Albert Ayler - Witches & Devils

Albert starts to shake the foundations of Jazz and Music in general.

"...Here, though the trumpet chair -- Norman Howard, a friend from Ayler's hometown of Cleveland -- is a weak link in the chain, this situation allows Ayler's music to shine through, more or less. Needless to say, the quartet with Grimes and Murray, which yields two tunes here -- the title track, which also features Henderson, and "Holy, Holy" -- offers the first real glimpse of Ayler in command. His statuesque take on the tonal and timbral fronts comes from both Ornette Coleman and the honking R&B bar-walkers. And in looking inside the various registers on the title cut, he explores the emotions inherent in timbral modulation without refracting the notes themselves too much. He moves from a whisper of great tenderness to a bloodcurdling scream, and it all sounds natural. On "Holy, Holy," the arco bass work by Grimes complements the intensity with which Ayler is playing. He goes for the upper register buoyed up by Murray's triple time, timberline beats and cross-handed polyrhythms, screeching to the point of sounding like a crying child, quoting hymns and blues tunes throughout. Howard's trumpet playing is no great shakes, but he moves through note displacement very well, opening up the harmonic registers for Ayler and Grimes to break through unencumbered. This is a revealing if not completely satisfying recording". - Thom Jurek

Spirits

Satoko Fujii Quartet - Minerva

Forceful free jazz with ferocious rock sensibilities. With Tatsuya of Ruins on drums.

"The Satoko Fujii Quartet's debut album, Vulcan, was something of a revelation, showing well-regarded free-jazzer Fujii in full-out rock mode, backed by a rhythm section worthy of Magma, or well, at least Ruins. Minerva, their second effort, mines similar territory — free jazz with a freewheeling, bashing rhythm section — but moves into spacier and, dare I say it, subtler ground. Fujii seems to exercise her will over the band to a greater extent on this album, with her piano coming to the fore in every piece. And luckily for the listener, her playing is impeccable.

Take "Warp," for instance: while it starts like Vulcan did, with Yoshida's bizzaro vocal noodlings that give way to some long, dreamy notes courtesy of Tamura's trumpet, the piece then breaks into an odd-time trot. Hayakawa's bass holds down a catchy (and mostly static) rhythm over which Fujii drops insistent cluster bombs, with Tamura joining only occasionally with brief mid-tempo stabs at half-melodies. Fujii's playing here is adventurous, delightful, and intense, making "Warp" the highlight of the album for me.

"Weft" and "Caught in a Web" are spacier, with Yoshida laying off his usual bang-bang style, to the point that in parts of "Weft" he might almost be mistaken for a jazz drummer. In fact, discounting structural considerations this song comes closest to a more "traditional" jazz-rock fusion aesthetic, particularly in Fujii's accessible solo two-thirds of the way through. It is followed by "Caught in a Web," which seems almost an exercise in ambience at times but closes with a real bang: a propulsive blast of fuzz-bass and then a flurry of notes from Tamura. Quite cleansing.

Minerva is the least immediately accessible of this quartet's three albums to date, at least to the listener coming from a rock background. But the rewards that it hides are greater than those of Vulcan, in my opinion, and come close to the even more spectacular Zephyros. In the end, though, if you like any of these, you'll like them all, and they all stand on their own merits." - Brandon Wu

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Don Pullen - Warriors

For Chokabert, who loves his work. One of the greatest pianists ever.

"Don Pullen developed an extended technique for the piano and a strikingly individual style, post-bop and modern, but retaining a strong feeling for the blues. He produced acknowledged masterworks of jazz in a range of formats and styles, crossing and mixing genres long before this became almost commonplace. By chance, unfortunately for his future commercial success if not for his musical development, his first contact on arriving on the New York scene was with the free players of the 1960s, with whom he recorded. It was some years later before his abilities in more straight ahead jazz playing, as well as free, were revealed to a larger audience. The variety in his music made him difficult to pigeonhole, but he always displayed a vitality that at first hearing could shock but would always engross and delight his audience.

Although Don was able to play the piano in almost any style, (the attribute that had made him so important to the wide-ranging music of Mingus) and sometimes gave the impression that there were two pianists at the keyboard, he caused most astonishment by his ability to place extremely precise singing runs or glissandi over heavy chords, reminiscent of traditional blues, while never losing contact with the melodic line. His technique for creating these runs, where he seemed to roll his right hand over and over along the keys, received much comment from critics, was studied by pianists, and heavily filmed and investigated, but could never be totally explained, even by Don who had developed it. His piano technique can be seen on the DVDs 'Mingus At Montreux 1975' and on 'Roots Salutes The Saxophones'. But it is better not to concentrate too much on his technique, especially now that he is gone from among us, and to pay attention to his depth of feeling and the intensity of improvisations, whether these were suggested by the song itself or engendered by the moment. It is easy to forget that those who come to love his music from his records may be totally unaware of his playing method. Even at his concerts, only a minority of the audience would be fully able to see his hands moving along the keyboard and be aware of exactly how he revealed the emotional outpourings of his soul." - All About Jazz

Get it

Art Ensemble of Chicago - Les Stances a Sophie

Abe request. One of the best jazz albums ever.

Yoyo

Art Ensemble of Chicago - Bap-tizum

"The Art Ensemble of Chicago is an avant-garde jazz ensemble that grew out of Chicago's AACM in the late 1960s. The group continues to tour and record through 2006, despite the deaths of two of the founding members.

The Art Ensemble is notable for its integration of musical styles spanning jazz's entire history and for their multi-instrumentalism, especially the use of what they termed “little instruments” in addition to the traditional jazz lineup; “little instruments” can include bicycle horns, bells, birthday party noisemakers, wind chimes, and a vast array of percussion instruments (including found objects). The group also uses costumes and face paint in performance. These characteristics combine to make the ensemble's performances as much a visual spectacle as an aural one, with each musician playing from behind a large array of drums, bells, gongs, and other instruments. When playing in Europe in 1969, the group were using more than 500 instruments. [1] Contents

Members of what was to become the Art Ensemble performed together under various band names in the mid-sixties, releasing their first album, Sound, as the Roscoe Mitchell Sextet in 1966. The Sextet included saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell, trumpeter Lester Bowie and bassist Malachi Favors Maghostut, who over the next year went on to play together as the Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble. In 1967 they were joined by fellow AACM members Joseph Jarman (saxophone) and Philip Wilson (drums), and made a number of recordings for Nessa.

As noted above, the musicians were all active multi-instrumentalists: Jarman and Mitchell's primary instruments were alto and tenor saxes, respectively, but they played many other saxophones (ranging from the tiny sopranino to the large bass), flutes and clarinets. In addition to trumpet, Bowie played flugelhorn, cornet, shofar and conch shells. Favors added touches of banjo and bass guitar. Over the years, most of the musicians dabbled on piano, synthesizer and other keyboards.

In 1969, Wilson left the group to join blues singer/harmonica player Paul Butterfield's band. That same year, the remaining group travelled to Paris [2], where they became known as the Art Ensemble of Chicago. The immediate impetus for the name change came from a French promoter who added “of Chicago” to their name for purely descriptive purposes, but the new name stuck because band members felt that it better reflected the cooperative nature of the group. In Paris the ensemble were based at the Théâtre des Vieux Colombier [3] and their distinctive music with percussion roles dispersed throughout the quartet was documented in a range of records on the Freedom and BYG labels. They also recorded “Comme à la radio” with Brigitte Fontaine and Areski Belkacem as a drummerless quartet before welcoming percussionist Famoudou Don Moye to the group in 1970.

In 1970 the ensemble recorded two albums with singer Fontella Bass, then Lester Bowie's wife. These were The Art Ensemble of Chicago with Fontella Bass and Les Stances A Sophie. The latter was the soundtrack from the French movie of the same title. Bass' vocals, backed by the powerful pulsating push of the band has allowed the “Theme De YoYo” to remain an underground cult classic ever since.

The ensemble returned to the United States in 1972, and the quintet of Mitchell, Jarman, Bowie, Favors and Moye remained static until 1993. Upon their return to the States, they came to prominence with two major releases on Atlantic Records: Bap-Tizum and Fanfare for the Warriers. Members of the group made the decision to restrict their appearances together, allowing each player to pursue other musical interests. It seems likely that this has contributed to the longevity of the ensemble. Despite the self-imposed limitations the Art Ensemble managed to release more than 20 studio recordings and several live albums between 1972 and 2004.

The makeup of the ensemble changed in 1993, when Jarman retired from the group to focus on his practice of Zen and Aikido. Bowie died of liver cancer in 1999, and the group continued as a trio (featuring a number of guest artists in their performances) until 2003, when Jarman rejoined the ensemble. In January of 2004 Favors Maghostut died suddenly during the recording of the group's latest album, Sirius Calling. The group was joined for their 2004 tour by trumpeter Corey Wilkes and bassist Jaribu Shahid, but it remains to be seen whether they will become permanent members of the ensemble, though a 2 CD live release by this quintet from 2004 is scheduled for release in 2006 on Pi Recordings.

Ensemble members embrace the performance art aspects of their concerts, believing that they allow the band to move beyond the strict limits of “jazz”. Their operating motto is “Great Black Music: Ancient To the Future”, which allows them to explore a wide variety of musical styles and influences; the band's distinctive appearance on stage also reflects this motto. As Jarman describes it, “So what we were doing with that face painting was representing everyone throughout the universe, and that was expressed in the music as well. That's why the music was so interesting. It wasn't limited to Western instruments, African instruments, or Asian instruments, or South American instruments, or anybody's instruments.”

Immm

Albert Ayler - Love Cry

"Of all the protagonists of free jazz, Ohio-born tenor saxophonist Albert Ayler (1936) had the shortest career (he first recorded in 1962 and committed suicide in 1970 at 34), but he nonetheless managed to articulate one of the most radical aesthetics, second only to Cecil Taylor's. He often sounded like someone who wanted to create a virtuoso art out of anti-virtuoso playing. Ayler started out playing rhythm'n'blues. By the time he landed in New York, he had developed his idiosyncratic style (notably via an unrecorded European experience with Cecil Taylor in 1962). A quartet with trumpeter Norman Howard, drummer Sunny Murray and bassist Henry Grimes recorded Spirits/ Witches and Devils (february 1964), that contains four lengthy pieces: Spirits, the twelve-minute Witches and Devils, the eleven-minute Holy Holy and Saints. Each of them sounded like it was coming from a distant past, from a remembered childhood, as it incorporated simple, naive, catchy melodies. The performance was ferocious, though, as if Ayler wanted to contrast innocence and experience, or European order and African disorder. The live Prophecy (june 1964) introduced his trio with double bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Sunny Murray, and added Ghosts (his most famous theme), Wizard and Prophecy to his exoteric canon. That trio was responsible for one of the most revolutionary recordings of the era, Spiritual Unity (july 1964), the (brief) album that made it explicit how Ayler was not interested in creating music out of notes but out of timbres, how his music was not a harmonic construction but a "soundscape". These new versions of Ghosts, Spirits and Wizard were delivered according to an apparently demented logic that mixed melodies inspired by folk tunes and nursery rhymes with emotional bursts of saxophone noises simulating the human voice. Murray's percussions (more cymbals than drums) had little to do with keeping the time: they produced a flow of disorienting noises that intersected and amplified Ayler's saxophone noises. By now, Ayler had refined his melodramatic vibrato. The "free" approach permeated the two side-long improvisations of New York Eye And Ear Control (july 1964), AY and ITT, with the trio augmented with trumpeter Don Cherry on cornet, Roswell Rudd on trombone and John Tchicai on alto, although the result was far less tight than on Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz (1960), proving that Ayler was a different spirit from the free-jazz crowd. The trio and Don Cherry returned to a humbler format with Vibrations/ Ghosts (september 1964), that added Children (actually just a fast variant of Holy Holy), the moving ballad Holy Spirit (with a spectacular Cherry solo), Vibrations and Mothers to the canon, and The Hilversum Session (november 1964), that introduced Angels in a tense mid-tempo version. Donald Ayler replaced Don Cherry for the one-sided LP Bells (may 1965), containing just one 20-minute track (fundamentally a madcap medley of marches and nursery rhymes) also featuring altoist Charles Tyler and bassist Lewis Worrell besides Sunny Murray. Spirits Rejoice (september 1965), particularly its title-track (performed by Donald Ayler, Sunny Murray, altoist Charles Tyler, bassists Henry Grimes and Gary Peacock), marked a transition towards a more religious mood and a regression towards the collective improvisation of New Orleans' brass bands. Spirits Rejoice basically revisited the format of Bells in a more organic and structured way, picking up along the way an impressive amount of debris of musical stereotypes. Holy Ghost (july 1967) documents a live performance with Don Ayler on trumpet, Michel Sampson on violin, Bill Folwell on bass and Milford Graves on drums (particularly Truth Is Marching In/Omega and Our Prayer). Ayler considerably toned down his music on In Greenwich Village (december 1966) and Love Cry (august 1967), that featured Donald Ayler on trumpet, Call Cobbs on harpsichord, Alan Silva on bass and Milford Graves on drums, and eventually returned to his rhythm'n'blues roots. After some kind of hippie-like spiritual crisis, Ayler turned to jazz-rock, soul and funk music, adding lyrics by a vocal singer, notably on Music Is The Healing Force of the Universe (august 1969). By employing a virtually unlimited repertory of tricks and a rich vibrato, Ayler expanded the vocabulary of the saxophone, but, most importantly, he did so while staging a multi-dimensional regression to a simpler age of music (whether the catchy folkish melodies or the military tempos or the collective improvisation of the marching bands). Ayler seemed to fuse the musical background of the pre-industrial society with an impulse towards the expressionistic cacophony of the industrial society. At the same time, his saxophone often seemed to intone shamanic invocations except to derail into frenzied explosions of vitality. Underlying all these contradictions was Ayler's exploration of sound for the sake of sound, that accounted for a completely new idea of music, away from the pillars of harmony, melody and rhythm. That was, ultimately, an exploration of the human psyche. Thus, at several levels of introspection and metaphor, Ayler's art was a mirror of society. Ayler's was the music of the collective unconscious." - Scaruffi

He once said the patch in his goatee was evidence that God had marked him as someone who would change the course of history. He was right.

Love Cry

Supersilent - 1

Supersilent are:

Helge Sten (electronics, guitars, keyboards)

Ståle Storløkken (keyboards, synth, electronics)

Jarle Vespestad (drums)

Arve Henriksen (trumpet, voice, drums, electronics)

Cream of the crop of Scandinavian jazz and avant garde scenes, Supersilent play an incredibly energetic mixture of free improvisation with fearsome sound processing and inner ear-burning analog circuitry dead in the center.

"In the course of these long improvisations (each disc contains a track at least 25 minutes long and many others reach 15 minutes), the group moves through countless moods, drawing from ecstatic jazz, avant rock, noise, and electro-acoustics to produce captivating music that pushes far into experimentation and yet remains immediate, even at times accessible." - François Couture

This is the first album of the initial trilogy.

Audio Virus

The Flying Luttenbachers - Constructive Destruction

And thus, the Luttenbachers and their improv terror tactics were born. The Weasel Walter-led collective rumages through godforsaken landscapes of pure retina burning noise prog jazz abandonment that'll leave mouths agape and more than a few saying "stop that shit it's fucking obscene!". Xenakis meets Magma in Ayler's rehearsal space. For more about the great Weasel, go here.

I know some coffeehouses I would love to see become ashes

Exploding Star Orchestra - We Are All From Somewhere Else

The Exploding Star Orchestra is, for this recording:

Rob Mazurek – Composer, Director, Cornet, Electronics
Nicole Mitchell – Flutes, Voice
Jeb Bishop - Trombone
Corey Wilkes - Flugelhorn
Josh Berman - Cornet
Matt Bauder - Bass Clarinet, Tenor Saxophone
Jeff Parker - Guitar
Jim Baker – Piano, ARP Synthesizer, Pianette
Jason Adasiewicz - Vibraphone
John McEntire – Marimba, Tubular Bells, Edits, Recording Engineer
Matt Lux - Electric Bass Guitar
Jason Ajemian - Acoustic Bass
Mike Reed – Drums, Percussion, Saw
John Herndon - Drums

"We Are All From Somewhere Else is comprised of 3 distinct sections, and corresponds to a story involving an exploding star, cosmic transformation, a sting ray, the travels of the sting ray, intelligent conversations with electric eels, the destructive power of humans, the death and ascension of sting ray, the transformation of sting ray ghost to flying bird, and the transformation of bird to phoenix to rocket to flying burning matter to a new-born star.

Says Mazurek, “I could clearly see and hear the events as a kind of animated adult/children’s story that could be presented in book or video form. In the end you have a poem text based on the original story line that is then flipped backwards to reveal another perspective on the poem. The flipped text was orchestrated by Portuguese video artist and conceptualist Joao Simoes, while I was in Lisbon making final preparations for the release of this recording.”

As the arrangements of the parts of the pieces came together it became more and more evident that Nicole Mitchell’s flutes would play a major role in the realization of the music. That said the intent of the music is not to featuring individual players (although this very well could have featured any individual in the group, as they are all very strong soloists and improvisers) it is more about the projection of a certain sound pertaining to imagination and the trajectory of the sound as movement in time and space, weaving patterns and non-patterns around and inside the idea of the poem. The overall organic approach included actual organic sounds - for example, the sounds of electric eels recorded by Mazurek at INPA research laboratory in Manaus. The juxtaposition of two drums, two basses, two mallets, multiple flutes, two cornets, bass clarinet, ARP synthesizer, guitar, trombone, voices and flugelhorn all played important roles in the development of the final sound.

“Psycho-Tropic Electric Eel Dream” is a group improvisation centered around the sound of electric eels. The electric eel tanks Mazurek recorded at INPA contain two species of eels, Pulsating and Waveform. The sound was recorded in a special tank of 15-20 eels of various sub-species, each with its own tone. The results are fascinating tonal clusters not unlike the sound of violins. This track reveals the beauty of these fine creatures and juxtaposes our improvisation with them, and concludes with spoken word by Rob Mazurek (“Robert Ashley was in my head during this part”), some ARP by Jim Baker and some final cascades of Nicole’s flute, which was snuck into the recording on the bass amp mic sitting in the hallway while Nicole was playing in another room. “Black Sun” features Jim Baker’s lovely piano playing. “This piece was originally written for the great French pianist Jeanne-Pierre Armengaud,” says Mazurek, “who I had the pleasure of working with at Abbaye Royale de Fontevraud in France during my residency there.” What you hear is Jim’s emotionally charged and understated improvisation on the theme of the composition. The sound corresponds perfectly to the text/poem of the recording in which the death of the stingray is a new re-birth of the bird and eventually a new star.

“Cosmic Tomes” starts out with storm sounds from the Amazon reversed. The powerful first section reveals a wide-open improvisation on a specific theme and then deconstructed through 3 harmonic centers. The Cornet is that of composer and leader Mazurek. Corey Wilkes’ poignant flugelhorn plays an important role within the center of the piece and for a moment he takes off in a more grand gesture. The song then melts into the second part of this suite; repeated lines based on the last harmonic chord of the first section find the bass taking the lead and Matt Bauder’s two tenor parts and bass clarinet part playing a major role. One hears Jeff Parker’s guitar, Jeb Bishop`s trombone, Josh Berman`s cornet, Matt Lux`s electric bass, Jim Baker`s modified piano, Nicole Mitchell`s flute, and some excellent cutting, filtering post-production work by John McEntire. Part 3 of “Cosmic Tomes” is meant as a kind of prayer or meditation on the idea of unity in the world/universe.

“15 Ways of Looking at a Finite Universe” is a quick piece inspired by the Anna Levine book "How the Universe got its Spots”, and catapults the recording into the last piece, “part 5,” In which we travel back to space, birthing or re-birthing new galaxies. Nicole Mitchell’s flute floats over the thick harmonics with Matt Bauder`s bass clarinet doubling the bass of Matt Lux and Jason Ajemian, creating the foundation for the sweet melodic interplay."

Powerful freeform excursions featuring the cream of the crop of Chicago's improv/post-rock scenes. Beautiful.

Tomes

Amon Düül II - Yeti

My favorite Krautrock album and one of my fav albums of all time, period. Amon Düül II were "the second incarnation of the Amon Duul entity, originally a political commune in Germany that happened to record their extended, drugged-out jam sessions." Yeti's a double album that's one half composed music and one half improvised. It's extremely unique and still blows my mind every time I listen to it.... Wait till you hear the 18 minute long improvised title track.

Julian Cope's take on it:

"The definitive 'progressive' Krautrock double album. This album should be included in the top 50 albums of all time, ever. It destroys the credibility of so many of the so called 'great' progressive bands of this era. It should form part of a European national curriculum and be enshrined as part of our great musical constitution. It is a huge huge success and should be lauded as such. It is absolutely crammed with riffs and rolls without ever drifting into the realms of pretenious meaningless drivel. Think of the great sounds of the Kinks, Stooges, Fairport Convention, Pink Floyd, Can, Traffic etc, mix it all together and chuck it through a mincer and you end up with Yeti. If you think that you know about your musical history then you will need to own a copy of this album."

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