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‘Four years after a first album on the Futura label in 1971, Jacques Thollot returned, this time on the Palm label of Jef Gilson, still with just as much surrealist poetry in his jazz. In thirty-five minutes, the French composer and drummer, who had been on the scene since he was thirteen — recording Gilson LPs when he was just sixteen — established himself as a link between Arnold Schoenberg and Don Cherry. Resistant to any imposed framework and always excessive, Thollot allows himself to do anything and everything: suspended time of an extraordinary delicacy, a stealthy explosion of the brass section, hallucinatory improvisation of the synthesisers, tight writing, teetering on the classical, and in the middle of all that, a hit, the title-track — which Madlib would one day end up hearing and sampling.
‘In a career lasting half a century, centred on freedom, Jacques Thollot played with a roll-call of key experimental musicians (Don Cherry, Sonny Sharrock, Michel Roques, Barney Wilen, Steve Lacy, François Tusques, Michel Portal, Jac Berrocal, Noël Akchoté...) who all heard in him a pulsation coming from another world.’
‘‘There is no hurry to this music, but there is great depth,’ according to London Jazz News Among the highlights here is opener Reconstructing A Dream, a darkly lyrical reverie. To Stanko is Bro’s hushed tribute to the late, great Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko, who featured the guitarist in his ECM album Dark Eyes. Another homage to a late elder is Music For Black Pigeons, given its evocative title by Lee Konitz. Listeners will recognize Henriksen’s whispering, poetic sound from his 2008 ECM album Cartography, as well as his collaborations with Trio Mediaeval and Tigran Hamasyan. Rossy is celebrated for his decade-plus tenure in Brad Mehldau’s first trio. As for the leader, in the words of DownBeat, ‘Bro’s guitar is luminous… his music both hypnotic and dramatic.’‘
With Joe Lovano, Larry Grenadier, Thomas Morgan, AC, Jorge Rossy & Joey Baron.
Recorded live in Paris in 1994 and New York City in 1995. The band includes Idris Muhammad, Manolo Badrena, and George Coleman. Beautifully constructed, grooving, percussive versions of a tasty mixture of standards and originals.
The pianist James Edward Manuel’s only release is one of the deepest custom-press jazz recordings of them all.
Jaman studied under greats like Earl Bostic and Horace Parlan. Gigging on the Buffalo club scene, one of his early trios included the renowned bassist John Heard and drummer Clarence Becton, till both were poached one night by a visiting Jon Hendricks. Other sidemen include Sun Ra Arkestra bassist Juini Booth and Ahmad Jamal regular Sabu Adeyola (also of Kamal & The Brothers).
Pressed in tiny quantities by the Mark Records custom service in 1974, and issued with a stock landscape cover, Sweet Heritage presents a soulful mixture of covers and originals. In particular the flying, spiritual sound of Free Will and the upful, Latin-tinged In The Fall Of The Year — both Jaman compositions — have turned the LP into a legendary collector’s classic.
‘One of the fiercest sounds in modern jazz… The New York-based sax player and co mix it up, from funk shuffle to full-on swing, on their blistering fourth album, comprising eight tracks of angular yet explosive experimentation…
‘The opening title track sets the tone, interweaving Lewis’s expressive lines among pianist Aruán Ortiz’s polyrhythms before reaching a blistering sax solo. As the album progresses, there is variety amid the consistency of Lewis’s blasting tone: a funk shuffle on Swerve, Latin rhythm on Per 6, and fast-paced swing on Black Apollo…’ (The blistering Guardian).
Thrilling, intensely rhythmic, questing music, featuring brilliant, dynamic contributions by Joshua Abrams and Sam Wilkes.
Very warmly recommended. Check out Bracelets For Unicorns.
‘The core of the album is a lush, opulent matrix of percussion ranging from the familiar — hand claps and drum machines — to the mysteriously verdant, sampled largely from Krivchenia’s own performed field recorded collection. For years, he would record any and all of his musical encounters with natural objects: performing on a particularly resonant log on a hike, throwing rocks into a pristine pond, tap dancing in the mud. Not just a novel set of sounds, but a new rhythmic language. The particular give, the anticipatory rustle, the extra breath of a hollow log when functioning as a kickdrum provides a greenness that overtakes the rhythmic grid, giving this music a peculiar kind of stickiness.’