Д.Д.

allen/drake/jordan/parker/silva the all-star game mte-44 marshall allen alto saxophone hamid drake drums edward 'kidd' jordan tenor saxophone william parker bass (right channel) alan silva bass (left channel) Nice, if not essentail disc. Jordan particuarly shines here - eloquant elaborate constructions, beautiful sound, great diversity. Less intense and aggressive here than elsewhere I've heard him - some bluesy and even lyrical moments creep in. Great master searching and "stretching" himself quite a bit here. Bravo. Allen is less diverse, and mostly sticks to quite primitive but effective and powerful wails on alto (with really powerful sound!) - in good coordination with what Jordan is doing. Silva is doing some very interesting stuff on bass, playing with feedback and distrortion, doing some frenzied arco and a lot a lot a lot of other things - not too rhythm-focused, as rhythm duties are carried out by Parker. Of Drake and Parker I will just say that there is nothing in their playing here that will change my opinion about the level of their creativity. Overall, good fire-music type of free jazz, and Jordan's playing (probably the best I heard him on disc so far, and I've been a devoted fan already) is worth hearing it.

That's human nature, I guess... Like Maslak says in the aforementioned interview, " If people think that free jazz or jazz is any different they're crazy. <...> It is just the same as the pop world. It is just on a much smaller level." Sasha, I wouldn't think so. Caretive music "business" is somewhat different if only because gaining money is not the main driving force behind it. People who go into creative music "business" as record label owners do not do it for the money (otherwise, they have to be really naive) - they do it because they have an urge of getting the music they are pasionate about out there to the public (however small it is) - just as musicians do not play creative music to make money (although some brave souls keep tryign to make a leaving like this) - they just have an (unexplicable) urge to play this music. Let's say some creative music label owner invests all his money (this is normally how it happens) in releasing as much as possible non-commercial music --> he then screws up the musicians with payments --> he reinvests all the (little) money he gets this way into releasing more creative music --> he screws up more musicians --> etc. Unless this unscrupoluos record label owner stops this cycle one day, which is doubtful, this is not particualrly a money-making business model for him. Most likely quite the opposite, as the more he releases, the more "risky" (and money-losing) his releases are likely to become. So this is not the money that is in the root of the problems we occasionally see inthe creative music environment. When money is not the main motivation, it shouold not be the main problem source - then, these have to be ego clashes, which is also something I cannot understand as the worldwide creative music community is so tiny it does not make any sense to fragment it artificially. Conclusion? I guess it's all just human nature

Curious what you think of their other duos, like Jet Lag or Friends Afar - or Dear John Cage? To me, they're all going in one direction, namely mocking everything and fooling around with no respect to artistic values, the latest being the most perverse I understand it can easily be unlistenable indeed Don't have those ones, and not that interested in investigating (at the moment). David, do you know the story behind this particular release? It's in this interview (which is worth reading IMO). To put it short, Maslak remastered it from his only (and scratchy) LP copy, because Leo took all the tapes. Never knew about this. I can't understand it - the world of improivised music is already tough enough from the standpoint of financial reward - why create additional artificial problems on the top of it? Interesting, haven't heard this one. On Hum Ha, I've been especially wondering about all these recent recordings with Toyozumi, a remarkable musician himself (and I think Maslak is a quite good sax player, judging from what little I've heard - mostly with Kuryokhin, live and on CDs)... ← Don't know Toyozumi... Will check him out. Maslak is definitely a very strong player.

Presense of Phil Minton keeps me a bit apprehensive about this one. How is his contribution on this disc?

Yeah, I did. I have some duo with Kuryokhin, and it is unlistenable - two guys just fooling around with cheapo synthethisers and singing. Might have been fun for them, but of no artistic value. THe other one I have is Humanplexity - and earlier work with Mengelberg and Bennink (once released on Leo, but hen deleted from the catalog) - some pretty wild reckless stuff, but quite badly recorded, and also the CD-R seem to be of bad quality - I have some ugly distortion on my copy. If you do not have it yet, I'd say go for Mother Russia (Leo) first - if only for the duo with Vapirov.

Boys and girls, Leo Records has an Autumn Sale, and a pretty nice one: 3 CDs for £11 (including shipping worldwide). For dollar-philes, this is $20 for 3 CDs. The items on sale are: all by Keshavan Maslak (of which Mother Russia is highly recommended) all by Ivo Perelman (of which The Hammer is wholeheartedly recommended) all by Jefry Stevens & Joe Fonda (not a fan) all by Dominic Duval & Herb Robertson (Undersound II is a must! Asylem is a good one also) all by Eugene Chadbourne all by Hartmut Geerken , AEoC and John Tchicai (I'd say tha Geerken / Tchicai / Moye discs are essential) The sale is valid till September 30th.

Win this time is the most jazzy title in the Limited Sedition catalog I've heard. Golia is a bit show-offish here, but he does have what to show. [ ← Listening to 'win this time' for the first time. Is there really only a market for 113 CDs of such quality music? George Cremaschi on bass sounds particularly exciting. ← Well, it took Tony nearly two years to persuade you to get a copy - how long do you think it will it take to get "the masses" to follow?

Tony, it's good. Not groundbreaking or particularly revelatory, but good. There are 5 or 6 different sessions on these 3 discs - from solo to larger bands. Miller is a good bassist, but Kowald (or Leander, if you wish) he is not, so solo and duo sessions left me not entirely satisfied. But larger group sessions are very nice (with some brillaint playing of Harry Beckett, Tevor Watts, Sean Bergin, Louis Moholo... Bennink also, I think) - all somewhere in the early Ornette territory with a lot of this joyful tuneful South African thing (which I enjoy, but in limited doses). But these are merely first impressions - I need to spend more time with this set.

Sure. I'll just finish listening to this one: and will go for the Butcher. My expectations are high - I was very impressd by every single Butcher CD I've heard so far.

I was lookng through the pile of unlistened to discs, and found a couple of unosounds releases (bought at CD Baby, I guess): John Butcher's solo and Butcher/Lehn/Moor disc. They go to the top of the pile.

Friends, I got J. J. Johnson Mosaic set a couple of weeks ago, and just can't get enought of it. This is some of the most beautifully organized and executed music I've ever heard. The set is "running low", so I would encourage everybody here to get it asap.

Glad you liked it, & glad you liked the review too. I seem to recall someone here (was it ubu or D.D.?) wasn't so keen on this brand of European jazz, in the comments on the BFT thread..... ← Indeed, I was not too impressed by that piece. But I got a copy of Janssen / Bennink's "Groet" - looking forward to listening to it.

Win this time is the most jazzy title in the Limited Sedition catalog I've heard. Golia is a bit show-offish here, but he does have what to show. Mutable Witness is excellent! Btw, despite very sloppy appearence of the CD-Rs, the music is mostly well-recorded. Oh, I remember - the one I like a lot is Morgan Guberman's tortured bass-guitar solo "Passador Gomel" - some crazy bubbling sounds. Guberman has also an excellent acoustic bass solo on Pax ("Hamadriya Baboon" it's called, I think), btw - but I plan to bring it up when I do a little overview of some more of the solo bass CDs I got.

I've done a quick search & I don't think Joachim Gies has been mentioned here before, any opinions as I'm a bit partial to solo works? ← As Gokhan mentioned, I do not have this Gies solo disc, but I do and highly enjoy the Not Missing Drums Project discs (on Leo; I have two, I think there are three or four). I agree with ubu - this is some pretty indescribable stuff; very original and engaging. There is some very impressive "modern academic" writing (but not in a sense of cold, dry, cerebral stuff, but rather quircky, catchy even funky little miniatures), some fusion with (very strong) opera singing, and just a little bit of free-ish blowing (in which Gies himself shines). All without bombast and pretty self-ironic (e.g. some romantic soprano singing against bass clarinet wailings, etc.). Gies is very talented composer and arranger, and based on this alone I am interested in his solo works - but from (few) moments of his soloing, it sounds like he also has some excellent chops.

My favorite is his early duo of his with Abdullah Ibrahim "Hamba Khale" (BYG) - reissued on CD a couple of years back. What a powerful sound on tenor! The latter stuff got watered down progressively, with each susequesnt work becoming more and more repetative and formulaic (by the middle of his FLying Dutchmen perid Barbieri seem to have stopped imporvising alltogether, just replaying the same melodic line all over and over again with very sight variations - not totally unenjoyable, but a far cry from his earlier stuff). Still have to get the ESP one.

Thanks, D.D., I will get that soon from either Verge or DMG. Yes, Music & Arts discs are cheap but in my experience the sound leaves a fair bit to be desired. How is the sound on this one - we can hear the two basses allright, yes? ← Sound is not spectacular, but you can hear the basses OK. And these are some crazy basses!

I was able to get this one, as well as Evan parker's Conic Sections, from Gino. Hopefully I'll have a chance to listen to both today. I'll post my thoughts if I do. ←

I hope nobody minds me quoting myself, but Hunting the spirits inside them on Music & Arts featuring Golia, one Joelle Leandre and one Ken Filiano is a monster record. Last time I checked Music & Arts CDs were available at Cadense for some laughable amount of $$. Dave Taylor is featured on excellent CD by Absolute Ensemble called Absolution (Enja Winkelmann): http://www.enjarecords.com/cd.php?nr=ENJ-9394 Highly recommended if you are interested in exploring combination of 20th century academic orchestral music with improvisation. Besides Taylor this disc features Denman Maroney on impressive prepared piano. ← finally found this puppy used ($4.99!) what a steal! and you didn't mention that they did hendrix's "purple haze", WOW!!! thanks for the recommendation! ← I thought "Purple haze" was the most kitch and the least successful of the tunes here. Still quite entertainig - only pales in comparison to other tracks on this really outstanding record. Let us know what you think of it.

Tony, no response from Leo is atypical for him. I assume he is on a summer vacation without access to e-mail. ----------------------- This the sale of tickets for money was abolished CD surely looks interesting. Gotta send some money to Mr. Smith. ------------------------ I agree regarding the missing person report style. As if the fact that the person is missing is not enough - you need to justify that he is a really nice guy...

Don't think we ever discussed Tano. I am not familiar with his music. Any recommendations?

Looks very interesting, evn though I don't kow Togashi (making it even more intriguing). Will search for it.

Just ordereed it used (couldn't find it new anywhere) from amazon.com.

Nor me. I've added it to the top of "the list." ← Available at CD Connection for $14.33.

You boys all picked up Bennink/Nabatov duo on Leo (Chat Room), didn't you? It went OOP real fast, so I figured this must have been you...

Yeah, I'll add this one too.