composer J. Peter Schwalm. The album is entitled The Beauty of Disaster (rarenoise 059 CD or LP).

Peter plays a myriad of instruments and makes of the studio his working canvas, playing guitars, pianos, electronic devices, drums and synths. Joining him at various points are guest artists on violas, guitars, bass, drums, pump organ and grand piano.

All that is the HOW, but it is the WHAT that makes this music stand out. Schwalm gives us an intricate universe of amassed sonics that revels in the totality of the blend. In ten segments we get a great deal to contemplate.

It is a space-orchestral ambiance built up of cavernous, resonating acoustics. Each segment comes to our ears as a marvelously totalized aspect of space-tronics. The vividly depictive sound mode constructions have their say with acutely singular spatial presence and then make way for a contrasting new sound episode.

This is not so much a music of instrumental virtuosity as it is an electronic orchestral tapestry of shifting elements that have some relationship to psychedelics and trance minimalism, soundscaping and present day electro-acoustics.

What makes it especially fine is Schwalm's sensitive unfolding of the sound palette possibilities. It is cosmic music in the grand tradition and a great example of how that can sound today.

Kudos! Space cadets don your interplanetary traveling suits and get ready for a lively journey!

Zusha, Kavana

Hasidic reggae? Well, yes. Zusha does this on their CD Kavana (self released). It is an artful adaptation of Hasidic vocal style into a contemporary world. Shlomo Gaisin nicely handles the lead vocals, Zach Goldschmiedt is on acoustic guitar and vocals, and then Elisha Mlotek is on percussion and vocals. Add to that a very full band, courtesy of Mason Jar Music, turn on the recorders, and you have something very special.

This I believe is their second album. It proceeds from the idea that prayer is meaningless without "kavana," which translates roughly as "intent." This then is music of intent.

And it is quite entrancing in its ready injection of deep roots into a contemporary sound. To me that is very New York and something that makes the creative ambiance of the metropolis so productive--the continual intermingling of diverse roots in an unending creative conflation.

The melodies may be part traditional (I don't know enough of the Hasidic repertoire to say, though some sound familiar) but they come across in their wordless three-part harmonies as infectious, sincere, and compelling, and very timely in their universality of intent.

I am nearly at a loss for words except to say that this is magical music. It rings out artfully and convincingly. If you are open to something new in something old that speaks to us with an open heart, this one is for you.

The Stryker/Slagle Band Expanded, Routes

Dave Stryker (guitar) and Steve Slagle (alto, soprano. flute) have been making music together for a long time now. (See the May 31, 2010 posting on this blog for an example.) They come at us with a new, larger grouping on the Stryker/Slagle Band Expanded album Routes (Strikezone 883). It's of course Stryker and Slagle with Gerland Cannon on bass and McClenty Hunter on drums, plus horn virtuoso John Clark, and, for two numbers the tenor and bass clarinet of Billy Drews, for two numbers the trombone and tuba of Clark Gayton, and for three numbers the piano and Rhodes of Bill O'Connell.

The added girth gives them the chance to craft some fuller arrangements of original compositions along with a very nice version of Mingus' "Self-Portrait in Three Colors."

The added sound colors give depth to the music and primarily serve to set off the very formidable mainstream soloing clout of Styker's guitar and Slagle's alto. The rhythm section churns into swinging territory as you would expect while the co-leaders burn with some of their finest solo work. O'Connell gets some profitable solo time, too, as do others and nicely so.

It's the sort of album that carries on the hard bop and beyond roots of the music naturally and un-selfconsciously. And the arrangements are hiply lush.

It shows us that Dave Styker and Steve Slagle still have much to say and they go ahead and SAY it on this new one. It bubbles over with heated goodness and manages to find something new within the centered contemporary jazz tradition. Nice!

Jus, Jacob Lindsay, Ava Mendoza, Damon Smith, Weasel Walter, 2007

We go back a few years to 2007. Remember then? Well, whether you do or not doesn't matter, especially, for now, because at the moment what concerns us is the album recorded that year, Jus (bpa013). It is a confluent gathering, a quartet featuring Jacob Lindsay on all manner of clarinets, Ava Mendoza on electric guitar, Damon Smith on "7-string ergo-bass" and something called a "Hoopp", and Weasel Walter on drums, percussion and bagpipes.

Now what makes this one interesting is the consistently out, pointillated, pin-point surgical entrance of sound structures in space. The sound colors are extraordinarily fertile and evocative. This is improv with a new music kind of slant, operating within the "tradition" of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, say, or MEV, in other words abstracted and cumulative, four-way just about all the time, continuous and creatively inventive.

It's not a music where you say to yourself, "Wow, Listen to that bass clarinet!" so much as you experience sonic wholes made up of the ingenious contributions of all four in out counterpoint.

Everyone is key most all the time, so it is not a music where you single out foreground from background. It is simply music that occupies pan-ground if you please.

There is most interesting bass and guitar work as a part of the whole, so I place the write up on this blog, but the reed and percussion contributions are no less interesting or important.

An hour of this, thanks to the insightful sound sculpting consistently present, does not seem at all taxing, assuming you already understand the outside lanes of getting to music. It fascinates, enthralls and refuses to abandon the rarefied realms it occupies, but instead generates ever new combinations of timbre and texture.

So the music succeeds in so doing. This is not something "easy to do" well. Do not fool yourself. Sit down with three others and try to get to this level. You doubtless will find it is not easy to be both self-ful and selfless with three others. Jus, then, is an achievement, a critical outing on the outer fringes that does what it does with a certain brilliance. It's a good example of a great result in this sphere. Put your ears on deep-listening mode and you will get much from this.

Flow State, Where the Sky Meets the Earth

Flow State features the compositions and electric guitar of Ben Brody with a quintet. The album Where the Sky Meets the Earth (benbrodymusic) gives us four pieces to hear and appreciate.

The first thing one notices with the quintet is the absence of a drummer. There is pulse as a constant, and electronics (not beats per se) or instruments sometimes play a percussive role. But it is the musical voicings that stand out all the more for not being drum accompanied, and they are consistently interesting.

The instrumentation is not typical. There is the electric guitar of Brody, plus electric and double bass (Nick Lenchner), electric keys (Jonathan Evers), alto sax (Alison Shearer) and tenor sax (Noah Dreiblatt).

This is electro-prog compositional, jazz-inflected music of great interest. The saxes sometimes freely improvise atop a compositional set of motifs. Other times there is an ensemble sound that has a relationship with some of the '70s-'80s electro prog outfits but is well evolved and complex in ways that stand apart from those roots. Sometimes one is reminded of middle-period Soft Machine in the mesmeric qualities, but again, there are pronounced originalities here that serve to distingush this music from that realm.

It is an ensemble music, so Ben Brody generally is an element in the blend more than a soloist. Nonetheless his sound is a vital part of the mix, especially in the droning psychedelic breadth of "I am Become Death."

If this album stands out as a peculiar musical statement, it is because it comes at you originally and electrically as a music unto itself. It is slghtly avant edgy, but not typically so. It is cosmic but not in a derivative way.

And in the end you are treated to some very energizing music that is rather beyond category. Nice!

Trio Da Paz, 30

When a guitar-bass-drums trio manages to stay together over 30 years, it is an accomplishment. There are good reasons, always, why this might be so. Musical and personal compatibility, sure, and if they have been able to capture the spotlight this long, artistic reasons as well.

So that most certainly is the case with the Brazilian samba-jazz juggernaught Trio Da Paz. Their new CD 30 (Zoho 201602), celebrates the long-lived union with an album of exemplary music. Duduka da Fonseca, the renowned and exemplary drummer, is here, along with Brazilian nylon-stringed guitar wizard Romero Lubambo and the very musical bassist Nilson Matta.

With the exception of the Baden Powell evergreen "Samba Triste" the program consists entirely of originals by the band members. They satisfy as you would expect, but the dynamic and very well burnished trio improvisational ways are what makes for a remarkable listen.

Romero is a Brazilian-jazz guitarist of the highest rank. He takes the rhythmic-chordal style so important to samba and makes of it something outstanding, personal and beautiful. His general linear sense makes of him a veritable icon. All that is plain to hear on this album. But then outstanding as well is how the triumvirate mesh together at all points. Matta's bass playing gains critical mass in this ensemble and he functions as the all important pivotal key between the beautifully inventive rhythmic presence of da Fonseca and the harmonic-tonal-rhythmic counterthrusts of Lubambo.

In all this album could serve as a primer for anyone who seeks to absorb the very subtle interplay of a jazz samba trio today. Time, tone and timbre come together for a truly inspired set from the very best. Can I suggest you grab this one? Very recommended!