Active Music Listening Wednesday June 27, 2012

YTD recordings listened to: 382
Good music, not recommended for purchase: 210
Not good music:158
Buys: 13 (not all 2012 releases)
Possibles: Glenn Hansard, Ebo Taylor, Sigur Ros, Le Super Borgou De Parakou

@@@ Linkin Park: Living Things.  I’ve always thought this was an emotionally overwrought straing of corporate metal/hip hop/arena rock, so clearly I’m not starting from a good place.  Firing up the first track we see a nice slab of synthesizer followed by the low self-esteem simulatneous rising up rapping style of the two head dudes whose names I do not know.  On the fourth tune Lies Greed Misery you actually get a nice simple groove with some decent flow over it, but when the other cat comes in on the chorus with the screaming nonsense I just tune out.  I don’t like the formula.

@@@ Zongo Junction: Thieves! (Self-released, 2010)  I found this record from a concert series email from Philly called RipRig.  This is Brooklyn afrobeat taken at a slighlty slower tempo.  I really liked the fourth tune ‘Madoff Made off’ — the dueling horn solos are beautiful.  Check it out.

 

@@@ Reed’s Bass Drum (Self-released, 2010).  Jazz that is neither striaght nor free, similar to Mark Turner’s outfit Fly but with a baritone sax instead of tenor.  I like how they’re connected to each other and there’s a looseness to what they’re doing that I dig.  The third tune, Changes, is pretty happenin and you can find the record on Spotify. or over here at, gasp, MySpace.

@@@ Jack Wright: Open Wide (2011).  :Looks like this was recorded in 2011 and put up on the digital stores last year.  It’s further out on the jazz branch.  The drums are reverbed out, but not washed out or faded and I like drummer Dan Breen’s player.  The other players, Wright on alto, and John Dierker on bass clarinet and tenor ebb and flow through the 20-minute opener and the next three 10-15 minute pieces.  The horn playing is bird like and interesting.  I don’t have any clips or place to send you, this appears to be quite underground — it is on Spotify if you would like to check it out.

I found a live clip:

Active Music Listening, Friday June 8, 2012

YTD recordings listened to: 333
Good music, not recommended for purchase: 182
Not good music:139
Buys: 12 (not all 2012 releases)

@@@ Steve Lehman: Dialect Flourescent (Pi).  The best of the bunch today.  I like the off kilter way Lehman tries to insert himself into the rhythm section on track 2, Allocentric.  I find myself listening more to the rhythm section, and Lehman sounds a little overshadowed by them.  I think he’s an above average saxophonist being marketed as great.  Solid B+.

@@@ Joe Locke/Geoffrey Keezer Group: Signing (Motema).  I like the drummer, I’m not partial to jazz fusion myself, but if you do dig the ideas behind jazz fusion check this record out as it’s well executed fusion.

@@@ Ted Nash: The Creep (Plastic Sax).  High energy straight ahead jazz.  I like the drummer, but the overall vibe of the music is not free enough for me.  I like the wild shit and the unpredictability of it, but I know I’m in a listening minority.  We have a pretty conservative almost Republican Democratic President, you dig?

Now if the straight jazz folks showed the same respect to the free jazz music that I really dig, we’d all be doing much better but I’m not holding my breath.

@@@ Jonathan Blake: The Eleventh Hour.  Much like the Ted Nash record above, high energy straight ahead jazz led by drummer Jonathan Blake.  If it was recorded differently I might like it more.

Kidd Jordan: On Fire (Review)

You can listen/purchase tracks from this album here:

Excerpt:

Tenor saxophonist Edward “Kidd” Jordan is one those rare musicians who is able to imbue the freest, most advanced improvisations with extreme lyricism and build complex harmonies out of dissonant notes. On Fires showcases his sublime musicianship to the fullest.

Full review here at All About Jazz

New music listening Friday March 23, 2012

No inspirational thoughts about how great the music business is today.

@@@ Duke of Straw has this Neal Casal as his favorite song of the week.  Nothing ground breaking but a strong voice.

@@@ Check out some ambient tape lo-fi from Russia’s Curd Lake over here at Russian Adults.  I dig the third tune, kinda haunting like that Mike Watt answering machine message on Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation.

@@@ Over here at Abeano Music you can read about and check out the band Virginia Wing.  It reminds me of the Mamas and the Papas, I think the chord progression is similar.

@@@ I don’t know why a blog that features acoustic music almost exclusively would be KickKickSnare, but it’s a whacky world.

Here’s a pretty straightforward indie ballad by St. Lucia.  He’s got a good voice, I don’t care that much for the song but check it out.

@@@ We’ll wrap up this week’s listening with a tune off Vijay Iyer‘s new record Accelerando.  I could have sworn I heard a riff from Michael Jackson’s tune ‘Human Nature’ tucked into this tune.  I shit you not.

William Hooker: Yearn For Certainty (MP3)

From the 2010 record Yearn For Certainty.

Personnel:

William Hooker: drums, spoken word
David Soldier: mandolin, banjo, violin
Sabir Mateen: Saxophone, flute, clarinet

New music Thursday Feb 16 2012

@@ From the front page of Spotify, some 1976 old school roots reggae music I dig by Page One and the Observers:

@@ Honey Ear Trio made a bunch of best of lists for 2011, and I’ve posted a video below.  I wish the raucous free jazz got the same amount of press as this Republican brunch jazz gets.  If you were an 18-year old would you want to traffic and support something with this vibe?  I know you yuppies out there are all over this like stink on a monkey.

@@ By the way, you can not fuck with Alice Coltrane.  She was badass (in some ways deeper than her husband John Coltrane), and when you hear this video, this is part of the reason we need a better sounding format than mp3.  It’s ass.

@@ Earth has a new record called Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light 2.  I dig Earth a lot.  I don’t know how you can hear their music and see how close it is to jazz, whether it’s composed or not.

Kidd Jordan: On Fire (review)

You can purchase and support Kidd Jordan’s music/my label here:

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=90763

Excerpt:

This is a fascinating performance by some still under-recognized masters of the music. They make music that is beholden to nobody’s creed save their own.

Complete review (.pdf):

Kidd Jordan On Fire: Al lAbout Jazz Review

http://www.youtube.com/user/EngineStudiosNYC#p/u/3/FO0mdai7Qxc

Links to new music Thursday, January 26, 2012

Morito Ergo Sum (Swedish metal), Jason Adasiewicz (Chicago vibes player), Oneohtrix Point Never, and more.

Deep in the Music

 

Kidd Jordan vs. Colin Stetson

I just got an email from Colin Stetson’s promo people touting the praise his record last year got.  And I can tell you as someone who listens to jazz everyday and who heard the Stetson record that he got a lot of praise because he has a publicist and not because he has much talent.  I put out a record last year by Kidd Jordan and Colin Stetson doesn’t deserve to hold his horn in front of Kidd Jordan while Kidd pisses in it.  Remember, kids out there, that the record you hear is often the record with loot behind it and not the best record and here is a glaring example of that notion.

Check out this utter shit from his publicist:

Colin Stetson is a horn player of uncommon strength, skill and genre-defying creativity. He composes and performs otherworldly songs that combine a mastery of circular breathing technique with percussive valve-work and reed vocalisations, making a polyphonic solo music that combines influences as diverse as Bach, early metal, American pre-war Gospel, and the explorations of Jimi Hendrix, Peter Brotzman and Albert Ayler.

Really?  I don’t think so.

Trio Caveat: Introspective Athletics (MP3)

Listen/purchase here: