Marc Ribot is near the front of a phalanx of whack jazz axe slingers that includes Fred Frith, Henry Kaiser, and of course, good ol’ Bill Frisell. As way out his anything-goes approach goes on his solo records, he’s plenty versatile enough to play for guys as diverse as John Zorn, Elvis Costello and Tom Waits, even touring extensively in [...]

Sometimes you know if a CD is going to be good even before you cue it up and start listening to it. The first thing I that caught my eye when I opened up Michael Bates’ Clockwise CD was the note that it was taped live on a two-track recorder. The second thing I noticed was that the sessions were [...]

by Pico Back in, oh, October of last year I got a wild hair and raved on a free form electrified cello performance by that late, lamented demon of the bowed bass, Tom Cora. The name of the stringed stream of conscienceness was called “Halleluhjah Anyway.” Back then, I made mention of the track that came before it: There are [...]

 In 1966, attorney Bernard Stollman founded the ESP-Disk label in New York City. Less than three years later, with orders dried up from established record labels bootlegging their better-selling records, the label was driven out of business. This is a familiar story followed in some variation by thousands of start-up record labels over many years, but ESP-Disk has a special [...]

For more than forty years, Charles Lloyd has been the small combo leader making distinctively impressionistic and soulful kind of small combo jazz. His tenor’s delicate, almost alto-like timbre is instantly recognizable from just a single note. His prolific periods of the late sixties and since the late eighties have produced consistently strong albums. Many stars have played in Lloyd’s [...]

I’ve got that itch again. It’s an itch that manifests itself whenever I listen to music with form, predictability and harmony for too long. Yes, folks, it’s time to cleanse the soul with some good, gut punching whack jazz, and Solar Forge by Totem> is the elixir. Totem> (yes, the “>” is part of the name) is a trio devoted [...]

For this installment of Quickies, the inaugural releases of a new label dedicated to presenting the music of talented up and coming jazz musicians are highlighted. These musicians are all members of an artist collective, the Brooklyn Jazz Underground, and this spring saw the launching of the collective’s Brooklyn Jazz Underground Records. BJU Records’ mission statement goes like this: “Brooklyn [...]

by S. Victor Aaron Let’s get this out of the way first: “Do The Hate Laugh Shimmy” is a title that the artist took from an e.e.cummings poem. Don’t ask me what it means (even the artist is not entirely sure), but it’s sounds stylin’ all the same. The stylin’ music contained in Do The Hate Laugh Shimmy is easier [...]

by Pico The history of jazz is a history of personalities; from the affable Satchmo, the showmanship of Diz, the gentlemanly ways of Ellington, to the intensely insular Miles. It seemed in most of these cases, the music reflected their personalities, too. You can’t have a discussion about characters in jazz with including Rahsaan Roland Kirk, however. Kirk stood out [...]

photo: Catherine Stockhausen by S. Victor Aaron When I think of a drummer of one of the most familiar-sounding trios in all of jazz who is still pushing out the boundaries of the genres, Paul Motian is the first name that comes to my mind. So much so, I easily confuse Jerry Granelli with Motian, and that’s a big injustice [...]