Machine Mass, Inti, Tony Bianco, Michel Delville, Featuring Dave Liebman

Music does not stand still. It cannot. Especially today, with the world as our basic unit for musical creativity and what is being done on planet earth generally known and freely inspiring others to respond in their own ways, and on and on. Just in the last few days we have covered Chinese, Indian, English, American, and Russian musicians, and now here on this page a coming together of heavies from America and Belgium. That's the way things go now. If the old "silk route" managed to encourage the mixing and melding of musical cultures centuries ago, the everything-everywhere road makes that creative interpenetration that much more vast and intense, rapid and encompassing.

So we have Machine Mass, here an excellent combination of sax master Dave Liebman with the vibrant guitar stylist Michel Delville and the complete drummer Tony Bianco. The album that comes out of such a fertile meeting is Inti (MoonJune 060).

This is avant jazz-rock without a stitch of cliche. That it is as fresh and vital in its own way as some of the old hoary classics has to do with the high creativity of all three artists and the zeitgeist that springs spontaneously and yet deliberately from the Pandora's Box that is unleashed in the process.

This is music that is both outside and firmly and hipply grooved. It rocks out as it goes out. It never stops. It is a series of very effective vehicles written by all three members, separately and together, depending, plus the old Zawinul Miles classic "In A Silent Way" done with a new angle to it.

Delville shows himself even deeper than we may have once supposed, with hidden compartments of hip music insight that are pulled open here to add to the totality. Lieb sounds as essential as ever and if you don't know what that means just put this on. Tony Bianco plays the right balance between grooving and inciting.

Well now I think I should stop because the hearing of this one will give you all the rest.

Don't miss this. Exceptional!

Shayna Dulberger, The Kill Me Trio, 1996

I reviewed this album once before, but it was a part of my Gapplegate Guitar Blog, Mach I, which was incorporated into my guitar sales site. I was forced to tear down that site quickly due to lack of funds. I was consequently unable to transfer all the reviews onto this site in time, and so Shayna Dulberger's The Kill Me Trio (self released) review was lost in cyberspace.

I haven't changed my mind on this one. It still sounds great. So I take a minute to say so again.

The trio is a good one--Shayna on acoustic bass, of course, then Darius Jones on a righteous alto sax and Jason Nazary on drums. What strikes me again this time around is how well the trio conveys the vibrant energy and excitement of "free jazz" in the ecstatic mode. They are fully charged and let loose with frenetically hip sounds.

The album has an equality of the three voices in that it forwards the interplay of the togetherness they emit. Shayna sounds beautiful, but then so do Darius and Jason. There are solo spots for all--and catch Shayna when she's out front--but then there are together spots too where three-way solos are working on all fronts.

The album might have been a sleeper then. We are awake to Shayna--or at least I am--so now we can look back and say, "yeah, nice one!" again. This time a bit more fervently.

Don't wait if you can score a copy. There may not be many left! Thanks Shayna. Time for a new one, I hope!

Luis Lopes, Noise Solo at ZBD, Lisbon

The art of noise and the art of solo guitar don't always converge. With Luis Lopes' LP Noise Solo at ZDB Portugal (001LPZ) it certainly does. . . in ways that make noise an art. I suppose the lineage of feedback, sustain and the reshaping and interrupting of high decibel guitar wielding via toggle switches and stomp boxes goes back to certain moments in Hendrix's early work, a moment now and then in early live Dead recordings and in the presentation of early psychedelia in general. Luis gives us two sides of creative noise-making on the LP that show a sense of process and, through that, structure. It reminds and hearkens back to those first days of amplitude mind-melding.

This is one uninterrupted solo improv live in a Lisbon club. It shows the more radically avant side of the guitarist, who we've encountered and appreciated before in various free avant jazz-rock ensembles on these pages. This one goes from noise station-to-noise station, so to speak, in the way Luis sculpts the sound. Some may hate it but I sure don't. It's lovely, beautiful, extreme guitar, in a very electrically charged way. Kudos! If you like the margins of total skronk this is a great example. If you don't then get out a Segovia record instead--or play them both at once!!

Find out how to get the record at luislopes.bigcartel.com.

The Blue Project, The Danny Petroni Blue Project (featuring Frank Lacy)

Guitarist Danny Petroni has gone back in a way to some of the jump-blues and humor of Louis Jordan of the late swing era and created his own version of it--not an imitation, not a tribute, but an analog creation of his own. This on The Blue Project (self-released).

It's a big band doing goofy-serious lyrics blues that feature some nice guitar wielding from Danny and Frank Ku-umba Lacy on vocals, trombone and something called the "flumpet"! There is some metal heat from Danny and a general high-spirits over-the-topness going on.

It may not change the world but it gives you a rooted ultra-today jazz-rock take on it all.

No, nothing bad to say to that. And Danny dedicates the album to all who struggle to get it back together in the NY-Metro-Jersey-Long-Island Hurricane Sandy debacle. That story still isn't over. The struggle keeps on going on. So thanks to Danny!

YAPP, Symbolic Heads

I must say that the No Business label has the right idea for some of the more esoteric releases. Print a low quantity exclusive edition and rely on word-of-mouth and the underground press to get the message out.

The quartet YAPP and their 300-copy LP edition of Symbolic Heads (No Business NBLP 69) gives us a perfect example. It's music in an avant free-jazz-rock zone with good performances from Bryan Rogers on alto sax, Alban Bailly on acoustic-electric guitar, Matt Engle on acoustic bass, and David Flaherty on drums.

This is music that has a personal identity, some intricate head compositions, a loosely rocking-freeing groove and nice playing from everybody. The guitarists out there will find Alban a very interesting and unique player worth hearing. But everybody pulls weight here. Dave Flaherty, perhaps the better-known of the four, sounds very groovy on drums.

This is real-deal music of distinction. If you have a sense of adventure you will find this some very hip travelling music. Or music to just sit there and listen, too. Nice!

Badi Assad, Between Love and Luck

Badi Assad, singer-songwriter and acoustic guitarist from Brazil, has something going for herself on her recent Between Love and Luck (Quatroventos AA0002000). She and a tight-knit ensemble explore some of her songs, 13 in all, and follow a contemporary Brazilian rock-pop-jazz sensibility that Purim, Gil and Nascimento set the pace for in earlier years.

Her voice is an instrument in the best sense, perhaps less Purimesque in the jazz sense but well-presented, the songs are good, her guitar playing very worth hearing and the arrangements quite interesting. Like the best of Brazilian contemporary over the years there is a joyous melodic and rhythmic feel to it all that appeals nicely.

Recommended!

Pete Macleod, Rolling Stone

There are some artists, some albums that jump out at you from the first note. The music could be anything but they have a presence that you instinctively feel in your gut straight off. I got that sort of feeling the moment I put on my player Pete Macleod's Rolling Stone (Cherry Red 359CD4).

He plies a version of retro-rock (retro in somewhat the way REM was in its first albums) that has excellent jangling guitar work, good vocals and strong tunes, something you either respond to right off or you don't. If you do, like I do, you are going to like this one. He plays a 12-string electric in a way that recalls the Byrds in their original period. Then there are other strains in there, too, Everything works. The songs have lyrical melodies, rock strength and good form.

Now that combination when done well as it is here is nigh irresistible. His short guitar solos are fitting and nicely done. And the band sound is full and strong.

I am digging this one. You might too--if what I describe sounds like it's your thing. Pete Macleod is happening!