jazz / ambient / electronic

To ambient aficionados, ECM addicts and electronic music fans, the name Jon Hassell will certainly ring a bell. Countless of solo releases and collaborations with the likes of Björk, Talking Heads, Carl Craig and Brian Eno have rightfully given him the "pioneer of electronic music" title. 

Now, he returns with his first solo album in nine years, to be released on his own new imprint Ndeya. This label will publish new material as well as selected archival releases. So perhaps 'Listening To Pictures', a sweet blend of ambient, electronic music and jazz can be seen as a new start in solo recording.

"Pentimento" means: Alteration in a painting, evidenced by traces of previous work, showing that the artist has changed his or her mind as to the composition during the process of painting. Musicians face something similar. Compositions can alter, change and evolve over time with only vague traces of the initial composition still present. Ambient and jazz have always been compared to (landscape) painting and with good reason. They share many similarities, which explains people's often ecstatic reaction to either a song or a piece of art. Somehow it feels like that is exactly what Jon Hassell has been doing on this album, changing, altering, reworking. 

There are eight tracks on this album, each on with its own identity and speciality. Perhaps it's not surprise then that different acts and artists come to mind with each tune. Opener 'Dreaming' has a similar feels as many Biosphere tracks. 'Picnic' throw that sound into an Autechre branded blender and goes wild on the glitches. 'Slipstream' takes me to the reals of acts like Zoviet France and O Yuki Conjugate. I love the percussion in this track. So far in this album, 'Slipstream' is my favorite, even when the jazz influences come shining through. 'Al Kongo Udu' is another favorite, an exotic and adventurous ambient tune.

On 'Pastorale Vassant' we go all jazzy with the nervous percussion and the free floating soundscapes. Perhaps this is one of the most experimental sounding tracks on this album, definitely not the most radio friendly but it still is an interesting entity to have floating through the room. 'Manga Scene' is what would have happened if Autechre and Dale Cooper did a jamsession, or Sknail of course. Glitch jazz is almost always awesome. 'Her First Rain' gently follows that example. And yups, I've turned this thing into a song-by-song thing. Well, in that case, 'Ndeya' is up to you to discover. All I'm going to say is that it's definitely worth it and that counts for this entire album. 


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jazz

Art First Records

Well, I guess this was inevitable. After reviewing and highly acclaiming several dark jazz records, the world of vintage jazz has found us. Not that I mind. Until a few years ago, I strongly disliked jazz but recently that genre has been growing on me. I'm still not wild about the whole freejazz stuff but an album like 'Atmosfärg' definitely feeds my interest. That sparks another problem. I have no idea how to describe this kind of music. Apart from Miles Davis, Toots Thielemans and Dave Brubeck I know next to nothing from jazz. Well, it seems this Saturday morning writing session is starting with a personal challenge, but that's a good thing, right?

This album was recorded live in Helsinki, Finland. It features Eevo Savela on trumpet, Tapani Varis on double bass and Alf Forsman on drums. In 48.20 minutes and eight tracks, this whole album feels like a classic jazz performance. I forgot to tell you that in the previous paragraph: I have seen a few jazz performances in my life. Being a raging metalhead at the time I didn't really pay much attention to those. All I heard was a bunch of people doing solos, all together. This record sounds a bit the same, even though the double bassist seems to behave.

My wife just told me that the secret of appreciating jazz is finding the math behind the apparent chaos of musical notes. Somebody once told her that. I'd like to know who. I'd like to have a chat with that person (unless it's an asshole). I can't seem to find the math behind these songs but I can feel the chemistry of three highly skilled musicians jamming together. There is quite often a sense of magic in playing together, especially when each participant perfectly controls his instrument. And that is absolutely the case here.

Varis builds a solid foundation, Forsman creates complex percussive structures and Savela's trumpet is allowed to meander and explore its own sound. That results in an immersive performance, something every jazz fan should be able to appreciate. For me, the whole thing tends to get too chaotic, too free-jazzy at times but there are also brilliant pieces of music to be found. So writing about this album proved to be rather difficult but finding people to recommend this one to is easy: jazz fans, you want this. I'm sure of that.


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ambient / drone

industrial / metal / drum & bass

classical

metal

grindcore / crust

ambient / techno

new wave / alternative rock

black metal

bandcamp

black metal

classical / post rock / jazz

facebook

drone doom

hard rock / metal

black metal / noise

dark jazz

Serge

experimental

Imagine the following scene: Allan Holdsworth playing SynthAxe like Vangelis, accompanied sometimes by Dylan Carlson and sometimes by Buckethead together with a great multi-faceted drummer (Bryan Mantia, for example). A line-up like this would have a lot of probability to go wrong, would not? Well, this album didn't going wrong, it became very awesome! This "crazy" mixture of jazz, fusion, metal, technology, noise and free jazz surprised me a lot!!! The breadth "polystylism" of 'Ariel' had a REALLY big chance to go wrong, but all the musicians played every sound and every note meticulously where it should be, and the album became powerful and a kick ass work!!!

This album was recorded by Greg Sinibaldi (EWI and SuperCollider), Ryan Ferreira (electric guitar) and Ted Poor (drums). All themes were based on the poems' book called 'Ariel' written by Sylvia Plath, released postumante, because her private life was very troubled. and her suicide was carried out after she left bread and milk near the bed of her children, ingested a lot of narcotics and put her head inside the stove, with gas turned on. Realizing her writing themes, this was possibly her last and most melancholy poem. But Greg used five of her immortal works as the inspiration for his music: ‘Ariel’, ‘The Arrival of the bee box’, ‘Lady Lazarus’, ‘Wintering Cut’ and ‘Elm’. 

Greg chose these poems and not only "translated them musically", he convey the sensation of the emotional charge that he had with each poem written by Sylvia. In this very sad book, you can clearly saw passages from something calm to obscure moments like in the song 'Arrival at the bee box'. Already in 'Lady Lazarus' and 'Lady Lazarus Part 2' the feeling of no future or no perspective ahead the humanity, is like in this excerpt from the poem: "Dying / Is an art, like everything else. / I do it exceptionally well". Her disenchantment with humanity is extremely evident in all the poems chosen by Greg.

Like the three songs mentioned, all the other tracks show an emotion that is incredibly consistent with the chosen poems, I even suggest that you read them before listen to this album, because all the emotions of Sylvia’s book can be perceived in a deeper way. Depressive moments are extremely dense and heavy, moments of doubt are puzzling and so the album goes on. This is a very interesting project and has managed to unite several different music idiomatics, creating sounds with an unbelievable cohesion!!! This album is available in digital format and in physical CD. Besides that, it has a special limited edition in Vinyl (300 copies). And to finish, I would like to say with all my sincerity: I loved this album because it surprised me a lot!!! So give yourself a chance to be surprised by 'Ariel'!!! 

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Glauber

post rock

densely acquiescent serenity, majorly entangled in a human emotional diagram of omnipotent infinity, S/T is a simple, yet complete sonorous conflagration of a melodic universe, whose imponderability is virtually attached to the most restless deliberation of a wonderful and honest expressive moment in time.     

​Wagner

heavy jazz / grindcore

ambient / post rock

jazz / noise rock / experimental

bandcamp

heavy metal

crust / hardcore

progressive metal

hip hop / j-rap

electronic

black metal / metal / death metal

black metal

doom / post metal

death metal / thrash metal

folk metal

alternative metal

jazz / experimental

When I think about improvisation ensembles, a stereotype always comes to my mind... It’s a group with a "name + improvisers orchestra" and a work based, almost exclusively, on the contemporary academic music. Please, don’t get me wrong, I had the opportunity to listen to a lot of recordings from groups that follow this characteristics and still do a relevant work, but this saturation ended up forming a kind of "pattern" that have to be followed. However, this isn't - definitely - the case of SPIO (São Paulo Improvisers in Orchestra), which is great!!! The work of this group - at least in this recording - is much more comparable with a modern jazz big band than with a contemporary academic ensemble, which is a pretty good surprise!!!

With curatorship of Daniel Carrera - who also works on the event series called 'Improvise!', which carries big names of free music to São Paulo - this group recorded 'Conduction BR # 5' at the release of Lawrence Butch Morris' WoorkBook called 'The Art Of Conduction', at Trackers - a very important São Paulo's venue for underground music. All its four tracks are very interesting and bring musical memories from Miles Davies' Bitches Brew, John Coltrane's Ascention, Anthony Braxton's free jazz works and of course the Sun Ra Arkestra.

The Morris's methodology demonstrates that any kind of music, being it free jazz or academic, could be conducted and not directed by its conductor, because s/he literally "plays" the orchestra with some codes and other pre-agreements made with the musicians. This work is a real proof that Morris's methodology can be used in any aesthetic and, for me, is absolutely gratifying to see a group of contemporary/experimental music presenting such creative and "accessible" songs  - even in consciously or unconsciously way - at their first record!!! I imagined myself in a venue listening to this kind of music during all night!!! Believe it or not, this was the image that didn't left my head during the whole listening of this album...


Glauber

jazz / experimental

bandcamp

‘Quinta do Lobo’... These words in portuguese could be translated as 'wolf interval', or that Pythagorean scale's interval that was compared to a wolf's howl and constantly avoided in the compositions that were written when this tuning was practically the most used in western world. Undoubtedly this is a very interesting name - even if only for its "sonority characteristics" - for this album recorded by André de Castro and Leandro De Los Santos. Well, their recording was "so live" that you can even listen to the sound made by cars passing at their street (listen carefully to the beginning of track 6, and entire tracks 8 and 9)!!!

In addition, the attribute that draws more attention in this album is the highly comprehensive character in terms of idiomatic - or musical styles - that were used in all its tracks! Of course the "language" that unites all these diverse influences is free jazz, as you may listen in tracks 3/8/9/10, however, there is sound processing, drones, ambient music, and much more just acting as a "differentiated packaging" in tracks 1/2/4/5/11. As if this weren't enough, we can still perceive some sonorities that remit us to a past that, in some way, was constructed by our collective unconscious to answer the question about how would be the sound of our primitive music... A curious phenomenon that happens while you are listening to tracks 6 and 7.

All these characteristics hide another interesting fact: “Quinta do Lobo” is a conceptual work, but it wasn't born this way. When André was in charge of giving the songs' titles, he noticed a cohesion between them and decided to "make a link" with the Lupa capitolina's image from the album cover. He selected the most important cities of Ancient Rome, as a kind of "main concept", and named each track with a title in portuguese that was thought the most appropriate in relation to them. So, if music is made by a set of factors that go beyond itself, I have no doubt that this work is a big and welcome surprise for free jazz enthusiasts!!! If you consider yourself a fan of this style, let yourself be surprised by Quinta do Lobo!!! If you have a label, and are looking for something cool to release on physical media, this is an awesome choice for that!!!


Glauber

ambient / jazz / krautrock

My mind is an absolute mess these days. Not because of the holiday season, not even because there are so many releases that need to be reviewed. I guess it's just a creative generalist thing. I got worse since I decided to become a novelist and then it got worse when I started to work on my second book. It's absolute chaos up there with ideas and plots flashing through my brain. Usually, music makes it better but not this time. This time music just generates more ideas and plots. Oh well, I guess I have to learn to live with it. Luckily there are brilliant albums out there, albums that seem to calm my mental nerves. You guessed it, this is one of those.

Lotto is an instrumental and experimental three piece from Poland, formed by Łukasz Rychlicki (guitar, bass), Mike Majkowski (double bass, hammond organ and synths) and Paweł Szpura (drums). With 'VV' they deliver their third album, a fully improvised musical adventure that beautifully combines ambient, krautrock and psychedelic rock. Furthermore, elements of noise and jazz seem to present too, as if Einstürzende Neubauten met up with Tortoise and Kreidler.

What I like most about this album is the freedom that these musicians have given themselves. Noisy percussion? Sure, why not. Subdued techno beats? They're welcome. Eerie drones and sound sculptures? Absolutely. And meanwhile you're floating on an immersive bass sequence which Tangerine Dream would be proud of. Needless to say perhaps, but this is not your everyday rock album. 

On the other hand, I'm damn sure that this stuff will appear in my day to day playlist a lot from now on. I just adore this continuous weirdness. It's no secret that I am a fan of all things improvised and I am definitely a fan of Lotto. So yeah, I can only recommend this album to all fans of experimental krautrock and experimental ambient. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to close my eyes and listen to the album again.


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jazz / noise / drone

Heavy jazz fans, rejoice, because Dutch combo Dead Neanderthals return with another in-your-face release. Ever since I saw these guys at Incubate some years ago, I've been a huge fan. Why? Well, probably mostly because I like all things original, inventive and entertaining. Dead Neanderthals came at exactly the right moment too. I've been a drone and doom fan since medieval times or so and in the year before that edition of Incubate I became interested in dark jazz. Then, suddenly, there were these noise makers, destroying the stage with their pounding, repetitive and hammering sound, like Sunn O))) meets Miles Davis during an LSD trip.

Otto Kokke (sax), René Aquarius (drums) and Colin Webster (sax) deliver two lengthy tracks which seem to turn back towards the harsh and abrasive sound of their live performances. Unlike their previous experiment 'The Depths', a slow album recorded in a massive tunnel, 'Womb Of God' comes with severe blasts of energy, intense saxophone sounds and unwearying drums. Part of it is still jazz, part of it is still related to death metal and grindcore but I also sense a massive krautrock element here.

Of course, 'Womb Of God' is not for the faint at heart as the album just keeps on going, keeps on raging these intense slabs of noise through the speakers. Personally, I don't really mind, on the very contrary and I'm damn sure that I'm not the only one who is quite fond of Dead Neanderthals. The fact that the white vinyl version of this record is already sold out on the release date confirms that theory. Anyway, anyhow, if you have ever loved Dead Neanderthals, this is the record you need. It's their most immersive and intense work so far.


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ambient / experimental / jazz

The output of Dirk Serries seems neverending, which coincidentally can also be said by the length of most of his works. Not that I mind, on the very contrary. In a way, Serries has been in my living room more than any of my friends and family. His solo works and his releases with Yodok III are constants here, played on an almost daily basis.
To be honest, I cannot say that about Graham Dunning. This is actually the first time I see his name so I'm not familiar with his music. Yet, judging from what I'm listening to at this very moment, that might change soon. Dunning is a sound artist, always exploring the possibilities of music. 

This album is a registration of two different concerts. The first one having taken place in Rijkevorsel, Belgium, while the other one recorded at De Ruimte, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Both tracks share a passion for experimenting with sound. Somehow, it feels like most of the experimentation comes from Dunning. Serries' lingering and droning guitar sound is not the constant here. The constant seems to be a form of free jazz and the chemistry of live improvisation, something these two artists know quite a lot of.

When I say "free jazz", don't expect confusing rhythms and over-the-top saxophone solos. The whole album maintains a slow and somewhat mellow tone. I guess "ambient jazz" is a better phrase. Drones, soundscapes, strange noises, turntables and unidentified object create a strange but constantly evolving sound that demands to be explored. Different sound float in an out, leaving the listener somewhat estranged and confused. In a good way, obviously. This is just a remarkable album, one every jazz/ambient/drone/experimental fan should own.


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