Music x 5: Free Jazz

Showing posts with label Free Jazz. Show all posts

Monday, January 14, 2019

Various - No Idea Festival

Label : Spring Garden Music - 011 / Coincident Records - NI-001 / Ten Pounds To The Sound - 002
Country : US
Year : 2004
Format : CD

A thought popped in my head listening to this. Whether or not I can craft the right sequence of words to reflect this thought is anyone's guess. It goes like this, the best free improv/eai/etc. has a sound or timbre similar to that of the noises old rusty buildings or frameworks make.

Whether that was a fabrication can only be known to me, I never really consider releases like these to be especially memorable but that did stick in my head (not my craw) a bit. A compiling of various musical performances in Texas for the No Idea Festival in 2004, featuring my man Jack Wright and his various friends. One word I would use for Jack's brand of free jazz improvisation is vacuous, not in the sense that it is vapid or shallow but a timbral quality of his recordings. It just sounds empty, not in the sense of.... It sounds good, the saxophone is in its own little world in the space of the other noisemakers about around it. Stop and start.

Here

Wednesday, May 2, 2018

X-Ray Eyes - X-Ray Eyes

Label : Megaphone Limited - 007

Country : US

Year : 1994

Format : CD

Ripped by Scramoutcha

Another bountiful feast from my friend over the information superhighway. This has been on my radar for a little while and I've finally got a blip. Those familiar with Megaphone Limited will have a good bit to like here, and some recognizables as well. Improvisational folk and pop melodies crash discordantly with its jazz and atonal origins. Jason Willett and Caroline Kraabel ring a bell? This album certainly is rrrringing hoooo!

"utterly individual (albeit gently so)" says the website

Friday, March 2, 2018

Michael Vlatkovich & Charles Britt - Transvalue Book I

Label : Thankyou Records - MV-004

Year : 1985

Country : US

Format : LP

Eventful night. The wind was howling and the moon looked right evil, full and peering thru the cloud cover. I was going to wrap up scanning this elpee when I was interjected by the clamors of my domains detritae cluttering about our road. So, I went out and collected as best as I can. To tell the truth, it was a joy. I felt so exuberant; the whole situation felt like an event. The aforementioned lune and the hard blows of the elements only added to it. To peer inside my brain, I was inspired to create. I always keep ideas running in my imagination, compositing what I hold dear to my neurotics. It may come to a surprise, but I would love to make a game. I have so many things in mind, and that's what I meant as an "event", like a scripted one or some emergent thing of those vestiges. It's lovely, in my youth I do feel like it.

In a brief "review", if one can call it so, I wrote "I'd like to think this is what would result if Zoogz [Rift] went full on gonzo jazz with some decadent poetry of the beat persuasion.". I stand by that short as it may be. Though to expand I'd also like to mention the many moving parts at play here. Tons of interesting ideas in this collaboration recurrent through the christened "transvalue" moniker. At points it takes a third stream approach, another a more rockjazz undercurrent, and a healthy helping of exp. bigband to really draw me in.

Here

Monday, October 16, 2017

IS - IS

Label : Awesome Vistas - AV-08

Country : US

Year : 2009

Format : LP

It's a real shame I can't really give cool anecdotes on these interesting recordings I find and post here, like all those other respectable illegal filesharing joints. Most of the time, I just find wreckords at a local shop and take em home with little in the way of an obstacle. Quite boring. Maybe I should start writing fictitious proseworks to spice things up. Anyway, what IS this? IS is IS, an improvisational grouping centering around Chris Johanson and his merry group of friends, as seen in this insert:

A bit voyeuristic, an email conversation between the culprits of this work of freefolk ambiance. As I had found later, some of these cats are pretty big luminaries in the once big(?) free impro-folk scene, lotsa Jackie-O Mothereffer alumni. It's nice, an exercise in a now seemingly bygone style in two sides which probably made for a good soundtrack for the exhibition it was created for. Now that I am thinking for the first time in awhile, I never really thought to check which side is which as this information is obfuscated by the fact that each side is marked by a colored label instead of the traditional text laden generic... I suppose it doesn't matter, unless someone is very serious about the archival of late oughts indie-pain-dance in plasticity.

Here

Thursday, March 9, 2017

Soul-Junk - 1946

Label : Sub Pop - SP 301

Country : US

Year : 1995

Format : 7 inch

Soul-Junk, the slightly less spastic and more theologically inclined Trumans Water, is a project I've heard about for a long while. Now that I've heard them, I'm casually intrigued to say the least. The most interesting part of this particular slab of waveforms are the free jazz sputterings of the interludes, before giving away to more conventional (and to my taste, too "alt rock") songforms. It's a quicky to be sure.

here

Sunday, February 26, 2017

Tome XX - Natura Morta

Label : Jazz Haus Musik - JHM 32 ST

Country : Germany

Year : 1988

Format : LP

I don't know that much about pure jazz, but this is some pretty good avant-jazz with some free inclinations throughout. The copy I got comes with signatures of all the dudes in the band, so that's a plus. Sorry about the pops and clicks, apparently "mint" means something entirely different when imported, at least according to record stores. This also came with an insert in German all about the band itself so I'll be sure to scan that sometime for you all.

Here