Clean Feed Avoiding the demarcations enforced by an instrument to produce music not resembling anything remotely influenced by that means comes extremely easy to drummer Harris Eisenstadt. The material he wrote for September Trio avoids indulgence within flashy percussive techniques – he never does indeed – being instead oriented towards the reflective side of things. [...]

3Leaves In the moment when silence and its weak ruptures become unbearable for a man to sustain, a music based on those very characteristics is equally problematic. When an artist works with micro-elements such as Belgian Pierre Gerard, the challenge is that of pushing a listener to find new implications within acoustic milieus exploited to [...]

Staalplaat Every once in a while a robust dose of Muslimgauze is needed to recollect a time when a friendship could be maintained via handwritten letters and postcards announcing additional quantities of revitalizing beats. Among the most prolific artists of our times and a unique innovator in his incessant quest for new sonorities, Bryn Jones [...]

As I walk around the house picking up pieces of gathered dust in the corners of the rooms with my bare fingers, the frame of mind is on the persnickety side. Nothing works as it should, world-weariness is knocking at the door, weather is shifting to bad yet again, the laptop’s hard disk can’t get [...]

Leo Escaping the asphyxiating exhalations of media-regulated attempts to generate mass depression while a large chunk of the social segment is being stuck with the “poverty” tag is getting tougher even in the so-called land of the sun, dear readers. The sharks will never take me alive, though: drugs and pills are verboten here. Why [...]

Nemu Andrė Pabarčiūtė is a singer from Lithuania whose style is somewhat evocative of Julie Tippetts with clear East-European accents. But it is her dramatic vocal agility which results especially valuable over dealings with instruments that may run parallel to – or slightly contradict – instant visions and melodic allusions during a specific performance. At [...]

Unsounds In various languages including this writer’s native idiom, the word “folia” (or slight modifications thereof) translates as “craziness”. This tune of centuries ago – you can read its history here – was reworked via guitar and computer by Moor and Kyriakides, who took the essential content of the piece and subjected it to a [...]

UgExplode The assumption that a quartet featuring such a marshalling of diverse improvisers could be – to the very least – dynamically spiky is quite obvious. Better still, numerous chunks of Scowl are also beautiful to hear, the type of aural gratification detectable during the sheer enjoyment of different-than-usual timbral emissions which, somewhat magically, appears [...]

33 Records Known for his work in the world of improvisation – especially in notable collaborations with Clive Bell and Sylvia Hallett – Mike Adcock is also the owner of a complementary artistic personality, a universe where straightforward compositional frames and the innocence of a melodic line are gifted with the same dignity, if not [...]

Bug Incision Half an hour of improvisations recorded in 2008 at Montreal’s La Brique in front of a few fervent stray cats by the trio of Gordon Allen (trumpet), Michel F. Côté (drums, feedback) and Alexandre St-Onge (electric bass, laptop). The first track evolves from a thick sludge of moderately dissonant layers – abounding in [...]

Moonjune As a rule, this reviewer is averse to the close association of contemporary orchestrations and traditional matters. However, guitarist Rea – who, for the occasion, added various Asian instruments to the palette – did a competent job in these five reworked tunes derived from ancient Chinese and Taiwanese melodies spiced with electric shades and [...]

Moonjune As soon as this CD was received (quite a while back) I had discarded it right away, such was the level of “instant negative reaction” experienced at that time. The attempt to re-tackle Hologramatron now – with additional doses of patience – unfortunately confirmed the first impression, namely that of an over-produced album containing [...]

Indie Europe / Zoom There are ensembles playing so well that one can’t possibly criticize them. Able to tackle whatever complex score is available, spicing it with improvised sketches that appear rehearsed, enriched by tentative sense of humour and quotes from easier materials (pop, folk, you name it). Add a pinch of elegiac nostalgia every [...]

Clean Feed Zé Eduardo is a lone wolf of sorts in the Portuguese music scene – it happens to everybody in the world who does not obey to the establishment’s rules, of course – and A Jazzar is a good representation of his non-compliant sense of humour and overall artistic cleverness. The enterprise’s chief, also [...]

Penumbra First solo CD by Rammel, following a 10-inch on Crouton (Like Water Tightly Wound) a few years ago. The instrument is the same: a palette spiked with wooden and metal rods, amplified with a contact microphone, plucked, rubbed or bowed according to the need. The 47 minutes of the program present an ample selection [...]

Every once in a while one has to spin those ancient-looking things, if only to get them out of eyesight. But let’s face it: great music hides in there sometimes, and I spent a nice Sunday morning listening to the best (well, almost) of what these people had to offer in such a restricted format. [...]

Appel Music Typical case of minor gem hidden amidst the piles of promos still to be reviewed after years from the receipt, Morceau En Forme De La is a beautiful piece by an artist formerly unknown to me. The score calls for “two double basses, a violin, and a piano”, which – in absence of [...]

Deep Listening Certain improvisers manage to sound clueless even at the highest heights of their technique, others act as militants but their wheels are perennially stuck in the mud of commonplace. Then there is a rank of experienced players who seem just happy to deliver solid music, elaborating eventual incidents and unexpected ramifications in the [...]

Appel Music The cover of this CDR (published in 2009) does not specify what I managed to gather by reading the scarce information existing on the web, namely that its sonic content was conceived via no-input mixer. Indeed the richness of the pulsations had me thinking about analogue synthesis; the sounds contained herein are for [...]

JOE MANERI / JOE MORRIS / MAT MANERI – Out Right Now Having listened to Out Right Now many years after its publication, I pushed myself to check old reviews on the web in order to see if the days spent decoding what the Maneris and Morris were trying to communicate were enough for me [...]

Opening instalment of a new feature that will be run intermittently, and in any case according to necessity. Reviews in 100 words or less (aka “not every record deserves bleeding ears and hours of work…”). This time the writeups are mostly dedicated to a few 3-inches sent by the German label Electroton. But first… SECOND [...]

Emanem Teatime is a precious document digitally reissuing 1975′s Incus LP in its entirety, with the addition of a boomingly grimy cassette outtake that made me feel the itch to release some “me-and-my-two-friends-in-a-room” free-for-alls jealously kept in a closet since eons ago. It is the aural testimony of the activities of a quintet of musicians [...]