World of Jazz 437

Alexa Tarantino “Rootless Ruthlessness” from Firefly (Positone) 00:00
Banausoi “Aeneas Tacticus” from Imagines (circum-disc) 07:46
Dom Minasi “Sucker’s Paradise” from Eight Hands One Mind (Unseen Rain) 17:22
L’abime “L’abime” from L’abime (Multiple Chord Music) 23:01
Rachel Musson “Slimpets” from Dreamsing (577 Records)
Ayumi Ashito “Night Chant” from Ayumi Ishito & The Spacemen Vol. 1 (577 Records) 34:42
Alexa Tarantino “Daybreak” from Firefly (Positone) 41:10
Gerald Cleaver “Galaxy Faruq (for Faruq Z. Bey)” from Griots (Positive Elevation) 45:43
Natalio Sued “Angeles” from Jardins de Estrellas (ears&eyes) 52:51
Le Bruits des Dofs “Charlotte va dans le forêt et ramasse des fraises” from La Combinatronique (circum-disc) 1:00:00
Rachel Musson “For Pauline” from Dreamsing (577 Records) 1:07:03
Dom Minasi “Dancing Rosetta” from Eight Hands One Mind (Unseen Rain) 1:15:14
L’abime “Requiem” from L’abime (Multiple Chord Music) 1:21:35
Natalio Sued “Blood Tears” from Jardins de Estrellas (ears&eyes) 1:26:00
Paul Dunmall and Mark Sanders “Dwelling In Unity” from Unity (577 Records) 1:29:48
Playfield “After Life (Edit)” from Playfield Vol. 3: After Life (Orbit 577) 1:43:26
Rachel Musson “Reeling” from Dreamsing (577 Records) 1:52:32
Alexa Tarantino “Spider’s Dance” from Firefly (Positone) 1:57:08

NOTES

Alexa Tarantino – Alexa Tarantino burns bright with a scintillating maturity of insight and takes flight on Firefly, her third release for Posi-tone Records. Driven on by the Winds Of Change to refine the Clarity of her artistic vision, Tarantino reaches inward to transform herself into the luminous “Firefly” and searches to discover the unifying spark of eternity hidden behind each individual moment in time. Supported on the album by familiar collaborators, including vibraphonist Behn Gillece, pianist Art Hirahara, bassist Boris Kozlov, and drummer Rudy Royston, Alexa leads her group by example and sparkles with melodic inspiration throughout. The centrepiece of the album is Alexa’s evocative Moment in Time suite which clearly demonstrates her advancement as a composer and showcases the wide range of her effortless multi-instrument virtuosity. With an engaging program of original compositions and a few tasty covers, Firefly presents the world with a musical message that shines brightly into the darkness to provide a much-needed message of wonder, poise, joy and hope.
Banausoi – The Czecho-Slovak band Banausoi consisting of Petr Vrba (trumpet, clarinet, electronics), Václav Šafka (drums, percussion, objects) and Ondrej Zajac (guitar, voice) with their debut album Imagines: a collection of stories intertwined with the aesthetics of gentleness, radical improvisation and Greek mythology.
Dom Minasi – Dom Minasi, Hans Tammen, Harvey Valdez and Briggan Krauss. “In memory of Bern Nix. Just as we were about to have the last rehearsal with Bern before recording, he passed away. It was a shock to us and the whole jazz community. I put the project on hold for about six months . I asked Hans if he knew someone and he told me about Briggan Krauss. Briggan agreed to come over for a rehearsal and he fit right in. We rehearsed for a while and recorded. What you hear is the result”.
L’abime – L’abîme (The Abysm) is the first album by an exciting new Québec based quintet of the same name. Hugo Blouin (upright bass), Jean-Philippe Godbout (drums), Alex Dodier (saxophones, flute) and Gabriel Genest (tenor saxophone, clarinets).
Rachel Musson – With her debut solo album, Dreamsing, saxophonist Rachel Musson deepens her improvisational practice and sharpens her unique sound. Recorded in London, Musson’s studio session for this album was scheduled at the precipice of the pandemic last year, and the resulting project is emblematic of that deeply uncertain era. It’s a record full of gestures and thoughts that preoccupied her creative practice before and during an unpredictable time. Apart from a scattered handful of words used as prompts, the album was improvised entirely on tenor saxophone; and like some of her previous work, it’s a unique interplay between spoken word poetry alongside texturally lush saxophone. This album follows Musson’s I Went This Way (577 Records, October 2020), and shares similarly meta-analytical themes about the improvisational process. Musson also features on other 577 Records albums, including the two Shifa LPs, alongside Pat Thomas and Mark Sanders, and a feature on Federico Ughi’s Transoceanico LP. Dreamsing will be available digitally and on CD on May 21, 2021.
Ayumi Ashito – The Spacemen offers a valiant attempt at capturing the interstellar experience. The ambient, experimental project comes from Ayumi Ishito (Saxophone) together with Theo Woodward (Synthesizer, Vocals), Nebula and the Velvet Queen (Theremin), Jake Strauss (Guitar, Bass), and Steven Bartishev (Drums). The Spacemen is full of distortion, unexpected percussive rhythms, and competing melodies. The album’s six tracks are exploratory and driven largely by cohesive solo performances, even when played in tandem. When combined, their sound is futuristic and cosmic, incorporating elements of improvisational jazz, scintillating electronica, and fluctuating vocals that make it disorienting, mesmerizing, and otherworldly. This project marks Ayumi Ishito’s official debut on 577 Records; she has more music with Daniel Carter, planned for release later this year. Their first project, Volume 1, will be released on 577 Records on July 2nd, 2021, and followed by Volume 2 in the near future.
Gerald Cleaver – Expanding on 2020’s ‘Signs’, his electronic debut, ‘Griots’ sees Cleaver diving further into the spider’s web of modular electronics, further exploring the electronic history of his Detroit roots. Combining his unique talent for composition with a curious ear for the unpredictable, Cleaver delivers another outstandingly dense and sprawling LP for a split release by Brooklyn-based Positive Elevation and Belgium’s Meakusma.
Natalio Sued – the tenor saxophonists album “Jardín de Estrellas”,wasrecorded in Portugal in 2011 with Demian Cabaud on bass and Luis Candeias on drums. It faces a double challenge: presenting new music and doing it in an austere format such as a trio. Any doubts or previous concerns are dispelled instantly. It is an album that invites you to continue listening to it. And once it’s over you want to listen to it again. The ten original pieces are truly attractive and together make up a varied repertoire, the product of the great compositional invention, executed with grace and skill.
Le Bruits des Dofs – A music that takes you in a hellish spiral. A powerful, organic jazz, with psychedelic contours, impregnated with progressive rock. La combinatorique, the trio’s new album distributed by Circum-Disc, combines genres, sounds, stories in 9 paintings that remind us that with a guitar, a bass and a drum set we can always shout our rage, taste trance, be ecstatic too, or sink into a frenzied delirium. Take a portion of Trout Mask, a spoonful of Frisell, a smidgeon of Gary Boyle’s Isotope, some James Blood Ulmer and a slice of Mahavishnu era Johnny Mac and you have something that sounds like this. There’s not much ground-breaking here just extremely well played guitar trio jazz which hovers around other genres to create something rather fine to listen to. JEAN-LOUIS MORAIS: GUITAR AND COMPOSITIONS, OLIVIER VERHAEGE: BASS, CHARLES DUYTSCHAEVER: DRUMS
Paul Dunmall and Mark Sanders – After decades of collaboration and friendship, UK-based saxophonist Paul Dunmall and UK-based drummer Mark Sanders realized they had not made an album as a pair, featuring their respective instruments. On Unity (2021), they improvise uncomplicated, poetic and uplifting avant jazz melodies. This natural musical chemistry is exemplified on their track, ‘The Quiet Mind’ where Dunmall’s tenor saxophone paints a cohesive melody over Sanders’s percussive abstractions. This project is one of 28 that the pair has collaborated on over the span of their careers, and one of many that Sanders has made with 577 Records; it marks Dunmall’s second release with 577 Records, following Onosante (April 2021). Their full album, Unity, will be available on CD on May 14, 2021.
Playfield – three-album trilogy PLAYFIELD, offers the musical equivalency of a walk through New York, meandering through the city’s conflicts, unparalleled diversity and mutual harmony. After years of playing improvised shows in small clubs and smaller apartments from Brooklyn to Harlem, the pandemic brought spontaneous collaboration between diverse musicians to an abrupt, necessary halt. But as people ventured outside, joining up for street protests and live sidewalk concerts, the eight-part group that created these volumes emerged organically. Instigated by 577 Records’ founder Daniel Carter, whose poetry is featured in each volume. Daniel Carter: Horns and Reeds, Luisa Muhr: Voice, Ayumi Ishito: Sax, Eric Plaks: Nord piano, Aron Namenwirth: Guitar, Yutaka Takahashi: Guitar, Zach Swanson: Bass, Jon Panikkar: Drums