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Birgit Ulher / Carol Genetti / Eric Leonardson:
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Peter Evans Being & Becoming (Evans / Ross / Jozwiak / Ode):
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Peter Evans Being & Becoming (Evans / Ross / Jozwiak / Ode):
Ars Memoria [VINYL 180gm + DOWNLOAD] (More Is More)

The second album from New York trumpeter Peter Evan's band Being and Becoming stretches out his concepts in five extended works that dovetails superb contemporary jazz — integrating extended techniques and solid vibraphone work — with beautifully rich and explorative passages, masterfully performed with Joel Ross (vibes), Nick Jozwiak (bass) and Michael Shekwoaga (drums). ... Click to View


Ivo Perelman (Fowler / Workman / Cyrille):
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Andre Duchesne:
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Montreal composer, guitarist and arranger Andre Duchesne developed the pieces on this solo album as a tribute to his sister Carole, "the one who dreamed of horses," who passed in 2010, his pieces incorporating elements of rock, improvisation and compositional forms, a sincere tribute developed by recording daily over a month as a virtual rock band of guitar, bass and drum programming. ... Click to View


Leap of Faith:
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Joining the Boston duo Leap of Faith, the core duet of David Peck on reeds, percussion, the kitchen sink and everything in between, and Glynis Lomon on cello, aquasonic & voice, is bassist Scott Samenfeld from Turbulence Orchestra, drummer Jared Seabrook, and brass player John Fugarino, with Joel Simches capturing the recording and manipulating the stream in real time. ... Click to View


Neurodivergent:
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Bill Harris:
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Dante Boon (Beuger / Boon / Elina / Holtkamp / Schuppe / Van der Ster):
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Joane Hetu / Ensemble SuperMusique:
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A fascinating work dedicated to improvising cellist Remy Belanger de Beauport written by Montreal composer Joane Hétu and performed by the large Ensemble SuperMusique with Jean Derome, Lori Freedman, Scott Thomson, Diane Labrosse, Danielle Palardy Roger, Pierre Tanguay, &c., commissioned and performed for the Ensemble's 40th anniversary and expanded for this studio edition. ... Click to View


Joelle Leandre / Pascal Contet:
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A collaboration that goes back 30 years, French improvising bassist Joëlle Léandre and avant accordionist Pascal Contet in their fifth album together, turning from their more typically extended conversations to a series of 10 "Miniatures", shorter and diverse dialogs recorded live in 2022 at the beautiful Arsenal Concert Hall in Metz, France. ... Click to View


Chad Fowler / Shanyse Strickland / Sana Nagano / Melanie Dyer / Ken Filiano / Anders Griffen:
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Highlighting the parallel to changes in birdsong in urban areas because of anthropogenic ambient noise, this diverse ensemble demonstrates the evolution of improv approaches through unique origins and backgrounds; with Chad Fowler (stritch, flute), Shanyse Strickland (French Horn), Sana Nagano (violin), Melanie Dyer (viola), Ken Filiano (bass) and Anders Griffen (drums). ... Click to View


Hal Russell NRG Ensemble:
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One of the core Creative Sources trios of Ernesto Rodrigues on viola & crackle box, João Madeira on double bass and Jose Oliveira on percussion, is extended to a quartet with Netherland's New Wave of Jazz/Vidna Obmama archtop guitarist Dirk Serries, presenting the 9-part "Dripping" series of free chamber-oriented lowercase improvisation. ... Click to View


Friedl / Siewert:
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Niels Lokkegaard Lyhne / Quatuor Bozzini:
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Copenhagen composer Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard's long form work refers to units of compositional structure in systems of instruments, each a "bubble" that interacts and collides creating fluctuations, ruptures and tension release in an hypnotic sonic tapestry, performed by Montreal's Quatuor Bozzini on violins, viola, cellos and harmonica; mesmerizing. ... Click to View


Merzbow:
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Charles Mingus:
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Three sides of Charles Mingus in this remastered reissue set: the 1961 Candid album Mingus Presents Mingus with the classic quartet of Eric Dolphy, Ted Curson and Dannie Richmond; then the Mercury release Pre-Bird from the same year, in ensembles performing the music of or influenced by Duke Ellington, along with the ambitious and brilliant through-composed work, "Half Mast Inhibition". ... Click to View


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Presented in two versions--a stereo mix and a binaural mix for headphones--flugelhorn improviser and composer Franz Koglmann leads his septet of exceptional players through 10 original Koglmann compositions, sophisticated works that show influences from Ellington to Franz Joseph Haydn or Johann Strauss, in pieces influenced by or tipping the hat to modern artists, musicians and writers. ... Click to View


Nikolaus Gerszewski :
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Giusto Chamber Orchestra performs three works for twelve strings by German composer and visual artist Nikolaus Gerszewski, whose music of shifting pitches, vibrations and volumes--compared with experimental sound & noise work--is influenced by composers Radulescu and Dumitrescu's spectral music, James Tenney's "swell form" and Cornelius Cardew's graphic scores. ... Click to View


Void Patrol (Sharp / Stetson / Martin / MacDonald):
Live @ Victo (Victo)

A wild and adventurous concert and one of the highlights of the 39th Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville from the electric improvising quartet of Elliott Sharp on electric guitar & electronics, Colin Stetson on bass, alto & tenor saxophones, Billy Martin on drums & percussion and Payton Macdonald on marimba, vibraphone & African xylophone. ... Click to View


Federico Ughi (w / Leo Genovese / Brandon Lopez):
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The first album under 577 label leader and drummer Federico Ughi's name in five years brings together the incredible bass skills of Brandon Lopez and expansive Argentinean keyboard sonics of Leo Genovese, the first of two planned volumes recorded in the studio for a boundary-less album of acoustic and electric improv influenced by the music and philosophy of Sun Ra. ... Click to View


Federico Ughi (w / Leo Genovese / Brandon Lopez):
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The first album under 577 label leader and drummer Federico Ughi's name in five years brings together the incredible bass skills of Brandon Lopez and expansive Argentinean keyboard sonics of Leo Genovese, the first of two planned volumes recorded in the studio for a boundary-less album of acoustic and electric improv influenced by the music and philosophy of Sun Ra. ... Click to View


Sven-Ake Johansson / Alexander Von Schlippenbach:
uber Ursache und Wirkung der Meinungsverschiedenheiten beim Turmbau zu Babel [VINYL 2 LPs & PAL DVD] (Trost Records)

Documenting the 1994 avant music drama composed by pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach and accordionist Sven-Ake Johansson, uber Ursache und Wirkung der Meinungsverschiedenheiten beim Turmbau zu Babel (on the cause and effect of the disagreements over the building of the Tower of Babel) through a double LP, DVD, libretto and 16-page booklet in a solid box set. ... Click to View


Musicworks:
#147 Winter 2024 [MAGAZINE + CD] (Musicworks)

Winter 2024 issue of Canada's premiere new music magazine, with Saxophonist Andrew MacKelvie on the cover; plus features on Indonesia's Music Subculture; Sonny-Ray Day Ride; Solidaridad Tango; A History of the Canadian Electronic Ensemble; plus album reviews, essays and a CD of tracks from artists covered in the magazine. ... Click to View


Witches & Devils (Williams / Vandermark / Lonberg-Holm):
At the Empty Bottle (Knitting Factory Works)

Before his ecstatic Xmas series, An Ayler Xmas, Chicago saxophonist Mars Williams led the Witches & Devils quintet of Mars Williams on reeds, Ken Vandermark on reeds, Jim Baker on keyboards, Fred Lonberg-Holm on cello and Kent Kessler on bass, an incredible and passionate free jazz group paying tribute to the music of Albert Ayler, heard live at The Empty Bottle in 1997. ... Click to View



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  Ken Ganfield, Kurt Liedwart, Petr Vrba 
  Something Wrong There  
  (Mikroton Recordings) 


  
   review by Dave Madden
  2020-03-03
Ken Ganfield, Kurt Liedwart, Petr Vrba: Something Wrong There (Mikroton Recordings)

Mikroton label boss Kurt Liedwart cites literary great and Oulipo founder Raymond Queneau as an influence on his own composition and performance technique. While it would be a time-intensive endeavor to analyze and dissect the dense Something Wrong There with one of that collective’s methodologies — or doing so in the way you did with Schoenberg orchestral works during grad school — a few concepts from the Oulipian philosophy resonate when reading about Liedwart’s approach to the record:



•"Inspiration which consists in blind obedience to every impulse is in reality a sort of slavery.” (Queneau)

• “…once the Apollonian structure has been circumscribed, Dionysus can work his magic.” (Andrew Gallix, The Guardian 07-12-2013)

• “I set myself rules in order to be totally free.” (Georges Perec)

To step back, Something Wrong There is culled from improvisations by electronics specialists Ken Garfield, Petr Vrba and Liedwart. The latter reworked and molded said sessions to, per Mikroton, “create (the) sonically fresh sound worlds” that he didn’t achieve with the original results. In other words, Liedwart didn’t trust (or put trust in?) his instincts, experimented, and came back to his rulebook. Reverse Oulipo! Don’t fall into the abyss of freedom, Kurt. Anyway.

Beginning with “Unbearable”, the music is a fusion of continuously churning cyclones, hyper-rhythmic and overdriven sizzles and sputters, juggernauts of low end, and harmonically loose material courtesy of modular synthesizers, laptops and hacked devices. Avoiding idiosyncratic chaos, Liedwart corrals the various maelstroms of blips and crackles into a relatively organized casing and form; think of large cruise ships, full of bodies and objects moving according to disparate whims and moods, intermittently bumping into one another near the dock.

Over chugging rumbles, warbling melodies brighten and squirm back to the shadows, returning with more fire in arpeggio form; ascending glissandi fight with scratchy twitches for attention; mechanical rain showers fill the backdrop behind junky transports armed with sonar, Geiger counters and electric telegraphs. After 20 minutes of the near-24-minute piece, the storms recede, and we’re left with an ensemble of faintly pulsing bleeps, gravelly ticks and glitches, and a repeating garble that sounds like a kid imitating a rocket lift-off (“SHRRRRRRRRR”). A switch is flicked, and each element gradually powers down.

This abeyance carries into the first few minutes of the second half, “Nauseating”. Gentle whirring and breathy, filtered drones swirl around an animated bed of detritus. Deep, full-figured bursts of distorted square waves pop out of your right speaker, and a tense submerged beat periodically interrupt until…

There is one reoccurring, grounding theme that pops in several times across the two works, even closing the second half. A spectral transmission, this shimmering, palpable cloud escaped a ballroom where “In a Sentimental Mood” was performed a few too many times (and is forever trapped like smoke in the walled atmosphere). Each time it hits, one is reminded of a Lortab haze, or the first shot of whiskey you spent too much on, or both of those done from the superficially innocuous bar in The Shining. Rather than integrate with the sonic palette, it stands as a looming counterpoint of tension and release to disrupt — for better or worse (I’m still not sure what to make of it) — the narrative.

Speaking of which, despite Liedwart’s dislike of linear narrative (see the link in the first sentence), truly, the visual storyline this audio inspires is vast — as sound waves free from time signatures and a tonal center and purposely defying labels are prone to do; The Adventures of James Cameron in the Mariana Trench, A Tale of Two Star Destroyers, My Stratosphere Journals, and A Night in the Engine Room would be apt screenplays. As an author of 100 takes on the same anecdote, Queneau would be proud.



Ken Ganfield, Kurt Liedwart, Petr Vrba: Something Wrong There
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Recent Selections @ Squidco:


Ensemble SuperMusique :
Musiques Emeraude
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Karayorgis /
Heinemann /
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Truss
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Ode):
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Siewert:
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w /
Leo Genovese /
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You You You,
Vol. 1
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Sven-Ake Johansson /
Alexander Von Schlippenbach:
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Wirkung der
Meinungsverschiedenheiten
beim Turmbau zu Babel
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To
Pre Bird,
Revisited
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