Recent posts tagged jazz
2021
Machine Gun (Peter Brötzmann)
You know how Woody Guthrie has THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS on his guitar? Peter Brötzmann's reeds should have signs that say THIS MACHINE KILLS, PERIOD.
2020
The Anatomy Of Addiction (God)
A thunderous fusion of jazz and industrial rock, way out of print but absolutely worth seeking out.
2016
City: Works Of Fiction (Jon Hassell)
Somewhere between Herbie Hancock's electronic pop-jazz of the 1980s and the more omnivorous, open-ended experimentalism of artists like David Byrne or Brian Eno.
2014
Execution Ground (Painkiller)
When John Zorn and Bill Laswell joined forces, the results were nothing short of seismic.
2013
Samuraiera (Various Artists / Kaoru Inoue)
A fistful of "lost grooves from the land of the Rising Sun."
Improvisation (Derek Bailey)
One of free music's cornerstones, an album of heedless challenges and curious pleasures.
Keith Jarrett: Hymns / Spheres
The full version of Keith Jarrett's highly experimental organ album, finally restored to life on CD.
Intents And Purposes (The Bill Dixon Orchestra)
This one-of-a-kind jazz composition, originally in incredibly limited release, is now back on CD.
2012
Nuclear War (Sun Ra)
A "lost" Sun Ra session from the early '80s may be one of the best places to start with him and the Arkestra.
Inspiration Information 3 (Mulatu Astatke / The Heliocentrics)
Afrobeat made accessible without becoming anodyne.
Kind of Blue (Miles Davis / John Coltrane)
One kind of perfect.
2011
Electronic Sonata For Souls Loved By Nature (1980) (George Russell)
A second take on George Russell’s masterwork, recorded eleven years later with a different lineup (Victor Comer, Keith Copeland, Jean-Francois Jenny-Clark, Robert Moore, Lew Soloff) and a markedly dissimilar orchestration. This version switches the piano for organ, slows down the...
2010
Electronic Sonata for Souls Loved by Nature (George Russell)
It was only through George Russell’s obituary that I ever learned about him in the first place. He was not as household a name as Duke or Miles or ‘Trane, but he mattered in a way that is only now...
Space Is The Place
The difference between an “eccentric” and a poseur is, I think, a matter of empathy. An eccentric inspires fondness and even a little reverence, in part because the true eccentric isn’t putting on airs. He really is what he is....
Last Date 8.28.1978 (Kaoru Abe)
This was the first record by Kaoru Abe I ever heard, and from what I can tell it was among the very last recordings he ever made. Barely ten days after this concert, Abe was dead at the age of...
2009
Et Al Dept.
A quick closet-cleaning of interesting stuff garnered over the past month. New York City apartment buildings freecycle, and create new community spaces in the process. A new book coming out called The Jazz Loft Project, documenting Weegee's time at 821...
2006
Spheres (Keith Jarrett)
Spheres is somewhere between mesmerizing and frustrating, not least of all because it’s not the record that was originally made. This is a severely edited-down version of a much larger work, Hymns/Spheres, an album which spanned two LPs when originally...
The Köln Concert (Keith Jarrett)
I once got into an argument with someone about a certain record—I think it was possibly one of the early Merzbow discs, believe it or not—because he didn’t believe that I would really want to listen to such rubbish, let...
