Д.Д.

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!!! .

Looking forward to hearing.

Great to see Soseditions following up with a new release - the first release (DOneda/Wright/Nakatani) was fantastic. My only exposure to Meehan's music is his duo with Sachiko M which I did not have the nerves of listening to for longer than 3 minutes - beacuse of Ms. Sachiko's sine waves, though. Would be interested to hear what meehan is about alone. At the same time, I am not sure I will jump on this new release immidiately - $31 (plus "small post fee") is probably not what I am willing to pay for a CD, even a double one.

The short Roscoe Mitchell piece is the one I liked the most, and that l o o o o o n g g g g g g Pauline Oliveros track is just overkill.

← Interesting (if not too optimistic) read. Curiously enough I just listened for the first time to Phillip Greenlief's solo Stalking Andrei (Evander), and the first impression is not so positive: these are mostly compositions (by Roscoe Mitchell, Joelle Leandre, Frank Gratkowski, Pauline Oliveros, Greenlief himself and others), and despite Greenlief's unquestionable excellent chops and no shortage of ideas, it is all just too dry, academis and somewhere more on the practice exercise level. Negative impression was exacerbated due to the fact that I was listening to John Butcher's brillaint Thirteen friendly numbers on and on for last three days. For Greenlief, I would highly recommend his Lost Trio recordings - much morein the mainstream vein, though.

New Leo Records releases. I do plan to buy some of those, as well as other Leo issues - despite a certain controvercy surrounding Leo practices (see a couple of pages up). I very much share Tony's concern for the rights of musicians, but the conclusion I make is that creative muscians are grown-up people who just as all other people should understand the weigh of their actions. If more and more musicians chose to go with Leo records (as it seems to happen; both new and return artists), then this is the best option of those avialable to them (and there is definitely enough resources out there to make a well-informed decision about various options). If this is their deliberate choice, I am not going to have any moral torments about it.

I am eyeing this for some time now. Will get it eventually, of course.

Hey David, have you heard Clinkers? There are solo ones and solo ones While Gokhan is not posting more of his impressions from Mulhouse, here is a short but wild flick from Barry Guy's Orchestra perfomance (3,4 Mb) ← Clinkers is great.