Sofa There’s no need of inordinate brain-straining to recognize what this CD is all about, especially when reading the name of Robin Hayward (on a microtonal instrument, versus Lo and Taxt’s C-tubas). The 32-minute total duration, given the type of medium and the manner of expression, is a sensible choice to elude stretches of pseudo-creative [...]

Utech By now nearly everybody knows that RM stands for Reto Mäder (supposedly, 74 is his year of birth; that would make this reviewer a RM64). Reflex is a quagmire, a morass, a sauna of noxious vapours. Inside that perilous area, one tries to negotiate whatever is necessary to see a few rays of light, [...]

Insubordinations Diatribes is an expandable French duo featuring D’Incise and Cyril Bondi on an array of objects and percussive materials that they hit, stroke and bow under the auspices of a laptop. The press release reports collaborations with people of the calibre of Keith Rowe and Jason Kahn, the latter’s spiritual presence indeed defining the [...]

Carrier So, a female duo of viola and bassoon. Nice, huh? If you were thinking of giving Natura Naturans to a chamber music-loving relative as a present for the upcoming Christmas festivities, hold your horses. Amy Cimini and Katherine Young (the names are inexplicably – or willingly – missing on the digipak cover) handle their [...]

Free Software Series Loyal readers know that lately I tend to become rather grouchy when pondering on records defined by few risible incidents emerging from perpetual silences. That’s what was initially happening with this disc, recorded on Hochherz’s Ubuntu Studio (this writer is also an eager Ubuntu apprentice, about to deepen his knowledge of sound [...]

Another Timbre A fascinating act, divided into two comprehensive improvisations for soprano sax and radio (Doneda), accordion and objects (Kocher) and prepared spinet (Schiller). Crepuscular tones abound, the musicians picking ways of emitting sounds according to a “let’s-put-this-in-and-see-how-it-works” approach rather than simply letting the instrumental unrest move around. The sections in which the three superimposed [...]

Mille Plateaux Klive is the pseudonym of Icelandic Úlfur Hansson, who alone is responsible for all that is heard in the nicely titled Sweaty Psalms (except for DivaDeLaRosa’s vocals in the peculiarly, and exquisitely slanted “Common Wealth”). You know that I’m not an expert in techno things – I’m not an expert in anything, actually [...]

NurNichtNur The music in Pas Appât was recorded live to digital in 2009. We know Hubweber as a Zappa-loving trombone monger, a ventriloquist with stomach problems hybridized with a splendid virtuoso capable of innovative sorceries that leave the addressees dumbfounded. But if you thought that the coupling with double bassist Wolf would result in a [...]

Hibernate It’s funny to note how my mind usually refuses to take in the often abstruse “explanations” that accompany a music release. This occurrence is particularly frequent in the ambient/installation soundtrack area, namely the place where Presence fits. Born as sound material for an event at the Art Museum of Torrance (California), this piece essentially [...]

Line All of the eight utterly splendid tracks comprised by Soirée are old Asmus Tietchens selections that he subjected to ten layers of recycling process, each layer the reworking of the previous “version”. When I read, on the sleeve, the composer’s philosophical question regarding the necessity of producing new music when there is a chance [...]

Line Armed with a Paia Oz (an out-of-production portable mini-organ) with which he recorded the basic superimpositions of pitches, and capturing environmental hues inside a former army barrack now containing 50 steel statues made by sculptor Donald Judd, Steve Roden generated Proximities during an artist’s residency in Marfa, Texas in 2010. As always, Roden’s music [...]

Touch Subsequently to ten days spent in the Ethiopian city of Harar, gathering materials to use as background sounds for a theatre piece based on an Arthur Rimbaud letter, Carl Michael Von Hausswolff managed to extract the maximum (for us, the listeners) from the minimum (of utilized means). In “Day And Night” a local string [...]

Hubro Having lost contact with ECM’s productions in the last fifteen years or so, when I read that the Norwegian trio 1982 comprises recording artists for Manfred Eicher’s imprint the response was nonexistent. All for the better, I believe – no influence whatsoever on the evaluation. The fact is that after three listens my opinion [...]

+3dB Norwegian cellist, composer and improviser Grenager’s relation with Affinis (the ensemble that gives its name to the opus, of course) is a solid one at over 12 years of collaboration; this familiarity is the reason behind the vivacious fluidity that blesses the listening experience. We’re treated with different categories of sonic construction, typically informed [...]

JON HEMMERSAM – Remembering The Future JSH Music Danish guitarist Hemmersam fronts a supergroup featuring Michael Jefry Stevens, Dave Liebman, Ken Filiano and Rakalam Bob Moses (for the ones who just came back from Uranus: piano, reeds, double bass and drums respectively). It’s an extensive trip containing a few morsels of exciting music, especially when [...]

JOHN LUTHER ADAMS – Four Thousand Holes In spite of my high regard for some of Adams’ past work, I couldn’t manage to greet this one warmly enough to compare it to the Alaska-based composer’s top opuses. The protracted title track superimposes major and minor triads played by Stephen Drury on the piano and processed [...]

Leo It takes a while to realize about the little gems concealed in an apparently “normal” – and quite lengthy at 76 minutes – record for solo piano by a Russian artist unknown to me before. Trust your scribe, though: Parallels is worthy of serious focus – if you want to concentrate a bit on [...]

New World The “self-inflicted obscurity” through which John Kennedy’s notes describe Peter Garland’s scarce appeal to ordinary critics and audiences is not that surprising after all. The union of eminence and matchlessness is something that average humans obstinately tend to repel, particularly when music is the discussion’s subject. That a bright individuality is expressed by [...]

Clean Feed Poor “official” jazz reviewers, at least the really skilled ones, belong to a category that I sincerely admire. Writing on jazz and related topics without recurring to stereotypes is hard, unless the customary “let’s rehash the career” approach is introduced, the writeup typically finished by a couple of lines lyophilizing the disc’s content [...]

Another Timbre There aren’t many articles on the web explaining in detail violinist Tiziana Bertoncini’s views on music, art and disguised establishments like this interview, unfortunately written in Italian. Have someone translate it for you, for several of her statements – though dating from more than five years ago – are the direct emanation of [...]

Another Timbre Tierce is a trio embodied by Jez riley French, Ivan Palacký and Daniel Jones, working on an array of peculiar and regular generators of sounds that include a zither, contact microphones, electronics, turntable and an amplified knitting machine shrewdly combined with plenty of field recordings. The latter inform a substantial portion of the [...]

Another Timbre According to someone’s opinion, it is better watching non-idiomatic improvisers at work during a live performance in order to have a clear idea of what they’re concocting and gain a deeper understanding of what they put in a recording to be enjoyed at home. Your chronicler stands at the opposite edge, preferring a [...]

Monochrome Vision Working at the blurred margins of what’s immediately decipherable (for instance, but not exclusively, liquid percolations and gushes in every possible manifestation and shape) and what is not (the fruits of a computerized process that attributes amorphous resonances and rearranged configurations to the original sounds) Pedro Tudela and Miguel Carvalhais show once more [...]

Another Timbre The different levels between performers working in comparable sectors of the musical area concerning with the atypical exploitation of the acoustic properties of instruments inside a room derive from the ability of repeatedly causing what in recent years has instead practically disappeared. The kind of emotional, visceral response to a sound – alone [...]

Three Chairs / Jardinista! I wasn’t aware of the fact that Christof Kurzmann – the artistic entity of whom my acquaintance is deeper in this trio – resides in Buenos Aires. The two tracks presented in this CDR were recorded there and in Santiago, respectively; besides the Austrian’s customary utilization of the “lloopp” software, the [...]

Corvo The very first release in this German label’s catalog is a vinyl comprising a communal effort recorded at Berlin’s Ausland in 2010 for a total duration of less than half an hour (good move, if you ask me: improvisational statements exceeding this time span, if not supported by proven artistry, sound rather boring to [...]

Creative Sources Solo release – dated 2010 – from a 28-year old Australian double bassist who has performed and/or collaborated with some major name of the improv scene, including never-enough-sung Jon Rose. Five pieces that try to deepen Majkowski’s growing interest in his solitary excursions through the textural varieties of an instrument that has imperceptibly [...]

Corvo Alessandra Eramo’s solo LP – whose title’s English translation corresponds to “How I Learnt To Fly” – is theoretically grounded on a few essential elements: flies (recorded during the transformation of larvae into insects and used in several segments), an ancient-sounding piano reminding yours truly of long-disappeared Giovanni Sturmann (does someone remember him?), field [...]