Post Tagged with: "Whack Jazz"

Vinyl

Medeski, Martin and Wood – Radiolarians 1 (2008)

I’ve covered a Martin and Medeski album, a Wood Brothers album and even an MMW children’s album on this space, but this is the first go around with a “proper” Medeski, Martin & Wood release. Radiolarians 1, which hit the streets September 30, is the first of a planned trilogyRead More

Vinyl

Bill Moring & Way Out East – Spaces In Time (2008)

Bill Moring is someone readers of this space have come to know as the guy jazz pianist extraordinaire Steve Allee relies upon for holding down the bottom in his band. Moring is hardly “just” Allee’s bass player, though. Throughout a three-decade career, Moring has played in ensembles of all sizesRead More

Vinyl

One Track Mind: Marc Ribot "Caravan" (1992)

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 JohnRead More

Vinyl

Michael Bates – Clockwise (2008)

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.Read More

Vinyl

One Track Mind: Tom Cora "Gumption In Limbo (The Four-Limbed Approach)" (1986)

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 ofRead More

Vinyl

Quickies: Three From ESP-Disk Records

 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-upRead More

Vinyl

Charles Lloyd Quartet – Rabo de Nube (2008)

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 haveRead More

Vinyl

Totem> – Solar Forge (2008)

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, theRead More

Vinyl

Quickies: Three From Brooklyn Jazz Underground Records

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 JazzRead More

Vinyl

Pete Robbins – Do The Hate Laugh Shimmy (2008)

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’Read More