Pixel, Golden Years

OK, ready for some song oriented contemporary jazz-rock from some Norwegian musicians? We get jazz with pronounced song-form indie leanings and acoustic rock underpinnings. Presenting Pixel and their third album, Golden Years (Cuneiform Rune 412). (I covered their "We Are All Small" album here. Look it up in the index box above.)The band consists of double bassist and vocalist Ellen Andrea Wang, drummer Jon Audun Baar, trumpeter Jonas Kilmork Vemøy, and saxophonist Harald Lassen. Ellen convincingly does the lead vocals and everyone contributes their voices for a group vocal sound when needed.

This is instrumentally vibrant music from some definite players. Dig Ms. Wang's bass. She has a real sense. And the horns can go at it, too. Baar plays solid drums. But the exceptional difference here along with the instrumental prowess is an excellent compositional sense both in the horn arrangements and in the songs. They are distinctive and something unexpected in good ways. These are songs well sung and memorable, so that an indie audience can take to them, or anybody for that matter. They stick in the mind.

I am of the opinion that anything goes out there if it is done well. Pixel straddles jazz and song in ways that sound authentic. It is heartfelt and very musical. Perhaps those who do not ordinarily listen to jazz will find this attractive and stimulating. They should. It is progressive musically without being "progressive" in the categorical sense.

If you find the idea of this music interesting as I describe it, I think this one will please you. It did that for me. Listen to these folks! This is art, whatever else you may want to call it.

Raoul Borkenheim ECsTaSy, Out of the Blue

Finnish electric guitarist Raoul Borkenheim and his ECsTaSy/Transcendant Quartet give us an exceptional set on the second album for this line-up, Out of the Blue (Cuneiform Rune 413).

Featuring drummer Markku Ounaskari, bassist Jori Huhtala and saxophonist Pauli Lyytinen, this is advanced modern jazz from a VERY capable group of jazz-rockers.

It is an adventurous gathering of originals--with shorter song-oriented offerings alternating with longer improvisatory excursions that affirm that this as a band of real strength. The rhythm team is very open and creative as well as driving; Paul and Raoul turn in some great work as soloists of originality and vision.

In the end Borkenheim stuns with his very developed sense of line-composition, bluesy and outside alternatingly, a sort of dynamo that takes something from the Terje Rypdal advanced melodic modernity and makes of it his own original style. He has chops, certainly, but most importantly a musical sensibility that avoids all cliche and propels us all into a stratospheric zone.

Combine Raoul's guitar wizardry with these three very excellent sideman and you have an exceptional album of avant fuse-rock.

It's one of those albums that will wow anyone dedicated to the new electric jazz.

Flabbergasting!

Karavan Sarai, Woven Landscapes

Today we delve into an excellent eclectic world music album, Woven Landscapes by Karavan Sarai (Karavan Sarai Music). It centers around eight compositions by Narayan Sijan, who sings and plays an oud, saz, buzuk, setar, baglama and kopak saz. He is joined by Carmen Rizzo on electronics, keyboard, drums and percussion, in addition to several guests.

The music is a contemporary re-presentation of the music of the ancient silk route caravans, covering India, Persia, Turkey, the Balkans and Arabia long ago. The continual traffic spread musical cultures as they traveled back and forth, giving rise to much cross-fertilization and redevelopment of stylistic paradigms.

Narayan Sijan creatively restates those musical folkways in a set of songs that owe much to the old ways yet manage to put it in modern context.

Strings and percussion are constants here along with haunting vocal lines. The music has an authentic yet contemporary feel. It gives us pause, helping us recall the roots and routes of civilization as forwarded by the interactions of long distance trade. It is the opposite of the small-minded fanatic insularism of those in Eye-sil, who would wage a barbaric war against the rest of the world. This is pro-civilization(s), anti-barbarism.

And so for that and for the music's excellence I strongly recommend it to you.

Any string players who read this blog will gain much from Sijan's prowess on the ancient instruments he has mastered. But everyone with a musical sense will get much out of this beautiful record!!

Very recommended.

Rank Strangers, Lady President

We return today to the alternative rock juggernaut Rank Strangers and the first volume of their trilogy, namely Lady President (Veto Vinyl LP). See the earlier postings on volume two and three here for more background. Suffice to say that this trilogy marks the 25th year of the band. Mike Wisti heads it with lead vocals, lead guitars. There is Davin Odegaard on bass, Shawn Davis on drums.

Lady President has all the strengths of the other volumes: a down-to-earth alt naturalness that thrives on strong songs, good arrangements and a disarming faux casual way.

This is DIY rock from Minneapolis in the grand tradition that goes back to early Kinks and on to today, but with an original sound and style that sounds like right now. And Wisti on guitar will throw you something unexpected now and again in between effective power chording and note-sounding arrangements.

It is an affirmation of Rank Strangers as a central alt band. Get the whole trilogy, but if not just yet, start here, or for that matter anywhere in the threesome.

Seriously, this reinstates the creativity of songmeister bands with its own take. Onward to 25 more years!

Jimmy Burns, It Ain't Right

Jimmy Burns is the blues. He's the blues from down on the Delta and up to Chicago. He's the soul blues. You can hear all this on his latest, It Ain't Right (Delmark 841).

Jimmy on vocals and guitar, his fine band, they move the blues along without leaving the roots behind, on 15 tunes that call forth the hard times and then send them packing. That's what the blues is meant to do and he is right there.

The band is a fine outfit, featuring Anthony Palmer on lead guitar, and they go through some serious paces on the collection of standards and new songs that puts the album right into your ear-zone.

There's gospel-soul and there is stomping sanctification. Jimmy is a singer of truth with the sound of truth. And he lets you HEAR it throughout.

Delmark knows the blues and so we get another gem from where the blues still LIVE, I ain't telling you no lie!

Cedric Theys, Eternity's Antechamber

So you may not know Cedric Theys. I did not so much until happily he contacted me on social media and sent me his album Eternity's Antechamber (Mad Ducks Records, available on Bandcamp).

It's Cedric on touch guitar and electronic digital delay processing. And as it turns out, that is a fine thing. His conception is orchestral and the sound universe is a spiral of density and spacetime, a program of cosmic sounds both ambient and tone-worthy.

It's all about shifting envelopes of sound color, soundscaping and such. It is something akin to my Aurora Dreaming I and Aurora Dreaming II, not to toot my own horn, but just to say that aurally we both are different but share an opening onto the universe that you might also hear on some of Markus Reuter's works (for example see Gapplegate Classical-Modern Review for an orchestral work of Reuter's that I also recommend).

So that is only to say that it has genetic affinity with things I like and sounds that exist in my own imagination. And it is on its own turf so that the liking is of a thing-in-itself wholly engaging and originally distinct.

I recommend this to the space-ambient prone. It's excellent.

The Hot Jazz Jumpers, The Very Next Thing

Jazz can be fun? Sure. It is usually mostly serious these days, as an art form, and that can be fun of course if you dig it, but there are not so many groups today that are designed to come across with high-times humor, though serious about it in the end. The Hot Jazz Jumpers take an approach to old-time jazz and roots music that most certainly has the sort of zany approach to the tradition that jug bands did back in the day and later in the hands of Jim Kweskin. In a way this band is a more musically involved, a serious but ultimately fun equivalent.

The Hot Jazz Jumpers have a CD/DVD set out called The Very Next Thing (OTBR 0002) and that's what I've been getting into. It's headed by guitarist and tenor banjoist Nick Russo. He alone is worth the price of admission, a real player who covers a gamut of jazz and blues styles effortlessly--which means he has worked hard to get to this point.

There are two vocalists in the band. Betina Hershey has a vivacious old-timey style and goes for the melody lines as well as playing a credible rhythm guitar. Miles Griffith is over-the-top in a very music way, scatting and playing with the lines improvisationally in a scat style that sounds like Louis A on into space! He is fabulous. David Pleasant plays a tiny drum set with sticks and with hands, as well as a small tambourine he slaps and uses as a stick on the drums. He's really on it here and makes the rhythm take off in ways I don't think I've ever heard.

Essiet Essiet plays bass for most of this, spelled for a few tunes by Mamadou Ba. They are very much a presence. The trumpet of Gordon Au is great, both old-timey and modern at the same time.

And as you listen to the CD and the 11-cut live DVD you get "Caravan," "In A Mellow Tone," "Got My Mojo Working," "Sweet Georgia Brown" and other classics plus some jams. It's all about recreating the old-timey music in a special way, special to this band, which is both "authentic" but not afraid to take it their own way, modern, even pretty outside for a moment here and there.

The musicianship is very high, the songs good to hear this way, the singing tops and, yes, this really is a fun band!! I do very much recommend this one if you dig revisiting the roots in an original, zany sort of style. Oh, yes!