Showing 1134 results for: Reviews
Black Sun Ensemble – Behind Purple Clouds - January 2014 January 5th, 2014
The teenage Jesus Acedo gorged on Zeppelin and Shankar at Tucson library, and picked up a guitar to form Black Sun Ensemble in the early ’80s, playing a mystical, mainly instrumental, acid folk blues, that instantly snapped synapses worldwide. But Jesus’s struggle with schizophrenia saw his compositions lose focus. Behind Purple Clouds, completed by the…
King Champion Sounds – Different Drummer - December 2013 December 22nd, 2013
What if The Fall had garnished their rockabilly grooves with swing era horns? What if Can played Ghanaian highlife? What if Morricone had scored Spaghetti westerns in a Moroccan souq? King Champion Sounds, a Dutch veterans’ organization fronted by GW Sok of jazz punks The Ex, recombine canonical influences in new contexts. Orbit Macht Frei…
The Velvet Underground – White Light/White Heat 45th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition - December 2013 December 22nd, 2013
The Velvet Underground’s second album sank on release in 1968, but became the proto-punk document. In hindsight, it’s a definitive New York minimalist moment too, more indebted to the departing John Cale’s viola and organ drones than to Lou Reed’s free jazz/doo-wop fusions. Without the example of Sister Ray’s sleazy, seventeen minute, two chord splurge,…
William Parker – Wood Flute Songs, Anthology / Live 2006-2012 - December 2013 December 15th, 2013
Nine hours of music, from six years, on eight discs, consolidates the bassist-composer-bandleader Parker’s position in New York’s improvisation scene. Appearing in his intuitively telepathic quartet, and with augmented ensembles, Parker’s partnered throughout by the percussionist Hamid Drake, who always makes spontaneous music swing. On the uncompromising 26 minute Tears For The Children of Rawanda,…
Chris Forsyth – Solar Motel - December 2013 December 1st, 2013
New York guitar gurus Television recently completed a British trek. The last of the psychedelic bands, their gargantuan grooves disguised in punk trousers, their set currently contains a new fifteen minute burn that could easily check in to Chris Forsyth’s Solar Motel. Four expansive instrumentals take Television, and the ‘70s art school No Wave massed…
Tony Oxley – A Birthday Tribute 75 Years - November 2013 November 24th, 2013
Tony Oxley floated Free Improvisation’s Northern English spearhead on implausibly arrhythmic pulses in the ‘60s. A rigorous retrospective could have included collaborations with talents as diverse as Georgie Fame and Cecil Taylor, but this appropriate 75th birthday celebration offers five unreleased slices of Oxley accompanying more sympathetic souls. Most welcome is a thirty minute 1993…