United Slaves #2-3, Vinnie Paternostro, Gene Janas, Jay Reeve, etc.

On the docket today is a double-CD of electric freedom of a cosmic sort, partaking of rock-drone elements and free jazz in a very nice way. The album is entitled United Slaves #2-3 (Improvising Beings ib37).

The band here consists of a quintet. Vinnie Paternostro is on drums, Gene Janas at the double bass, Jay Reeve on synthesizer, Michel Kristof on electric guitar and sitar, and Julien Palomo on keys.

They give us an extended outing that combines a blend of instrumental collectivity with a dynamic changing freedom that does not pulsate so much as express freetime collaging, with neo-psychedelic avant immediacy.

It's outside all the way, with electric guitar onslaughts that blend with washes of keys, bass and drums.

Imagine what some of the vintage psychedelic groups did live for a minute or two in heady times, then imagine that expanded into a long extended 2-CD voyage into space. That's something of what you get.

I find the whole thing fascinating and bracing. If you aren't into the avant electric thing you may shy away from this. That of course is your affair. Intrepid travelers of the spaceways will no doubt take to it like I did. There is nothing compromising here, not even a tune to get your bearings. So take off with it.

Metallic Taste of Blood, Doctoring the Dead

Some vital jazz-metal-avant music is being made out there. I've been covering it here when the music strikes me. Another good one is up today. Metallic Taste of Blood is the brainchild of guitar-electrician Eraldo Bernocchi. He put an album out a while ago that I missed, but he returns with a new band lineup and some intriguing heavy sounds on Doctoring the Dead (RareNoise RNR 053 & RNR053LP, CD or vinyl).

The band is a together one, with Bernocchi teaming up with Colin Edwin on bass guitar, Ted Parsons, drums, and either Roy Powell or Matilde Bernocchi on keys and electronics.

The music has compositional structure and very heavy clout. It's about a well wrought group sound more than a showcase for guitar pyrotechnics, though you will hear good playing if you listen closely.

We get all-out, expanded, driving compositional sequences that bring the dark metal sound into space nicely, thoroughgoingly and ambientally.

It has music that grows on you the more you hear it. But it's not for the squeamish, really. The sounds are thick and invigorating! Check it out!

Gary Peacock Trio, Now This

It is rather incredible thinking retrospectively at this later date about the presence of bassist Gary Peacock on the jazz scene. He was an important member of many classic avant and otherwise dates before he became the long-standing bassist with Keith Jarrett's Standards Trio. And with Gary's new trio CD Now This (ECM 2428) we are reminded of what he can do and be in a changed playing context.

The trio is an excellent one, with Marc Copland at the piano and Joey Baron on drums, two very beautiful players who have for years managed to create their own stylistic turf in an ever-shifting improvisatory world. The three together here remind you that having a truly individual voice in this music is very difficult and very rare. Peacock, Copland and Baron have done it and by getting together as a threesome they make a trio that stands out as a furtherance of their personal and collective selves as well as of the music.

The tunes are gems, seven by Peacock, two by Copland, one by Baron and the classic "Gloria's Step" by Scott LaFaro. The nod to the bass pioneer reminds us of the now long history of the modern piano trio and Peacock's central place in it, as well as of the critical legacy of LaFaro in creating the bass role for the classic Evans Trio. Gary of course spent a long time creating his own place in that legacy and we are witness to its mature ripening, its full-flowering on this release as on the classic Jarrett sides.

Happily, there is a good deal of Peacock's playing in an out-front context and he sounds very wonderfully himself throughout. The magic touch and voicing excellence of Copland shines forward as well, making this something special. And Baron in the piano trio tradition is subtle and supremely artistic.

This date has a sublimity about it that comes about when three artists of this high caliber get real traction from the three-way dialog. It is inspired music, piano trio music of the highest sort. They are substantially different sounding than the Standards Trio and so there is a freshness here, a different sort of beauty.

Highly recommended!

Bud Tristano, Connie Crothers, Primal Elegance

Today's album is most unusual. Connie Crothers has been making advanced free-but-grounded jazz for many years. She is a pianist without peer, a essential creative force in the music today. Her music can look back to earlier jazz roots and you sometimes hear new music elements, all forged into a stylistic originality that is all her own. But if you told me she made a rock album up until recently I would have been incredulous. Well, it so happens she did, in a way, back in 2002. Bud Tristano, son of the titan pianist Lennie, happens to be a very good guitarist who mostly comes out of an advanced hard, metal stance.

Connie and Bud made an album together, Primal Elegance (New Artists 1038CD) that I am only now aware of, thanks to Connie kindly sending me a copy. It is indeed a melding of rock guitar elements and Connie's inimitable piano freedom. This might have been a failure if the two didn't bridge the distance by very close listening. I've heard things like this that did not come off because the connection was never quite made. Not so, this one.

Bud most of the time keeps to free expressions of a metallic sort, well constructed, virtuoso-oriented. He does also adapt himself to less rock-oriented freeness, but it is primarily Connie who shifts what she does, at least at the beginning. What she does at times is adjust toward a centered tonality, modal-eastern and bluesy. It isn't that she plays in ways unlike her. And in the end she gradually gears into complexities that Bud responds to with rock sensibilities and takes it outside himself via bends, feedback and sometimes non-centered chording.

There are ten improvised segments in all. They showcase a fine guitar playing and a brilliant seconding and/or directional openness on Ms. Crother's part that puts it together and makes it much more than just a fascinating meeting of disparity. Ultimately most of the time it achieves a oneness that you would not expect to hear if you didn't already expect great things from Connie. And of course it is Bud's prowess and adaptability that brings coherence on his side as well.

This may not be what a rocker expects and it isn't what an avant free acolyte expects, either. It is a joyous surprise that you need to hear closely to fully appreciate. If you aren't afraid of mixed categories and seek synergies, this is one you will want to explore!

Alessio Alberghini, Garrison Fewell, inVerso

If we keep our ears open these days, there is excellent music to be heard. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. It may take a bit of combing through the mass of things coming out, and in part that's my job on these posts, to uncover and speak of what is worthwhile.

A just-released album inVerso (Floating Forest) is a prime example. On it are a series of duos that the artists call "Nine Variations on an Intimate Moment," where closeness of musical orientation leads to a sort of uncanny, open oneness. It's Alessio Alberghini on soprano and baritone sax, with an excellently brandished-burnished sound, and Garrison Fewell on electric guitar, a singular player with a smart and inspired approach. The compositional frameworks are by Alberghini and Fewell, with two by the late luminary of the new jazz world, John Tchicai.

The frameworks can be filled with melodically song-like fluidity or be abstract in makeup, but in either case we hear some marvelously attuned duets throughout, two masters who are so compatible musically that, as Ed Hazell's liner notes state, they can feel free to go each in any direction that seems right with confidence that the other player will respond with something equally inspired and fitting.

The music is both free and concentric, with deep listening and deep concentration joining together with two lifetimes of expression and a sure sense of sounding. It becomes so unified that you stop listening in terms of, "here's the guitar, now the sax is doing x, y or z." It is simultaneous sounding in the highest realm. At the same time what Alberghini and Fewell do on their instruments define the parameters of how wide-ranging freedom can somehow sound pre-ordained, have an inevitability that is in fact anything but.

If you are a guitarist, a reed player, and/or just get off on great sounds, this one is the right one for all that. It is a superb example of the art of improvisation today. So grab a copy, already.

Exovex, Radio Silence

Today we have an interesting new (to me) alt-progressive rock band named Exovex and their album Radio Silence (self-released). This is the brain child of Dale Simmons, who wrote all the songs, plays guitars (well), does all the vocals, plays bass and keyboards throughout. He is joined by Nicole Neely on cello, viola and violin, Richard Barbieri on keys for one cut, plus the drum duties divided up between Keith Carlock (2 cuts), Josh Freese (3 cuts) and Gavin Harrison (one cut).

Simmons gives us moody space-age sorts of songs, good ones, well sung with wall-of-sound rock thickness, a hard edge at times, a nice lead guitar presence and a kind of ambient feel throughout which makes this music sound more contemporary than retro.

The songs stand out very nicely and the arrangements give structure. As with this sort of thing in general, the good songs make it all work.

I come away from this album with a real appreciation for the talent of Simmons. It's an album that stands out as a very good example of how this genre of rock can continue to produce worthwhile music. Exovex is most definitely that.

J.B. Hutto & His Hawks, Hawk Squat, with Sunnyland Slim

From the considerable archives of Delmark Chicago blues classics comes a welcome reissue of the 1966-1968 perennial by J.B. Hutto & His Hawks, Hawk Squat (Delmark 617). It reappears now in a new deluxe edition with an extra six unissued tracks and a 20-page booklet.

It's of course the raw-and-real Hutto at his best, lighting the house on fire with his electrifying voice and slide guitar. Sunnyland Slim is on piano, too. And the band as a whole goes full tilt throughout.

When you hear it, you know it. "You just ain't no good" he signifies on the opening "Speak My Mind," and you believe it! And when he sings about how what few friends you have left "groan when they hear your name," you know he is hitting the essence of the blues. The entire 18-track sequence puts you at the edge of your blues seat, because that's the way it was with him, that's the way it was in Chicago, and that's always the way it is when the blues really SPEAK to you.

This is a classic among classics. The extra cuts remind you he was permanently switched to the "on" position back then.

Highest recommendations for this one! It's a blues essential.