Editions Mego The technical description of the generative methods for this music is quite simple, so to speak. Lehn on his analogue synthesizer and Schmickler on a computer improvised together in November 2010 during a festival in Helsinki, the results diffused by a six-channel loudspeaker system in the hall. This edition comprises a vinyl LP [...]

482 Music This 2009 release is the first by a quartet featuring pianist Greg Burk at work with woodwind player Henry Cook, bassist Ron Seguin and drummer Michel Lambert. A couple of mental notes materialized while the CD was spinning: one concerns with the Coltranian character of many pieces, the other is the welcome news [...]

Henceforth Contrarily to any lackadaisical intuition, Toca Loca are not a salsa group but a trio specialized in contemporary materials, its members responding to the names of Simon Docking (piano), Aiyung Huang (percussion) and Gregory Oh (piano, conduction). The repertoire they decided to tackle for Shed comprises the work of a quartet of composers, the [...]

Monotype The pair didn’t really play together in this particular circumstance, but the results of this long distance collaboration (which, absurdly, had been waiting for a label willing to publish them for years) are quite extraordinary. The essential core of the music is born from Wastell’s 32-inch tam-tam, which we have come to madly love [...]

Waystyx Perhaps contrabassist Johannes Frisch is one of those performers who likes to remain behind the scenes, in the shadow of somebody who may be more known yet still conscious of his role’s importance. As hard as I tried, in fact, no detailed bio was found via customary googling (Facebook and Google+ introduced me to [...]

Ayler Second release by this quartet after We Were Watching The Rain on Leo, the members of the group being leader Mezei (viola), Bogdan Ranković (alto sax, bass clarinet, clarinet), Branislav Aksin (trombone) and Kornél Pápista (tuba). Let me be blunt: I smile bitterly when reading – not in just one, but two reviews to [...]

Family Vineyard In the eternal “take it or leave it” struggle that has always characterized this writer’s relationship with the music of Loren Connors – a man whose abundant output has often been the subject of excessive glorification in relation to the actual value of certain releases, yet worthy of respect for the coherence of [...]

Z6 The record name says it all, in a way. The sounds conceived in the fourteen improvisations of Rust Fungus give in effect the idea of transforming matter, not necessarily in the “positive” acceptation of this expression, except for the sheer quality and indisputable honesty of the resulting music. La Berge is renowned for her [...]

Kvist Starting with a somewhat Riley-esque scent, only to continue with a large variety of impulsive signals and unpredictable shapes, 1975′s “Pieces For Kohn” was Tom Hamilton’s successful attempt to accompany the visual art of St.Louis artist Bill Kohn, a painter using “daring and vibrant color combinations to fulfill 3-D geometric and architectural compositions”. To [...]

Henceforth This is 2010′s debut release of a guitar quartet form New York, its repertoire including works from composers such as Phill Niblock, Fred Frith, James Tenney, Arvo Pärt (!), Nick Didkovsky and Elliott Sharp (who penned the liner notes), in addition to younger ones who are absolutely, and culpably, unknown to this reviewer. The [...]

Drip Audio Subtle Lip Can is a trio comprising percussionist Isaiah Ceccarelli, guitarist Bernard Falaise (of Miriodor renown) and violinist Josh Zubot. This CD, their debut release, stands among those albums instantly calling for a second, a third and perhaps a fifth listen after the first. The reasons are manifold, and all positive. Firstly, the [...]

Riti The beautiful picture inside the digipack portrays the protagonists of this uncompromising record in dissimilar facial expressions: Fernández relaxed but also conscious of being photographed, Morris glancing obliquely at the camera while touching his hair, the smart smile of someone who knows of having just perpetrated acts against the accepted conventions, evidently unwilling to [...]

Emanem How many phrases, in several decades of liberal interaction, has been imagined, created on the spot, played without thinking or plainly discarded by a mind like Lol Coxhill’s? And another question arising as I listened for the fourth or fifth time to Success With Your Dog: how does the guy manage to execute those [...]

Ultramarine Released in 2010 but – as a matter of course for this scribe – approached only now, Prism has gained quite a number of rave reviews over the months. I’m not the kind of person who gets influenced by anything, either negative or positive; still, writing on an album after having read what other [...]

πτώματα κάτω απο το κρεββάτι Vinyl album with splendid cover pictures portraying the final stages of a decaying theatre; no notes, except something on the actual disc’s very label. A pair of live performances that must be enjoyed through headphones, or at least played at high volume to get overwhelmed by the incredible amount of [...]

Fragment Factory There’s always a great degree of mystery hovering in the air whenever names like John Duncan and Z’EV are featured in a release. But if they’re joined by Michael Esposito, an expert in Electronic Voice Phenomena whose family roots belong to the same tree of Alfred Vail (co-inventor of the Morse Code), the [...]

Beta-Lactam Ring Part of a compendium of 7 LPs involving himself alone plus assorted collaborative projects he’s into, Pure Drone sees Aidan Baker’s guitars at the maximum level of oneiric minimalism. In keeping with the album’s title, the first side “Pure” revolves around a single centre, a severely reduced quantity of barely wavering notes whose [...]

Unit This is an attractive venture that, although dating from 2009, retains interest to this day. Studer performs a solo piece to begin with, then it’s just duets with entirely different vocalists in age, experience and fields of experimentation. What the host does is generating an acoustic environment for each singer to adapt in and [...]

Triple Bath The recent 3-LP set by Mohammad (Spiriti, on Antifrost) has not stopped radiating droning beauty after many months from its release. When I rescued 2010’s Onda from the hundreds of recordings that keep amassing all over my house, the thought was something around the lines of “let’s see if this is an earlier [...]

Accretions First briefing for your darling babbler with LA’s Slumgum, composed of drummer Trevor Anderies, saxophonist Jon Armstrong, pianist Rory Cowal and bassist David Tranchina. Quardboard Flavored Fiber is their second release, and if there are three things that I would attempt to utter about influences and similarities to other kinds of music, they might [...]

Creative Sources Sometimes one lives entire days with a record, inhaling its spellbinding fumes yet unable to find the right words to express feelings about music that absolutely refuses a classic description. It can even happen that the theoretical reviewer decides to set aside additional time for a suitable terminology to materialize, dedicating the attention [...]

Leo The voice of Katja Cruz is not exactly what you’d call a model of intonation. In an album like Primeval Sounds Of The World she had managed to elicit a measure of interest, while the most recent solo outing Mi Corazon – based on traditional Argentinean tunes – was so awful that I refused [...]

Basses Frequences After an atypically lengthy hiatus – mostly due to the Christchurch earthquake of February 2011, which destroyed his studio besides spawning dramatic tragedies in the area where he resides – Peter Wright released the last album he made prior to that event on vinyl, although buyers can download a digital version once cuddling [...]

Mudoks Hubert Bergmann is still too little known in regard to his improvisational lucidity and conscientious tackling of past issues of jazz pianism. Reminiszenzen, released in 2010, lasts 75 minutes; usually I consider this duration excessive (with the exclusion of minimalism and trance), yet the fruits of Bergmann’s imagination are equally juicy and delicate. His [...]

Serein I often happen to remain in awe in front of the wealth of words that certain reviewers are able to produce for a record, especially when it is very short. This 10-inch vinyl by Donato Wharton is largely built on environments deriving from an electric guitar subjected to a cycle of processing that, in [...]

Die Schachtel On Venice’s Giudecca Island in 2009, Selvafiorita and Tricoli captured echoes and signals from the location, with a preponderance of liquid matters as per the record’s title, a clear mention of T.S. Eliot. Pertinently inserted in a system of live tape processing and subsequently manipulated in a Milan studio, those source materials became [...]

Creative Sources An earnest quest for the attainment of unusual sonorities from two “traditional” instruments (Flinn’s percussive arsenal and Tucker’s guitar) paired with Beresford’s electronics. Certain types of improvisation let some space for the listener’s brain to unscramble – at least partially – the signals deriving from bastard instrumental proceedings. In Ink Room this happens [...]