Category Archives: Reviews

Reviews

Oliver Lake – Holding Together 12” LP

Oliver Lake-holding together

Ok, so I would say that this is one of the most mandatory destinations in the Avant-Jazz/Free Jazz spectrum. It’s an unsurpassed shocker of staggering originality, complexity, bridge-of-the-razor innovation & meticulous technical acumen. It also amalgamates both rash improvised wilderness & punctilious composition & instrumental-coordination fashioning both into an incredible consensus. The musicians, all exorbitant veterans of both virtuosity & arrant Off-Road/Avant-Garde are as follows – Oliver Lake on alto & soprano sax & flutes, Michael Gregory Jackson on electric guitar, Fred Hopkins on double-bass & Pheeroan ak Laff on drums. Continue reading Oliver Lake – Holding Together 12” LP →

Reviews

Jacques Coursil – Black Suite 12” LP

Jacques Coursil-black suite

A bit of a mood-piece this one. For me personally, under the right conditions/during particular modes of mind, it’s a real blinder (though I rarely spin this record, it’s a specialist job). Let’s get to the leader here, Jacques Coursil, clearly one fine trumpet player, having previously worked with/amongst the Sun Ra Arkhestra & others in the US before immigrating to France where I believe he has stayed right up until this day. This 1969 recording session commenced the day after the truly epic Burton Greene-Aquariana LP, that has almost exactly the same line-up. This album loses the secondary bassist  & stray flautist from the Aquariana action & drops Anthony Braxton into the foray on contrabass clarinet along with Beb Guerin on bass/cello, Arthur Jones on alto sax & a very reserved & clement Burton Greene on piano (& I suspect some other bells & percussion) & drummer/percussionist Claude Delcloo (also massively contained & minimal on this effort). Continue reading Jacques Coursil – Black Suite 12” LP →

Reviews

Burton Greene Ensemble – Aquariana 12” LP

Burton Greene - Aquariana

An astonishing record! It’s got to be one of the most peculiar that I have come across at the same time as being a total success in it’s own right (not relying purely on it’s rare unusualness for effect). Greene is a cult Jewish pianist/composer & a formidable visionary, precipitating some of the most advanced & daring excavations into deep’ deep Experimental/hyper Avant-Garde surrealism & intensity early in the game. The two albums I have studied from Burton prior to this release (On Tour & Live At The Woodstock Playhouse) both boast extraordinary merit & acute adventurism (especially “On Tour”, which enacted some ridiculously futuristic decorum-smashing techniques & themes for it’s time), but this album is quite something else & is one of my most treasured LP’s. Continue reading Burton Greene Ensemble – Aquariana 12” LP →

Reviews

Archie Shepp – Life at the Donauedchingen Music Festival 12” LP

Archie Shepp-Life_ed

It’s another muscular gut-puncher from Shepp. That irresistible sound of truth, blackness & indignance just charging the fuck through & invigorating everything it scorches. Fulgurating indomitable exhilaration just burning like a volcanic eruption, it’s like a damn purification process, the man just blitzes like a maniac, channelling the soul through the sax like a magician. So many glorious saxophonists, all with their own angle, energies & idiolect, but what is it about Shepp? That strength & style just charging down like some kind of sacred battle-weapon of virtue. I can listen to this shit all day & never get tired. Continue reading Archie Shepp – Life at the Donauedchingen Music Festival 12” LP →

Reviews

Roscoe Mitchell – Angel City CD

Roscoe Mitchell-angel city

Roscoe Mitchell is on a bit of a roll at the moment! A knock & roll motha*”^#@r!!! he is allied here on this 55.12 minute (one track) live performance at Mills Uni from 2012 by James Fei on tri-saxophones, bass clarinets & analog Electronics) & William Winant on masses of percussion (more in the micro form of bells, gongs, woodblocks, cymbals & a massive gallimaufry of odds & ends). Continue reading Roscoe Mitchell – Angel City CD →

Reviews

Gutturalia XXX (Glaukom Synod)-Tilt! : 1 Sided Cassette

Gutturalia XXX

One-man French Industrial-Machine-Grind-Noise from estranged loner Gab, a long enduring & committed pillar of the Grindcore underbelly. This eleven track cassette from 2012, although definitely not his best is another excellent foray into Synod’s sewer network of murky pitched down Industrial GrindNoiseCyberDeath with IDM influences. Continue reading Gutturalia XXX (Glaukom Synod)-Tilt! : 1 Sided Cassette →

Reviews

Executive Distraction Tasks – Finished with Grind 3” CDR

Executive Distraction Tasks

Astronomical turbo-technical progressive DeathGrind. sodden in secrecy, for reasons that continue to astound me just a little less than they infuriate me, this lost god-particle of seminal British Grindcore-Tech were active from 2004-2009 (this nine track MCD having been recorded in 2008). Describing the bands objective, drummer Elliot Smith (indubitably one of Grinds greatest, also playing with The Afternoon Gentlemen & other groups) writes on the inlay “the sole mission of EDT was to play the silliest music possible”. Continue reading Executive Distraction Tasks – Finished with Grind 3” CDR →

Reviews

Canale 666-s/t CDR

Canale 666

Super novel Italian Noise, Electronic sound-scapery, with a multiplex of scattered randomized incidents compacted into a fifty four minute distention of segmented sonic montage. The man behind the basket-case is Luca Carlozzo, most frequently manifesting his pugnacity in harsh noise maim-dispensary Digital Noise Distortion (DND) spewing out predominantly ultra-limited CDR releases that vary from mundane & typical to legendary bouts of superiority in extreme Stridor destruction. This project/album is clearly inspired & infatuated with Horror movies with masses of samples integrated into the miscellaneous motley. The samples are sometimes verbatim sections, almost like cinematic Field Recordings. Continue reading Canale 666-s/t CDR →

Reviews

Sam Rivers – Dave Holland – Volumes 1 & 2 LP

Rivers-Holland_1

Two droll editions in the truly awesome & vast Rivers n’ Holland back-catalogue. Both excellent LP’s feature the two laureates rushing through improvisational expanse as a duumvirate with no supporting musicians or percussion throughout the entire session.

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Reviews

Henry Threadgill/Air – Open Air Suit 12 LP

Open_Air_Suit

Aw’ shiiiit! Henry & henchmen really land the haymaker on this super scintillating four track 1978 exposition. Renowned probably most putatively for his acute compositional verve, Threadgill’s cult “Air” trio that conscripted Steve McCall on drums & Fred Hopkins on double-bass pushed beyond the Jazz preserve & much more in to the dense foliation of intense improvisation/Off Road/Out Back yet sagaciously infusing unstable & sporadic structures & preconceived portions. The clashing essemplastication & subsequent ingrowing-oddity of themes coupled with Threadgill’s momentously anomalous approach to song-status & the razor-sharp expertise of his fellow assailants do yield a particularly unique experience.

Continue reading Henry Threadgill/Air – Open Air Suit 12 LP →