Д.Д.

Good to see a critical note about Brötzmann. I've been hearing "mindless clichés" in his playing for some time now (even in quite a few of his older efforts), and I thought it was me... ← Hans, my opinion of Brötzmann's music became much critical after I heard his discs which were simply on the different level compared to everythng I had heard from him before 14 love poems and Live in Berlin - '71. Both of these are among my favorite CDs right now, and here you can hear Brötzmann at his very best - diverse, creative, thoughtful and challenging himslef. Many of the other Brötzmann's discs sound like little bits were sampled out of either of the twoe records and looped for 45 minutes... Thinking of it, I thought No one ever works alone by Sonore (Okka) from last year was really good. ← where does 'live at the 'bottle' fest 2005' fall for you? Its one of the year's better releases to my ears. ← Haven't heard it.

If you are willing to ship international, I'll take it.

Good to see a critical note about Brötzmann. I've been hearing "mindless clichés" in his playing for some time now (even in quite a few of his older efforts), and I thought it was me... ← Hans, my opinion of Brötzmann's music became much critical after I heard his discs which were simply on the different level compared to everythng I had heard from him before 14 love poems and Live in Berlin - '71. Both of these are among my favorite CDs right now, and here you can hear Brötzmann at his very best - diverse, creative, thoughtful and challenging himslef. Many of the other Brötzmann's discs sound like little bits were sampled out of either of the twoe records and looped for 45 minutes... Thinking of it, I thought No one ever works alone by Sonore (Okka) from last year was really good.

I was having a search for Brotzmann & this post came up & I noticed your last comment John. It looks as if it has been a relatively quite year for his releases .Am I right in thinking these are all of this years new releases ? The Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet Be Music, Night (OD12059) peter brötzmann & nasheet waits live at the 'bottle' fest 2005 brö A peter brötzmann & han bennink still quite popular after all those years brö 4 ← There is one Brötzmann release on Kilogram records: North Quartet - "Malamute" Peter Brötzmann - alto & tenor saxophones, metal Bb clarinet Mikolaj Trzaska - alto & C melody saxophones & bass clarinet Peter Friis Nielsen - bass Peeter Uuskyla - drums An (14 minute!) MP3 here sounds GOOD (don't take this praise coming from me lightly - I have been severaly over-Brötzmann'd recently, growing less and less interested in his recent output: his solo "Petrogliphs" (Long Arms) is total bullshit, and his playing with Eneidi's trio on "Live at the Spruce street Forum" (Boticelli) is all just an exercise in mindless clichés).

Tony, if you liked this Butcher/Edwards duo, you might enjoy Butcher / Edwards / Dunmall "Hit and run" (FMP). Half of the disc is Butcher/Edwards duo, and the other half is Dunmall/Edwards (with Dunmall playig bagpipes mostly. Mayhem!). And there is one short track with all three playing together.

Total Music Meetin, Berlin, day 2 1. John Butcher (ts, ss) Gino Robair (dr, perc, live electronics) Excellent, as expected. Interestigly, RObair did not do much drumming per se but mostly focused on producing high-pitch dronin sounds from percussion (including a long secion of "bowed cymball"). Clever music with a lot of listening. 2. SOLO-TOMBAK (IRAN/D) Mohammad Reza Mortazavi (tombak, daf) Good one. Mortavizi is a traditionally-trained Iranian drummer who went into extended drumming techniques. I felt that he still was very much entrenched in the tradition, going into groves quite often (the audience loved it). 3. MAYAS / NUTTERS / OLSEN / GALVEZ QUARTET (NL/Norway/Spain) Magda Mayas (p) Carlos Galvez Taroncher (bcl) Koen Nutters (b) Morten J. Olsen (dr, perc) Nothing special - typical piontillistic European academic improv. Well played, but dry and boring. 4. TOUCH THE EARTH - BREAK THE SHELLS Wadada Leo Smith (tp, flh) Barre Phillips (b) Gьnter ґBabyґ Sommer (dr, perc) After disastrous Wadada Leo Smith solo concert the previous night, I was apprehensive about this one - and rightly so, it turned out. Nothing interesting happened during the first 20 minutes (with Smith being the main problem, IMO), so I left. Went to a disco and enjoyed it immensely.

I thought Leimguber looked OK. Whilte playing he seemed extremelly concentrated. Little I've heard of Schoof and Dudek on record I like (Schoof on Waldron's One-Upmanship, Waldron's best disc, IMO and DUdek on excellent trio session Open with Vesala andd Nebeirgall reissued recently by Atavistic, and on some good mainstream disc on Konnex) - but yesterday they were just going through the motions. Dudek was totally overshadowed by Canneloni.

Total Music Meeting in Berlin, day 1. 1. Prof. Dr. Markus Lüpertz and Band / TTT (Germany) Markus Lüpertz (piano) Prof. Manfred Schoof (trumpet) Frank Wollny (bass) Frank Köllges (drums) Jesus Canneloni (woodwinds) Gerd Dudek (woodwinds) Wolfgang Lackerschmid (vibraphone) Peter Sandkaulen (g) Well, I suspected that if somebody mentiones that he is "Prof. and Dr." in a concert program, the music is likely to be bullshit - and so it was, nothing to talk about. The only positive element was Jesus Canneloni's powerful tenor playing. Would be interested in hearing what the man is up outside of the copmany of Dr. and Prof. 2. OING - klaffende leere (Germany) fьr schlagspieler und materialsack Hans-Joachim Hespos (composition) Ulrik Spies (perc) Started with Spies slowly and theatrically dragging a huge bag with various percussive junk, an then thundorously pouring at all out in front of the stage. Five munutes of pretty frentic drumming over the top of a pile followed. Was quite entertaining, I would not have minded it benig longer. 3. TRIO WING VANE (CH/F/USA) Urs Leimgruber (ts, ss) Jacques Demierre (p) Barre Phillips (b) This one was stunning. Words fail to describe it. Leimgruber, who was the main driver and focus of the performance, created so much beauty with seemingly non-musical sounds on soprano (with every single puff, breath, squeak and hiss falling into place and contributing to a very coherent and fascinating story). Not a single sound random or wasted. Demierre mostly played some dark low-pitch background "sound cloud" against which Leimgruber's constructions sounded particularly mancing. Phillips was excellent as well, mostly in a supportive role, either providing conterpoint to Leimgruber, or contributing with his arco to the Demierre's dark atmospheric wonders. In the middle of a set, Leimgriber took his tenor and surprisingly produced a short powerful and virtuostic free jazz firework - absolutely on par with the most relentless screamers. The trio has two CDs - one on Victo and one on psi, and I'll be definitely buying both. After this, the rest was a let down. 4. SOLO TRUMPET & MORE (USA) Wadada Leo Smith (tp, flh, comp) I was sleeping through most of the set, so can't say much. What I heard failed to keep me awake for too long - lack of direction and ideas, more like a set of exercieses with richness of gimmicks (loops, wah-wahs, etc.) making it all more unfocused. 5. FURT + EVAN PARKER (GB) Richard Barrett (computer) Paul Obermayer (sampling) Evan Parker (ts, ss) Evan Parker has become a machine, this is abolsutely clear to me. He played exactly the same soprano solo I've heard him live and on record from the last 15 years or so - with one variation: in addition to this whirling circular stream of sounds, there was an additional whistling sound with slkowy-changing pitch added on top (for the first 15 minutes of the concert I frrankly was sure this was done by the electronics guys). So he is progressing on the path of producing more sounds simultanously - amen to that. All sounded very bombastic, mindless and superficial compared to what Leimgriber was playing on the same instrument an hour before. Electronics guys on the other hand were very entertaining, throwing some funny sounds and creating very busy (and, it seemed to me, openly mocking) comentary to Parker's sound diarrhea. There were some sampled harps, clavecines, persussion, etc - all at fast very tempo. Also, the guys broke the stereotype of laptop performance being boring to look at - they were extremely animated, jumping on their seats with their hands flying all over their gear. Their contribution made the set overall quite enjoyable, although after 25 minutes it all became a bit predictable (not Parker, of course - he became predictable on minute one).

Good news.

Upcomong release on FMP: FACETTEN Fred Van Hove / Wolfgang Fuchs Live @ Total Music Meeting 2004 a/l/l 012

Nabatov on hatOLOGY is so-so - fairly regular, way-too-many notes (from Nabatov and from the drummer) muscular hard-bop stuff. What amazed me so much was how more thoughtful (and much less voluble) he is on Chat Room than anywhere else I've heard him.

Thanks Tony. I'll get it.

He didn't answer any of my (friendly) e-mails, not even when I asked him about ordering directly from Leo Records and payment methods. I guess he just wasn't interested. He's lost me as a customer. ← Could it be you were using the wrong e-mail? He changed his e-mail earlier this year to leorecords at blueyonder.co.uk, so his old e-mail leorec at atlas.co.uk is not functional anymore.

I may have to temporarily suspend that boycott that you insisted on instituting. ← I am actually really surprised Leo has not responded to you. Might have been busy screwing up all these stubbornly naive artists over and over again (is this something like 10th Leo release with Ms. Leandre or what? *). Haven't listened to any music in last couple of weeks (well, nearly - some beautiful Afro-pop stuff like Salif Keita and Oumou Sangare), but will catch up soon, as I plan to visit the Total Musis Meeting in Berlin later this week. ----------------- * - I counted - it's 11th. Lookng through the list of Ms. Leanndre's works on Leo, I remembered what a beautiful and funny disc E'vero, her duo with (Italian Instabile Orchestra) trombonist Sebi Tramontana is. Highly, highly recommended. Still didn't manage to listen to Lenadre's duo with Lacy One more time till the end - first couple of attempts didn't leave me too inspired. Now having started looking into this, what a massive discography Ms. Leandre have: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~ps/efi/mleandre.html ! I would be interested in hearing this John Cage #4 disc...

New release on Leo. Interested, Tony?

DTM might have it - it's not on their website, but I saw it in their store when I was there a month ago. I might even have picked it up, but I am not sure .

Now how can I resist ordering from Beak after reading this?

Busy with other things, really - haven't even listened to music for a couple of weeks, and probably won't be able to for another three weeks or so. Will be "back" to ratty business in November.

Fiasko records

I finally received a copy of this yesterday from DMG. I am so excited about this group! They can really stretch a melody and work it into something fresh. Thanks very much for the recommendation. Looks like Tails Out is next on my list. ← I also orderd it as a part of DMG DIW sale - looking forward to hearing it.

The label (including DDQ in addtiton to Black Saint and Soul Note) is still moderately active, and releases some excellent music. In addtion to the ones mentioend above, I would recommend John Carter's "Dauwhe" - a beautiful epic work for a large band, and Glenn Spearman's "Free Worlds". And Lindberg's "Catbird sings". There is really a lot of good stuff in the catalog.

Would highly recommend getting Fly, Fly, Fly (INTAKT) - one of the best releases of 2004, IMO. THanks for the reviews. Would have loved to see McPhee / Brötzmann duo, even though I am not that much of a trumpet-playing-McPhee fan. From seeing the men live (with Zerang and Kessler), I'd agree that McPhee is the ears of the two.

SLAM news: *****October 2005 ***** New releases: “Vesuvius” (SLAMCD 262). Alex Von Schlippenbach piano, Paul Dunmall tenor saxophone, Tony Bianco drums, Paul Rogers 7 string bass. “Amherst Dislodged” (SLAMCD 263). Tim Crowther guitar, guitar synth. Steve Franklin keyboards, Tony Marsh drums.

I have a feeling that some of those are form 2004. I know that this is to coinside with the operations year of the magazines Nate writes for, but then it's a bit silly - "the best of October 2004 - October 2005"? "The best of what we listened to in 2005, regardless of when it was released"? Thanks for recommending this one. Great indeed! I got this one as well! - haven't listend to it yet. I'm, on EMANEM mailing list for a couple of years now, and this is the first time they announce a sale.

...WE [downtownmusicgallery] ARE ABLE TO OFFER 110 OF THE [DIW and AVANT] TITLES AT PRICES FAR LOWER THAN WHEN THEY WERE AVAILABLE BACK THEN, NOW AT PRICES of $12, $10, and even $8 each!!! .