RUSS LOSSING / MAT MANERI / MARK DRESSER – Metal Rat (2006)

Label: Clean Feed – CF064CD
Format: CD, Album; Country: Portugal - Released: Dec 2006
Style: Free Improvisation, Free Jazz, avant-garde
Recorded at Acoustic Studios, Brooklyn, N.Y. by Michael Brorby, 2006
Mixed at Skulyne Productions, Warren N.J.by Paul Wickliffe
Mastered by Luis Delgado / Produced by Russ Lossing
Design by Rui Garrido

''Metal Rat'' with Russ Lossing, Mat Maneri and Mark Dresser has been hailed a masterpiece by critics and musicians.

Review:

A focused session of collective free improvisation conceived by pianist Russ Lossing, Metal Rat features the spontaneous interplay of three sympathetic musicians. Joined by violist Mat Maneri and bassist Mark Dresser, Lossing booked a recording studio for a mere four hours to instill a "real sense of urgency" to the proceedings. The ensuing session benefits from this pre-imposed constraint by lending an air of palpable tension to the work. Full of simmering intensity and dramatic flair, this is dark, intuitive chamber jazz at its finest.

The album is composed of four trio excursions, four duets and two distinctive originals written by Lossing, the blistering "Turn" and the introspective "Is Thick With." The majority of the pieces are brief sketches, from two to four minutes in duration, with "Ch'ien" the only exception. At fourteen minutes, it is the album's tour-de-force, an epic suite of turbulent emotional transformation, circumnavigating jittery agitation, hopeful optimism and bittersweet resignation.

Throughout the record, Lossing reveals a shadowy, modernist sensibility; melancholy pointillism, spectral glisses, pulverizing clusters, and searing embers erupt from his keys. Maneri's microtonal viola technique is singularly expressive, a hollow, crying tone that glides from mournful to caustic. Dresser's resonant bass playing is typically magnificent; his sinewy arco work is especially plangent.

The trio stretches formal concepts of accompaniment, call-and-response and counterpoint with clairvoyant elasticity. No one player dominates as each responds in turn with confirmation or confrontation. Their intuitive declarations spur on new avenues for exploration. The session unfolds gradually with chamber-like restraint, punctuated by sudden interjections of taut dissonance.

Employing a monochromatic palette of deep chiaroscuro, the album alternates between unsettling agitation and somber melancholy. Metal Rat is a subtle, rewarding document of free improvisation from three acknowledged masters of the form.

_ By TROY COLLINS, Published: June 13, 2007 (AAJ)



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I remember Zeke's Gallery – Poster - No. 2

Graphic Design:
Poster – No. 2
Live Performances At Zeke’s Gallery – Montreal, Canada – 2005/07
Different Perspectives In My Room ...! about Zeke's Gallery, which stopped working in August 2007
Artwork and Complete Design by VITKO Salvarica
ART&JAZZ Studio SALVARICA – 2012
The used materials are the old photos, for the new posters.

The Zeke’s Gallery Performances & Interviews , were included live band recordings, poetry readings, theater performances, and interviews with artists and other people involved in making art and culture in Montreal. A fiercely independent art gallery started in 1998, Zeke's Gallery began recording the bands and poets who performed in their space in 2001. As time progressed, the recordings began to expand in scope and incorporated in-depth interviews with artists exhibiting at the gallery.

Zeke's Gallery, sadly, closed its doors in August 2007.


Periodically, in several episodes, I'll introduce you to some interesting shots, which occurred on the premises of Zeke's Gallery. The material I found on "The Zeke's Gallery Podcasts".
I fixed the sound quality, digital audio format is MP3@320, and you can find a link in the comments.
As such, this material, will be published only on this blog.
I hope that you will discover something new.


Well, in this second part of walk through the Zeke's Gallery, listen:

THE HHAKA ENSEMBLE - Live at Zeke's Gallery (2006)
Kris Covlin (saxophones), Charity Chan (accordion), Simon Angell (guitar), Carley Mellan (bass clarinet), Jonathan Keeley (guitar), and Sarah Page (harp)

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SERGEY KURYOKHIN – Pop-Mechanics No. 17 + (1988) - Disc No. 2

 

Disc No.2 - Sergey Kuryokhin – Pop-Mechanics No. 17 +

This is the second disc from the collection "Sergey Kuryokhin - Divine Madness" of the four, label Leo Records (1997).

Sergey Kuryokhin – Divine Madness 

Label: Leo Records – CD LR 813 - 816 

Format: 4 × CD, Album, Box-Set; Country: UK - Released: 1997 

Style: Free Improvisation, Experimental

The total duration of the four CDs is five hours including a whole disc of previously unreleased material. 

The box includes long deleted LPs: Piano Zoological Elements, Subway Culture, Introduction in Pop-Mechanics, Pop-Mechanics No.17, etc. 

Total time: disc 1: 76'09, disc 2: 73'34, disc 3: 77'52, disc 4: 72'26

The original vinyl release has the following characteristics:

 

Sergey Kuryokhin – Pop-Mechanics No. 17 

Label: Leo Records – LR 158 

Format: Vinyl, LP; Country: UK - Released: 1988

Recorded live in Novosibirsk 2 October, 1984

Style: Free Jazz, Free Improvisation

Sergey Kuryokhin (born in Murmansk on June 16, 1954), pianist, composer, band leader, actor, director and public figure died of cancer on July 9, 1996, at the age of 42. He first attracted public attention as jazz pianist, playing solo, with Vladimir Chekasin, Anatoly Vapirov and others. In the early 1980s, before he was allowed to travel outside the Soviet Union, his records published by Leo Records, as well as a number of TV programs made him one of the cult figures of the burgeoning Russian underground.

In 1984 he formed Pop-Mechanika Orchestra - a band, a concept and a philosophy. The band, which could be anything from a modest trio to a full blown multimedia extravag anza complete with a full symphony, a brass band, a rock group, a circus, a zoo, a gypsy singer, and whatever else his fantasy could bring up at the moment, subsequently toured most of the world. Sergey Kuryokhin's discography counts more than 40 LPs and CDs, he composed music for dozens of films worldwide. His importance however stretches beyond his documented legacy. He was most known and valued as a tireless catalyst of artistic life, as a creative force which united and formed the artistic community, as one of the strongest and most vital voices of a rev olutionary era, the era which transformed the stagnant Soviet Union into new, yet unknown, but vibrant Russia.

Walls all over the world are coming down: cultural, physical and intellectual. As was the Pop- Mechanika Orchestra, the SKIIFestival will be of an interdisciplinary nature. Thus it is rather a Feast of Arts: the Festival stages will host Baroque, Classical , Jazz, Free Improvisation, Rock, Dance, Film, Theater & Poetry.



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CARL LUDWIG HÜBSCH’S LONGRUN DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNIVERSE – The Creators Bend A Master Plan (2010)

Label: NEOS JAZZ – NEOS 41003
Format: CD, Album; Country: Germany - Released: 03 Jul 2010
Style: Free Improvisation
Recorded November 5, 2008 at Institut Francais, Cologne (Köln)
Mixed By, Mastered By – Reinhard Kobialka
Producer – Carl Ludwig Hübsch
Recorded By – Christian Heck 

Carl Ludwig Hübsch 
(Planet Blow, Post No Bills, Lester Bowie`s Brass Fantasy, Arthur Blythe, Schubert Sextett, European Tuba Quartett, Buck Hübsch Mahall, Vertrauensbildende Massnahmen etc.).......tuba
Matthias Schubert (Gunter Hampel Duo, Albert Mangelsdorf Quintett, Klaus König Orchestra, Marty Cook Band, M.Schubert Quartett/Sextett Schubert/Gratkowski Duo etc.)....... tenorsaxophone
Wolter Wierbos (ICP Ensemble, Gerry Heminway Quintet, Podium Trio (van Kemenade/Kuiper), Maarten Altena Ensemble, Curtis Clark Sextet, Albrecht Maurer Quartett, Available Jelly etc.)......trombone
Gerry Hemingway (November 2008) (Crispell/Guy/Hemingway, tom&gerry (Thomas Lehn & Gerry Hemingway) BassDrumBone(Helias/Anderson/Hemingway), Graewe/Reijsegger/Hemingway, Hemingway/Butcher ...) ......percussion

Review:

One of the great appeals of this trio (alright, quartet, but we'll get to that) is that it breathes as a single living being. In concert, and on their previous recordings, Hübsch, Schubert, and Wierbos sound as though they are one three-voiced beast, singing ad libitum, moving seamlessly between written material and the stuff of their imaginations, when necessary covering mistakes, compressing coal into diamonds, all of this with apparent unified thought.

Aware that the gravitational pull of a percussionist might tear at the seams of his Universe's bonds, Carl Ludwig hübsch chose carefully. Although in the Universe Hübsch limits himself to tuba, he is also a talented drummer. That was one of the reasons he wanted to experiment with the effects of the right drummer on this more-than-a-decade-old trio. In Gerry Hemingway he knew he had a singular personality who could function as a melodic voice, as on "3 pinups," or as a source of metric propulsion, as on "not even," or at times move freely between the two roles, as on "module mobile." As important as this versatility and his innate creativity is Hemingway's organic, intentional looseness, a flexibility that lets this now-four-voiced animal breath freely.

— Scott Fields, Cologne, April 2010

 Carl Ludwig Hübsch

 Matthias Schubert

Wolter Wierbos

Pictures from the Eindhoven concert

Place: Jazzpower, café Wilhelmina, Eindhoven (March 7, 2005)

....."There is a focus on highly complex written and improvisational lines that are hard to distinguish. Individual soloing comes and goes, with masterful work by Wierbos in particular. An outstanding and unusual release (not the least because of the instrumentation, but also due to the sophisticated orchestrations), Carl Ludwig Huebsch's Longrun Development of the Universe may not live up to the implicit ontological impIications of the group's name, but it produces a musical product for serious listening pleasure."
_ Steven Loewy

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CARL LUDWIG HÜBSCH'S PRIMORDIAL SOUP – Primordial Soup (2007)

Label: Red Toucan Records – RT 9331
Format: CD, Album; Country: Canada - Released: March 2007
Style: Free Improvisation, avant-garde, Free Jazz
Recorded In April 2005 live at Loft, Cologne. Germany or at Neuwerk 13 Studios, Lahr, Germany
Recorded By – André Horsmann (tracks: 3, 6), Christian Heck (tracks: 1, 2, 4, 5, 7 to 9)
All tracks composed by Carl Ludwig Hübsch

"My playing is focused on music as a structure in time. All focus is on the genesis of the moment. While emphasis and plot are fragmented and given the freedom of a new point of departure, utmost care is given to awareness of musical flow and continuity of the play. Through the use of avant-garde and self-invented performance techniques, the tuba acquires completely new characteristics as a brass instrument. An innovative array of unexpected sounds is heard, the instrument is seen from a fresh perspective, and the audience is confronted with a novel way of perceiving time."
(Carl Ludwig Hübsch)

Primordial Soup is based on material composed by Hübsch, who is accompanied by three of the best artists of the German jazz improvisation scene. An innovative listening experience through an amorphous, unrecognizable, de/structured sound.

Review:

Carl Ludwig Hübsch's Primordial Soup is made up of German free jazz stars, yet they are called upon to navigate some very complex compositions. That is not to say that the pieces do not allow for some extended improvisation. It is just the knowing where the written stops and the free starts that is beyond recognition.

The opening track, a twelve-minute introduction into Primordial Soup's mission statement tentatively slips across as a classical piece of music that is extended, elongated and infused with improvisation tools. Midway through NGC 2271 Hades Bb the logical progression of the composition stops. The nothingness begins again with trumpeter Axel Dörner's whispered breath technique. Is it the same song, but with a written passage of silence? It certainly must be the breathy growls and uttered tones, whether improvised or notated, are mood stabilizers.

It is as if the composer has written with tools that are all now familiar within free jazz; he has simply gathered them into his color palate for music making. The obvious reference for a track like NGC 2273 Vier/Four with the off-kilter measure and the tuba bottom is Anthony Braxton. But Hübsch is less serious (in the best sense of the word) than Braxton. Compositions written here must have been developed with the individual players in mind. Hübsch allows the familiar playing of Dörner and Gratkowski to blossom as he does not straightjacket each player by his writing. For his part, the drummer Michael Griener is a colorist and a fine collaborator with the other players.

This music might be one of the finer examples of how free jazz can be tailored into not randomly coherent, but orchestrated, coherence.

_  By Mark Corroto (AAJ)


This music has great depth, and what the musicians manage to create, not only by getting unknown sounds out of their instruments, but also by creating sound sculptures you've never heard before, is a great listening experience.

_ by Stef Gijssels (FreeJazz)



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FRANK GRATKOWSKI PROJEKT – Loft Exil V (2CD-2003)

Label: Leo Records – LR 410/411
Format: 2CD, Album; Country: US - Release: 2004
Style: Free Jazz, Free Improvisation
Recorded live at the 32nd New Jazz Festival Moers (Germany) on June 7th (CD 1) and June 8th (CD 2) 2003 by Stefan Deistler
New Design by ART&JAZZ Studio SALVARICA, Designer by VITKO - 2012
Mixed and mastered by Wolfgang Stach

Review:

Milestone birthdays are as fine a catalyst as any for convening all-star aggregates of improvisers. Evan Parker teamed with colleagues from his two longstanding trio associations for his 50th. The results released on the Leo label were memorable and still rank in the top tier of his discography. Paul Dunmall followed suit when he hit his own half-century mark by conscripting his Moksha big band for a BBC-commissioned concert. German reed maven Frank Gratkowski, a guy who can count both men as peers, marked his 40th in similar fashion. Coordinating celebratory gigs as part of the 2003 Moers Jazz Festival, he assembled a formidable septet fronted jointly by his own horns, trumpeter Herb Robertson, and trombonist Wolter Wierbos. A dyadic rhythm section comprised of Dieter Manderscheid and Wilber de Joode on basses and drummers Gerry Hemingway and Michael Vatcher, divided into separate stereo channels, completes what reads on paper as a powerhouse collective. And as if that weren ’ t enough marshaled might, the set ’ s second disc finds Tobias Delius joining in on both tenor and clarinet, further swelling the band to octet size.

Loft Exile V also celebrates Gratkowski ’ s enduring relationship with H.M. Müller, proprietor of the Loft, a performance space where the reedman got his start along with a still-growing alumni of other European musicians. Assembling his dream band in a crowded formation against one wall (pictured in a landscape shot in the liners), Gratkowski largely eschews his customary compositional intricacy, opting instead for looser free-range blowing. The two dates captured each carry an ad hoc feel, with the players tossing out the formalities of a rigid, premeditated roadmap and simply seeing where there shared ingenuity takes them. Gratkowski supplies the single ‘ composed ’ piece with the closing “ Out of the Loom ” . It works as a fitting capstone to the mammoth slabs of free improv that precede it. Point-of- entry track demarcations further leaven the density by allowing for easy episodic listening. The first disc ’ s hour plus “The Morning Beckons” contains ten such tags.

The music is much too sprawling and discursive to reconstruct an accurate itinerary within the space of a review (and why read a faulty facsimile when one can take the trip in person for the price of a parting with a small stack of bills?). Arresting moments are numerous, starting with the opening fracas that finds the horns bristling and blustering atop a stomping crosshatch of snap-plucked basses and stentorian drums. But there are also a fair number of quietly palaverous passages too, still strung with tension. A loping two-prong pizzicato groove surfaces and Wierbos ’ mute-socketed brass spreads metallic glisses. Arco harmonics weave with floating flute-like sonorities in a creaky dance of ethereal tones only to turn knotty and diffusive once again with the ‘ rhythm ’ section thwacking and smacking away at its instruments. Gratkowski ’ s all-stops-pulled alto solo in the crowning closing section represents an energized apogee. Delius ’ presence on the second disc also helps in shoring up the more meandering sections too.

Some listeners will probably second-guess Gratkowski ’ s decision to mostly suppress his composerly urges in favor of freewheeling improv. For those doubters there are plenty of places in his existing catalog to find solace. His jubilee shindig might not place on par with the likes of Parker ’ s, but there ’ s still much enjoyment to be had. With luck Gratkowski ’ s own 50th will stir up an even more potent habanero heat.

_  by DEREK TAYLOR, 17 January 2005 (AAJ)



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FRED HESS – Extended Family (2003)

Label: Tapestry Records - Catalogue # 76004-2

Format CD, Album; Country: United States

Release Date: 03/18/2003

Style: Avant-garde, Free Jazz, Modern Jazz

Distributor: City Hall

Review:

Jazz is sometimes described as a musician's music, a rarefied art form that only gains true appreciation from those whose sensibilities have been heightened by years of study. It also perhaps a reflection on the fact that jazz musicians are all too often more concerned with impressing their musician peer groups than pleasing audiences. Extended Family is an album that is only likely to please a very small number of people with extremely narrow musical interests. 

Fred Hess's latest recording is an album of original compositions for tenor, trumpet, bass and drums. It's a so-called progressive affair that showcases the leader's virtuosic tenor playing and Paul Smoker's distinctive trumpet style. It's a hard listen, but not for the right reasons. The difficulty here is maintaining interest in the music. 

The opening track "Good Question" is a 12 bar blues with an angular be-bop melody that selfconsciously avoids square phrasing. Hess's blowing opens confidently as he demonstrates his speedy technical mastery. However, none of the phrases are particularly inspired and you're left without a shadow of doubt that he's spent years obsessively practising scales and note patterns. 

Ken Filiano on bass takes the next statement which reminds you how unsuited this instrument is to jazz soloing, even in his skilled hands. Smoker's trumpet is the most distinctive of the solos,moving between bluesy phrases and rapid, scribbled runs of hidden shallows. 

"Mr and Mrs Clef Take a Vacation" is a long free piece that has little to commend it. In the liner notes it's described as an illustration depictinga couple's eventful holiday which includes a harrowingabduction by aliens. It's just like every other mediocre free jazz track you've ever heard and wish you hadn't.

This sort of line-up, which omits a harmony instrument, is extraordinarily difficult to get right. In the hands of geniuses such as Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, or Sonny Rollins, the harmonic void is filled by flashes of inspiration and sheer musical energy. More often, the absence of a harmonic instrument results in an empty and alienating sound.Maybe the Fred Hess Quartet, like Mr and Mrs Clef, would benefit from getting away from the alien and finding a way to connect with normal humans who enjoy music.

_ Ian Lantham, 2003

(BBC Review) 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/qhw6/

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