It doesn’t matter if the experimental music is being rendered by electric guitar or banjo, Seabrook uses technology, virtuosity and a deviously fertile mind to blow the minds of anyone who comes across these recordings. ‘Sylphid Vitalizers’ expands the world of what is possible with a banjo. And guitar, too.
As a collection of children’s songs for grown-ups, ‘Business Is Bad’ would be terribly silly if it wasn’t so damned inconspicuously clever. Thankfully, it *is* clever, and marks the return of Karen Mantler after nearly a decade and a half off without skipping a beat.
‘Solarists’ immediately establishes Haitian Rail as a fearsome battery of inscrutable, noise with terrific give-and-take. And trombonist Dan Blacksberg’s presence assures that they hold up the jazz part of the experimental metal-jazz equation, losing none of their ferocity along the way.
A lot of Dirty Loops’ covers have been released via YouTube, and the latest one to hit the video circuit is their more organic, more virtuosic rendition of Avicii’s Aloe Blacc-sung “Wake Me Up.”
The tunes are solid and so are the arrangements, but there’s no disguising good playing and ‘Disguise’ has all of those things out in the clear open. A welcome return to form for Ada Rovatti.
Eric Wyatt makes good on his enviable Brooklyn upbringing by evoking the masters he’s met as a child while finding his own voice to do it.’Borough of Kings’ is pure, Brooklyn-bred jazz at its finest.
The first jazz record released by the just-beginning ESP-Disk record company, ‘Spiritual Unity’ quickly put this tiny label on the map, as well as thrust Ayler to the forefront of the free jazz movement when it was released more than a year later. Even then, this record was well ahead of the frontier of jazz and remains so today.
Bonamassa advances his new album with a pretty nice display of his soulful side.
Scott Amendola’s leadership and Nels Cline’s presence should make ‘Fade To Orange’ a special recording, but don’t sleep on Trevor Dunn. Every time I’ve come across a record on which he’s appeared, it’s been a rather good record. That bodes well for this one.
Write, record and release a new jazz tune every six weeks for a year? Nick Hempton could be onto something good.
