Kevin Kastning, Carl Clements, A Far Reflection

Kevin Kastning, as this blog noted earlier in the year for another album, has created a wonderful new sound out of the 36-string double contraguitar and the 30-string contra-alto guitar. The latest, a very uplifting duo recording with reedman Carl Clements, A Far Reflection (greydisc 3529), brings us another dimension in the universe of possibilities.

Carl has an explorative voice of his own on tenor and soprano saxes, alto flute and bansuri flutes. He has a beautiful sound on each instrument. It compliments Kastning's special sonarity in poetic ways. The deftly imaginative Kastning harp-guitar multiple sounding melodic-harmonic emanations have a wind counterpart on these thoroughgoing two-voiced improvisations that fulfill the sonic promises the music contains in potent reserve. You might say that the music comes to full completion through the silences between, before and after the music sounds. The space between the notes are an equal partner in all this. It is in the soundings and the silences working together that we feel palpably the musical space that is so integral to the magic of this duet set.

This is music of great atmosphere but also of intelligence, of creative sonic-decision making. Not only does the music speak in a lush carpet of sound, each strand interrelates finely to the others like a treasured hand-made rug from earlier times. And whether listening in broad terms or subjecting each set of phrases to microscopic scrutiny, the music bears forth with cohesion and depth.

In short, this is music of ravishing improvisational artistry, a seventy-minute adventure of near breathtaking presence. Kastning and Clements come through with a gem worthy of their considerable abilities. Hear this!

Rhythm Future Quartet, Travels

Django Reinhardt, Stephane Grappelli and the Hot Club group gave us some of the most original and inspired original jazz of the swing era. Django was a guitarist of gigantic originality and artistry, Grappelli was one of the jazz violin innovators of the era and a beautifully skilled artist, and the ensemble gave us a sound we now call "Gypsy Jazz."

It took a while but in this century Gypsy Jazz has blossomed into a movement that honors that legacy with varying degrees of effectiveness and by now shows signs of becoming a style that continues to evolve and sound fresh. No better an example of how Gypsy Jazz can go into innovative directions than with the Rhythm Future Quartet and their album Travels (Magic Fiddle Music CD).

It has the Hot Club instrumentation, with Jason Anick on violin and Olli Soikkeli on lead guitar, backed nicely by rhythm guitarist Max O'Rourke and bassist Greg Loughman.

Anick and Soikkeli take the legacy of Grappeli and Reinhardt along with prodigious technique and build something new overtop it all. New compositions by all four, and a cover or two break ground on this, their second album.

The band takes Gypsy Jazz into the present with a less strictly Hot Club demeanor at times, though the inspiration is still very present underneath it all. The originals extend it nicely and the Anick-Soikkeli front line gives us some uncanny virtuosity that channels the masters and remakes them into a modern image, all the while showing the dexterity such music demands.

It is a wonderful album!

Joelle Leandre, No Comment, 1994-95

Joelle Leandre is a bassist without peer in avant-free jazz-new music realms. I mean that others may approach her virtuostic sense of extension and mastery on the acoustic bass-contrabass but nobody is quite like her. My "Exhibit A" is the recently issued live solo performances she did at jazz festivals in Ragusa, Italy and Vancouver, Canada in 1994-95. It is available in full sound and impact on the CD No Comment (Fou Records CD 14).

It is her bass and vocals carrying forth with brilliance and discernment in nine segments. If you need to be reminded, her vocalizations intertwine with bass effervescences in beautifully virtuoso ways, like nobody else. And some of those moments here rank with her very best. But of course that is also true of the bass improvising itself, whether with bow or pizzicato, or both at once.

And in the course of this nicely packaged album you get some of Joelle's finest declamations, a real stunner of a set. She is master at utilizing a broad swath of extended and conventional ways of getting the bass to sing and then adds her voice now and again for something that assuredly does NOT sound like Slam Stewart (hello, do readers have any idea who I mean?) but sounds unmistakably like herself.

Anyone who loves the sound of the contrabass in its fullest potential will find this a bracing and even exhilarating listen! Do give it your ears, if you can!

Moppa Elliott, Still, Up in the Air

OK? Am I crazy if I tell you that Moppa Elliott's inaugural solo acoustic bass album is "funny?" I speak of Still, Up in the Air (Hot Cup 152). I do not mean "haha" or "lol" funny. It is in fact a dead serious journey through some exceptional bass zones in seven segments, using bow and pizzicato and yielding some beautifully expressive sounds. No, it is not exactly a joke. Far from it. But Moppa Elliott is, as we have come to know, a mischievous fellow. As head of Mostly Other People Do the Killing, as composer, as who he is, he has given us some quite serious and seriously excellent music in the company of his illustrious cohorts, some of it with a real sense of humor that is all too rare these days. He has caused controversy, but no, I am NOT going into that here. And there is the ability to take himself very seriously but also to laugh.

Let me be more specific. The album is filled with some very excellent, supercharged avant bass playing. His own approach to the bass is on fine display. He often gets a kind of dual sonic panorama playing out, as, for example, bowing on some strings and hammering on others simultaneously.

There is often a manic quality to the improvisations that is attuned to the "energy music" mode that is of course integral to avant jazz. He gets many a froth flowing in his playing plus an wealth of attacks and colors via conventional and unconventional techniques. There are times though where there is something humorous about the sheer over-the-top frenzy he can unleash on us. I know this can be taken the wrong way. Hell, anything one writes can always do that. And I can remember when one of my compositions, written many years ago, was thought "funny" by my composition guru. Now, yes, it WAS funny, but at the time I had forgotten that aspect and I said to myself, somewhat indignantly, "it is not SUPPOSED to be funny." I was wrong. But it's easy to get touchy. So I must say I mean this in the positive sense.

There is a huge energy outpouring in this performative wave of profusion. And at times Moppa takes it far enough that he ends up parodying himself. Does that make sense? The point in the end is that this is superlative solo bass playing that has a consistency with Moppa's musical personality. And that it is original and quite exemplary.

It is over-the-top, fun even, yet seriously good. Get it and dig on those huge dimensional swaths of sound! Basso profundo...

Gary Lucas and Jann Klose, Stereopticon

You never know what's coming next until you get to the future. And even then you wonder about the next future. Sometimes that is a very good thing. Certainly that is true of guitar wizard and conceptualist Gary Lucas and his multiple adventures/projects. It turns out it is true also of singer-songwriter Jann Klose. They have collaborated most rewardingly and the first fruits can be appreciated on their recent album Stereopticon (Cosmic Trigger/The Orchard).

One who knows may think almost automatically of Gary's legendary collaborations with the late Jeff Buckley. Other than the guitar-song intersections being equally creative it is probably best to put that aside for the moment. Gary sticks with his trusty old Gibson and gives us his patented, wonderful picking-claw-hammering-strumming best here. Jann has a modern, youthful sound that is not really Buckleyian, nor should we expect it to be. He sings well and directly and his part in the song collaboration is more in line with the rock-song stylings of the present.

Now that should not put you off in the least, because there are a bunch of great songs (some co-written with co-producer Dan Beck), some great singing and of course lots of Gary in a fine fettle on guitar. I would think that Lucas fans will be well satisfied with this album as I am, and Klose fans should feel the same way. Beyond that Venn diagram of intersections there will be an audience that may not know either artist well or perhaps not at all. The music should get their attention, those who look to furnish their life with great songs, great singing and great guitar playing. That huge mass of potential fans have much to attract them on Stereopticon.

It's the sort of music that gets your attention straight off but then when you go back and listen again and again it continues to grab you and sound fresh.

So my guitar-oriented readers will be happy with this one as I am. And there will, I hope, be many others. It has a joyous sorrow about it. And a kind of universal appeal. So get it!

Samo Salamon Bassless Trio, Unity

Today I am happy to report to you on Unity (Samo Records), the new album by the Samo Salamon Bassless Trio. It is a fine mix of three excellent players doing ten provocative and substantial Salamon compositions.

Samo is a guitarist of weight. He plays through the trio performances with composed and comped signposts that wear well on repeated hearings and solos with depth and musical originality. Julian Arguelles sounds great and advanced on tenor and soprano. John Hollenbeck is a drummer of palpable imagination and drive.

Together they make music that is beyond fusion but related to it. It is driving and has some of fusion's complexities but also has innovative structural ways. The trio covers unconventionally the compositional keystones of each number while opening up the improvisations in a free-wheeling way not entirely fusionesque. It tends to be less cranked than a more rock-saturated fusion group. Yet there is great torque nonetheless.

Every number jumps out at you with musical content and infectious forward motion. The trio can break into, say, tenor and drums in duet for example and/or with any number of group possibilities that can stray far beyond head-solos-head conventions.

Samo is a guitarist to listen to closely. He comes forward with well-conceived parts and beautiful solo work. And his compositions stand out strongly from the routine sorts of fusion formulas that one might hear on a typical date.

It is some outstanding music from an outstanding threesome of musicians. You should hear it!

Julian Lage, Arclight

Julian Lage is a guitarist who has formidable technical tools but also a very musical way about him, a keen ear for what can be done. His latest is out in a few days, March 11th (see below for a pre-order link). It is called Arclight (Mack Avenue). What we have is a lively trio configuration of Julian, plus the ever-potent Scott Coley on double bass and the swinging Kenny Wollesen on drums.

The album has the influence of early-to-mid period Jarrett trios in their treatment of "covers," but that comes through with originality in what Lage and the trio are doing. Lage does some nicely thought-out arrangements of early jazz/pre-bop. There are also some nice originals.

What is striking is the beautiful playing of Lage and the excellent trio interaction. Lage has become his own stylistic self, cleanly exuberant, tastefully musical in his chordal-lining lyricism, filled with some beautiful intersections of the noteful and the chordally interesting. He is one of a kind at this point and he has worked out his versions of the old and the new that has at times a rock electricity and other times a brightly direct tone. There sometimes is an almost Django-meets-surf brilliance...I don't know how else to describe it. But there are indeed a number of dimensions of Lage to be heard on this fine album, all of it a pleasure and, I'll admit, a challenge to all guitarists out there to be original, to press on!

Lage is becoming a major guitar force out there. It's all on the CD, so jump up and grab it if you want something accomplished and original.

A link if you want to preorder: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01AIO7OM My live link button is on the fritz so you'll have to copy and paste the link into your address window.