Random Touch, perfectly named, is an accidental neo-prog music collective. Even better, they’ve issued a double album called Tributary, a 23-track, two-hour project, that — again, perfectly named — couldn’t be further from the mainstream. Comprised of found sounds and improvisational asides on whatever instrument is at hand, Random TouchRead More

The young man pictured on the CD cover looks barely out of his teens and in fact it’s the picture of a twenty-year-old Bryan Carter, and drummer and composer out of Chicago and a junior a Juilliard at the time of the album’s recording last December. But everything else aboutRead More

by Tom Johnson X equals 10 and V equals 5. So that’s 10 to the tenth power times 5 … carry the 1 … whatever. It’s higher math, but this was, believe it or not, the group’s 15th album. I’m going out on a limb here — I can’t imagineRead More

Eugene Marlow’s Heritage Ensemble’s follow-up to last year’s Celebrations CD is also its predecessor. Let me explain. Marlow’s first Heritage Ensemble record, Making The Music Our Own (2006) was Marlow’s first stab at making a record of modern, multicultural takes on old Hebraic (Jewish) music. Since that album was recorded,Read More

by Tom Johnson You just don’t think of too many great guitarists in indie-rock. It’s practically built into the genre to not emphasize your skills. So what a refreshing treat a band like Built To Spill is where they most definitely fall into that meaningless “indie rock” category (since theyRead More

by Tom Johnson Even before Guided By Voices split on New Year’s Eve 2004, some fans were pining for the old days — back when Robert Pollard and company crudely recorded in a basement on cassettes into a boombox, throwing caution to the wind and making lo-fi masterpieces that confoundedRead More

Ben Monder is one of the more talked about guitarists in New York due to his impalpable, impressionistic approach that’s uncommon outside of Bill Frisell and has made him a favorite for progressive-minded leaders from Marc Johnson and Maria Schneider to Donny McCaslin and Guillermo Klein. He’s also been aRead More

by Mark Saleski I’ve love gamelan music. There’s just something about all of those interlocking instruments. And where should a person go to hear some great and authentic gamelan music? Why Denver, of course! Gamelan Tunas Mekar is a community orchestra based in Denver. They may be a long wayRead More

Dancing with Duke, the second album as a leader from North Carolina bassist John Brown (Nnenna Freelon), follows the thematic pattern established by his well-received initial recording — a tribute to Art Blakey. But this homage to Ellington explores more interesting territory, in that Blakey’s music has always been associatedRead More

by Tom Johnson This is an album I grew so comfortable with so quickly that it nearly slipped my mind that it came out only in 2004 and is actually not an album I grew up listening to. Granted, Phillips has hardly changed his MO since disbanding Grant Lee BuffaloRead More