by S. Victor Aaron As I write this, two very talented bands from Italy specializing in the jazz of the whack variety are traversing the fruited plains looking to collect fans from the USA. The trio Neo and the quartet Tribraco are criss-crossing the country from August 23 to OctoberRead More

Note: This is a slightly abridged version of the inaugural article in the long-running “Whack Jazz” series, first appearing on July 11, 2006 on a forerunner site to the Something Else! webzine. Machine Gun remains to me the gold standard for all thrash-jazz records, one that all other such albumsRead More

Mother Nature just staged a terrorist act on our ass! — Warren Smith, “Dyes And Lyes” About five years ago, woodwinds and flute specialist Andrew Lamb convened a recording session with his longtime musical partner Warren Smith (drums, percussion) and the bass/cello master Tom Abbs for some free form musicalRead More

Before there was Sonic Youth, before there was Radiohead, Material, The Flaming Lips or the Animal Collective, there was Curlew. Founded by saxophonist/composer George Cartwright in 1979, Curlew soon became an incubator for just about every important name in the the New York downtown experimental music scene that thrived inRead More

Earlier this week, Erik Friedlander released his 12th album, in his fiftieth year on earth. Those facts may not be so important to you, but the music that marks both events just might. Especially if you like the army of sounds, both familiar and strange, that Friedlander wrests from aRead More

by S. Victor Aaron The Claudia Quintet is an ensemble that goes by its own set of rules. With its slightly weird combination of vibes, accordion, sax, double-bass and drums, and songs that don’t follow the script of how songs go (but avoids skronkery and dissonance), the five piece bandRead More

by S. Victor Aaron If you’re a big ECM Records fan like I am, then you’d probably even remember your first ECM record. For a lot of those types, this one is most likely their first ECM. For me, though, it was Terje’s Rypdal’s Waves, which I picked up justRead More

by S. Victor Aaron Throughout all of the history of jazz, trumpet players were always in the vanguard: Armstrong, Gillespie, Davis, Bowie, I could go on. The common theme with the two fresh offerings go beyond the fact that they are led or co-led by trumpeters; these are releases thatRead More

Things could be looking up for Grace Potter & The Nocturnals. by Pico It’s been a whole three months since we last discussed a batch of sparkling new releases that are targeted for wider audiences. That’s such a long span that a few of the half dozen records yakked aboutRead More

AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File by S. Victor Aaron Fred Anderson, a forward thinking tenor saxophonist for more than six decades and a major force in Chicago’s vital jazz scene, died Thursday following a heart attack. He was 81 years old. What I’ve found so remarkable about Anderson isn’t so muchRead More