Small Medium Large (SML) Window Sill Song

SML · Jeremiah Chiu · Gregory Uhlmann · Josh Johnson · Booker Stardrum · Anna Butterss Small Medium Large ℗ 2024 International Anthem Espécie de super grupo de Los Angeles em estreia na International Anthem, o quinteto de Anna Butterss, Jeremiah Chiu, Josh Johnson, Booker Stardrum e Gregory Uhlmann não passa sem nos fazer lembrar as composições mais sintetizadas de Herbie Hancock - e não fosse a terceira faixa do disco chamar-se “Herbie for Commercials”. mas tudo vai além disso: há aqui uma liberdade de mudança entre paisagens, de uma mestria da gramática dos sons que é raro encontrarmos noutros lugares - em “Rubber Tree Dance”, mais pelo fim, a naturalidade com que revertem o sentido da faixa e desaguam num mar de sons etéreos, calmos e bonitos - potenciados por efeitos e pelas técnicas de estúdio - é fascinante. Improvisações circulares e cruas editadas e arranjadas resultaram no que ouvimos no disco. Há funk, jazz, música ambiental com laivos de new age (não fosse Chiu membro integrante deste projecto), tudo ancorado por ritmos electrónicos e com uma improvisação de tom mais freak, psicadélica, como mote. Um piscar de olhos aos delírios kraut e jazz com inovações texturais electrónicas? Música de dança fora do baralho? As influências cictadas corroboram isto: Pole, Susumu Yokota, Can, Fela Kuti, Herbie Hancock. Encontram tudo aqui no novo International Anthem. Flur one of the best 2024 album Sounding at various points like a contemporary electronic dance record, On the Corner–style 1970s fusion, or 1980s New York mutant disco like Liquid Liquid and ESG, the West Coast quintet SML’s first album is constructed from live improvisations transformed through postproduction editing and processing. The group has its roots in Jeff Parker’s Los Angeles jazz venue ETA, which closed last year; bassist Anna Butterss and saxophonist Josh Johnson are also both on Parker’s superlative double album this year, The Way Out of Easy. Circular and raw improvisations edited and arranged resulted in the album. There is funk, jazz, environmental music with hints of new age (if it weren't for Chiu being an integral member of this project), all anchored by electronic rhythms and with a more freaky, psychedelic improvisation as the motto. A nod to kraut and jazz delirium with electronic textural innovations? Dance music off the deck? The influences cited corroborate this: Pole, Susumu Yokota, Can, Fela Kuti, Herbie Hancock. But the shimmery, pulsing sound of SML, with its synthesizers, guitars, percussion, and loops, has the potential to entice a listenership not usually drawn to free-jazz types, perhaps the way Chicago’s Tortoise did in the 1990s—with the squared-off anti-funk of “Industry,” for instance, or the near-ambient pit-a-pat of “Window Sill Song.” Enfield Tennis Academy. The tiny Los Angeles cocktail bar, with its specialty in avant-garde jazz and a name that winked at David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, dodged any accusations of snobbishness by cutting out the usual strictures: no two-drink minimum, no ban on talking or cell phones, and for a while at least, no cover charge. ETA became a destination for the new jazz scene’s westward migration from Chicago to L.A.; a weekly improv session led by Tortoise and Isotope 217 guitarist Jeff Parker was the highlight of the schedule, and a phenomenal recording of those shows, 2022’s Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy, finally let the world know what was happening in the cramped back space of that long, narrow club. But despite its momentum, ETA officially shut down at the end of 2023, closing another chapter in the history of West Coast jazz.

CP Unit, Before The Heat Death - Quantized - Brandon Seabrook · Tim Dahl · Weasel Walter · Chris Pitsiokos

CP Unit, Before The Heat Death (Clean Feed) Ever since extreme-music overlord Weasel Walter took Chris Pitsiokos under his wing in 2012, the saxophone wunderkind has been a major player in Brooklyn’s DIY jazz and experimental underground. In late 2016, Pitsiokos and his Quartet offered up One Eye with a Microscope Attached quickly followed by the early 2017 release of his CP Unit’s Before the Heat Death, a godhead assault that channels the downtown free-improv mayhem of John Zorn, the ecstatic groove throw downs of electric-era Ornette Coleman and the proggy precision of Walter’s Flying Luttenbachers. Fittingly, it’s Walter and his Lydia Lunch Retrovirus bandmate, bassist Tim Dahl on drums and bass respectively, holding the chaotic fort, giving free rein to Pitsiokos and guitarist Brandon Seabrook to go batshit-crazy with a brutal punk-jazz monolith that calls to mind no wavers like James Chance and the Contortions, DNA and John Lurie and The Lounge Lizards.

Crown Larks Population 2017 - Stranger (Unce Down to the New Store)

7) Crown Larks, Population (Already Dead) From the land of post-rock, Shellac, Thrill Jockey Records and The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), comes yet another group making a holy racket, albeit under-the-radar, in Chicago’s underground scene and beyond: Crown Larks. On Population, the follow-up to 2015’s Blood Dancer, the adventurous, free spirited noisemakers in Crown Larks form a psychedelic rainbow colored by soaring alto sax and flute-driving pirouettes, tribal-centric polyrhythmic action and organ-drenched post-jazz freak-outs on a Kraut-rock bender and topped by the cathartic wails of vocalists Jack Bouboushian and Lorraine Bailey. 10 Best Experimental Albums of 2017 So Far From interstellar rock to electro-samba to psych-jazz spirituality and back 10)Colin Stetson, All This I Do For Glory (50HZ) 9-Dálava, The Book of Transfigurations (Songlines) 8-Bearthoven, Trios (Cantaloupe Music) 7) Crown Larks, Population (Already Dead) 6- Mako Sica, Invocation (Feeding Tube) 5) Conformity Contortion (Sara Lund and Thollem Electric), Perception Management (Personal Archives) 4-Bill Brovold & Jamie Saft, Serenity Knolls (RareNoise) 3) Arto Lindsay, Cuidado Madame (Northern Spy) 2-Joshua Abrams & Natural Information Society, Simultonality (Eremite) 1) CP Unit, Before The Heat Death (Clean Feed) Ever since extreme-music overlord Weasel Walter took Chris Pitsiokos under his wing in 2012, the saxophone wunderkind has been a major player in Brooklyn’s DIY jazz and experimental underground. In late 2016, Pitsiokos and his Quartet offered up One Eye with a Microscope Attached quickly followed by the early 2017 release of his CP Unit’s Before the Heat Death, a godhead assault that channels the downtown free-improv mayhem of John Zorn, the ecstatic groove throw downs of electric-era Ornette Coleman and the proggy precision of Walter’s Flying Luttenbachers. Fittingly, it’s Walter and his Lydia Lunch Retrovirus bandmate, bassist Tim Dahl on drums and bass respectively, holding the chaotic fort, giving free rein to Pitsiokos and guitarist Brandon Seabrook to go batshit-crazy with a brutal punk-jazz monolith that calls to mind no wavers like James Chance and the Contortions, DNA and John Lurie and The Lounge Lizards.

huggy bear - her jazz 7"

The 50 Greatest UK Indie Records Of All Time From the fringes of the mainstream come 50 records of romance and revolt. INSPIRED BY PUNK, angered by Thatcher and in love with ’60s culture, the UK indie scene produced some of the greatest (and oddest) pop records of all time. It all began on December 28, 1976 at Indigo Studios on Gartside Street in Manchester. The Buzzcocks had just recorded and mixed four songs destined for the Spiral Scratch EP. A month later the EP would be released on the band’s own New Hormones label, in the process spawning a scene of musicians, songwriters and labels hell-bent on doing it for themselves. Forged in the political turmoil of the late ’70s and early ’80s, labels such as Postcard, Creation, Factory, Zoo and Rough Trade emerged as maverick flag-bearers of a new eclectic indie aesthetic. The DIY revolution had begun and British pop would never be the same again. From Aztec Camera to Arctic Monkeys, Felt to Franz Ferdinand, Swell Maps to The Smiths, here are MOJO’s 50 essential albums, EPs and singles of homegrown genius.