by S. Victor Aaron Howard Wiley’s The Angola Project (2007) created a lot of buzz and put his name firmly on the jazz map. It wasn’t so much for the tenor saxophonist’s playing or inventing a whole new style of jazz. Rather, the acclaim came from the attention he broughtRead More

Band of Joy resurrects a name that was the moniker for a band that Plant and John Bonham were in before being recruited by Jimmy Page to join a new incarnation of the Yardbirds. That “new incarnation,” of course, soon adopted the name Led Zeppelin and the rest is rockRead More

by S. Victor Aaron Washington, D.C.’s Matta Gawa’s self-described “cinematic chunks of post-hardcore improvised sound” is, however else you might describe it, standing apart from the main body of whack jazz. Sounds created from more than forty guitar pedals generating loops, sample, octave altering, various synthesized noise effects created andRead More

That drummer Scott Amendola must like a lot of the same kind of music that I do, because his name comes up in the credits list of plenty of records that I enjoy. A lot of that has to do with his close association with Nels Cline and being theRead More

by S. Victor Aaron Even if you’re into experimental music you might not have heard of Richard Pinhas, but he’s kind of a big deal in his native France. This guitarist led the art-rock band Hedron in the mid 70s, during which time they made seven albums. Pinhas went onRead More

by S. Victor Aaron Recently, Wilco lead guitarist Nels Cline reconvened his scary good Nels Cline Singers and last spring the group released Initiate, an ambitious, 2-CD affair. So what does Cline do next? Why, he follows up today with another 2 CD release that’s pushing the boundaries even furtherRead More

It’s ritual groove music time again. The Swiss pianist and bandleader Nik Bärtsch has broken musical ground with his Ronin outfit, pioneering jazz that’s melodically sparse and rhythmically robust. Not dance music but very funky, not piano bar jazz but very soothing, Bärtsch and his crew create paradoxes that resolveRead More

by S. Victor Aaron When we last visited a George Benson recording, it was about his remake of the still fresh-out-the-oven Abbey Road. Fast forward seven years later, to 1976: Benson had just ended his long and artistically successful stint with CTI Records, having been enticed back to the majorsRead More

by S. Victor Aaron OK, I relent. I was forced by the overwhelming evidence to do it. I had to create a new tag “Houston TX” because even though we’ve long had a “Texas” tag, the richness and diversity of good music originating from the Space City was more thanRead More

by Pico A couple of months ago, Robert Branch self-released an appealing little guitar fusion record that you just might to pay attention to if guitar fusion is your thing. But first, a short introduction to the man behind the album. Robert Branch grew up in Ft. Worth TX, butRead More