Bagatellen

Bagatellen, who I've only mentioned in passing, has a hilarious review on Sean Meehan's Sectors (for Constant), which has sparked a great discussion on approaching art as something different than what we perceive. Few magazines out there allow their readers to comment on their criticisms and those who avidly read Bagatellen are as adept as its writers. This is something I wish more magazines would do. "Letters of the Editor" have already lost steam by the next issue and if there's a response from the writer, it's left there as the definitive end. Then you have magazines like Pitchfork that have completely removed reader response; thus, erradicating any check power. It only reaffirms what forced authority they exert and that's dangerous. Discussion on art is not a dead stop but a continuous, meandering, and annoying conversation.

So I raise my cup to Bagatellen and hope that others will follow suit.

Tonight I'm missing Wolf Eyes in Atlanta, noise's unlikely free-form poster-boys, as I have no money. Not surprisingly enough, that money was spent on records at Agora:
+ Paul Bley/Bill Connors/Jimmy Giuffre- Quiet Song [Improvising Artists]: The softer size of free-improv.
+ Keith Jarrett- The Koln Concert [ECM]: Often considered one of his best. I'm still getting into him, personally, but Jarrett apparently improvised the entire concert, so that intrigues me.
+ Gary Burton/Chick Corea- Crystal Silence [ECM]
+ Anthony Braxton w/Muhal Richard Abrams- Duets 1976 [Arista]: Mainly picked it up for "Composition 40B" and their take on Eric Dolphy's "Miss Ann."
+ Ralph Towner/Gary Burton- Matchbook [ECM]: Classical guitar meets vibes. I've been meaning to pick this up since I first heard Ralph Towner's solo record Diary.

Playlist 9/26/05

Artist "Song Title" - Album Title [Record Label]

Roscoe Mitchell "The Little Suite" - Sound [Delmark]
Sam Rivers "Lines" - Contrasts [ECM]
Triptych Myth "All Up In It" - The Beautiful [AUM Fidelity]
Marzette Watts "Play it Straight" - New Music: Second Wave [Savoy]
Tim Berne "7X" - 7X [Empire]
Simon Nabatov/Han Bennink "Es Lauft" - Chat Room [Leo]
Tricolor "Unabashed" - Nonparticipant + Milk [Atavistic]
John Coltrane "Mars" - Interstellar Space [ABC]
Old and New Dreams "Mopti" - Playing [ECM]
Cecil Taylor Unit "It Is In the Brewing Luminous, pt.1 (excerpt)" - It Is In the Brewing Luminous [Hatology]
Cecil Taylor "(track 2)" - Chinampas [Leo]
Anthony Braxton "Comp. 122 (+108A).... (excerpt)" - Quartet (London) 1985 [Leo]
Sonny Simons "Zarak's Symphony" - The Complete ESP Disk Recordings [ESP Disk]

ESP Disk Hooks WUOG Up

I e-mailed ESP Disk, one of the more overlooked avant-garde jazz & rock record labels making its way back into consciousness, a couple weeks ago to see if they'd send WUOG (we have real-time playlists now! check 'em out) their latest Marion Brown and Sonny Simmons reissues. Imagine my surprise today when Grant (WUOG's current music director) shoots Phillip and I an e-mail saying we got a load of ESP CDs to review! Some we already own and have spun this past summer, so we happily split those up between us, but here's what we got:
+ Marion Brown- Marion Brown
+ Sonny Simmons- The Complete ESP Disk Recordings 2xCD
+ Pharoah Sanders- Pharoah's First Quintet
+ Sun Ra- Heliocentric Worlds Volumes 1, 2, & 3
+ an Albert Ayler live disc
+ Ed Askew (psychedelic folk)
+ at least 6 I don't remember right now

I'm confident this influx of great jazz will infuriate the pop mold of WUOG DJs, but they'll have to deal. Think of it this way: I have to deal with the crappy pale-imitation indie-pop they play. Fair trade, I think.

Ubu!

At long last, Ubu has returned after a long summer restructuring. Ubu is the finest place on the internet to download (mostly) legal music, movies, and documents pertaining to avant-garde, modern composition, spoken word, musique concrete, minimalism, etc. Their partnership with WFMU (the best free-form radio station... ever) has garnered an impressive collection of music from Glenn Branca, John Cage, Yoshi Wada, and Morton Feldman to movies featuring or written by Roland Kirk and John Cage (which I recommend), Samuel Beckett, and Guy Debord.

Some suggested downloads:
+ Glenn Gould: Radio Broadcasts
+ Yoshi Wada
+ Group Ongaku
+ John Cage Meets Sun Ra
+ The Tape-beatles

You'll probably hear a segment of that Sun Ra download this Monday.

Playlist 9/19/05

Pharoah Sanders "Hum-Allah-Hum-Allah-Hum Allah" - Jewels of Thought [Impulse!]
Carlos Santana & Alice Coltrane "Angel of Sunlight" - Illuminations [Columbia]
Return to Forever f. Chick Corea "Vulcan Worlds" - Where Have I Known You Before [Polydor]
I Heart Lung "Speedboats for Breakfast" - Castanets/I Heart Lung split 12" [Sounds Are Active]
Don Cherry "Total Vibration" - "Mu" First Part/"Mu" Second Part [BYG/Actuel]
John Zorn "Space Church" - Spy Vs. Spy: The Music of Ornette Coleman [Elektra/Nonesuch]
*Frederic Rzewski "P-JOS 4 K-D-(Mix)" - No Place to Go But Around [Finnadar]
David S. Ware Quartet "Rhythm Dao" - Dao [Homestead]
Gary Peacock "Major Major" - Tales Of Another [ECM]
**Steve Lacy Four "In Walked Bud" - Morning Joy [Hatology]
Keith Jarrett "Angles (Without Edges)" - Treasure Island [MCA]
Sunny Murray "Red Cross" - Sunshine & Even Break (Never Give A Sucker) [BYG/Actuel]
Max Roach/Anthony Braxton "Tropical Forest" - Birth and Rebirth [Black Saint]

*Written by Anthony Braxton.
**Written by Thelonius Monk.

There may not be much updates this week due to any number of things, but I promise at least one nerdy entry before Monday.

New York Sucks

Once again, New York has foiled me in its concert listings. The same folks who coordinate the excellent Vision Festival every year, which I got to attend this past summer, have put together a benefit for New Oreans set for September 20th. More of the same New York faces reappear like Matthew Shipp, William Parker, Charles Gayle, Bill Dixon (a solo performance... should be interesting), and any combination of those and the standards of Vision. The surprises, however, are exciting and quite creative: John Zorn's klezmer jazz-punk quartet Masada, a Muhal Richard Abrams solo piano recital, Jazz Passengers with Elvis Costello and Deborah Harry (yes, from Blondie), and what could be amazing or horrible, Yo La Tango with Other Dimensions In Music.

As always, this event will be recorded and we'll have to cross our fingers to see release in the next 10 years (as per standard). Sigh. I still want a copy of the Matthew Shipp/William Parker/Han Bennink/Sabir Mateen and Joe McPhee/Lori Freedman shows.

It's a shorty

Paris Transatlantic has their September issue up (actually it's been up over a week... I'm a bit late to the game). They review the Spontaneous Music Ensemble reissue (Emanem), the excellent Philip Gayle disc The Mommy Row (though Bagatellen does a better job), and a slew of others. Bagatellen, who I haven't pimped properly yet, reviews the Fred Anderson, Hamid Drake, & William Parker collaboration out on Eremite and it sounds great.

Be back later with more music nerdery.

Playlist 9/12/05

Artist "Song Title" - Album Title [Record Label]

Dewey Redman "Tarik" - Tarik [BYG/Actuel]
Marilyn Crispell "Collage for Coltrane II" - For Coltrane [Leo]
8 Bold Souls "The Art of Tea" - Last Option [Thrill Jockey]
Lee Konitz/Paul Bley/Bill Connors "Out There" - Pyramid [Improvising Artists]
Borah Bergman/Peter Brotzmann/Andre Cyrille "The Fourth Idea" - Exhilaration [Soul Note]
Jay Hoggard "May Those Who Love Apartheid Burn In Hell" - Solo Vibraphone [India Navigation]
Bill Dixon "Summer Song One: Morning" - In Italy, Vol. 1 [Soul Note]
Cooper-Moore & Assif Tsahar "The Tortise & the Buzzard" - America [Hopscotch]
Dave Holland Quintet "Shadow Dance" - Jumpin' In [ECM]
Collin Walcott "Moon Lake" - Grazing Dreams [ECM]
Butch Morris "Dust to Dust, second and third parts" - Dust to Dust [New World]
Barry Altschul Trio "Be Out S'Cool" - Brahma [Sackville]
The New York Underground Orchestra "Fifth" - Fragments [Hopscotch]
Art Ensemble of Chicago "Reese" - AACM, Great Black Music/Reese and the Smooth Ones [BYG/Actuel]
Sun Ra "The Shadow World" - Nothing Is... [ESP]

Finnishing off the horns with a mighty blow

Dusted Magazine has published a very informative article on the Finnish free-jazz label TUM Records. (Dusted just keeps getting better every week I read it.) This is my first introduction to the label, so every last artist on the roster is foreign to me except sax player John Tchicai and trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah, the latter who's not Finnish and has worked with Steve Reid, Billy Bang, Sun Ra, and just a mess of great musicians since the '70s. In fact, my knowledge of Scandanavian free-jazz would be practically null without the Dutch drummer Han Bennink.

However, what struck me most about the article was the following:
The key, then, is a business perspective as strong as the aesthetic one. In addition to the usual funds that support Finnish music – the Foundation for Finnish Music and the Finnish Music Promotion Center – the White & Case lawyer has procured support for some of his albums from Finnish corporations such the telephone operator Sonera, and the paper manufacturer UPM Kymmene. Other Euro labels, such as HatHut, have enjoyed similar corporate sponsorship.
It's refreshing that the Finnish have organizations that fund the jazz arts so generously and that corporations support it as well. I'm not saying Matthew Shipp or someone like that should seek endorsements from Coca Cola, but labels and artists could work with businesses that appreciate and respect the artform, and the artists still maintain their freedom.

Cadence stocks TUM.

Oh, if anybody actually reads this, please comment. I'd love to get conversation going about these issues.

Playlist 9/5/05 + Why ECM Don't Give Us Play

Artist "Song Title" - Album Title [Record Label]

Frank Lowe "Epistrophy" - Fresh [Arista Freedom]
Paul Bley "Open,To Love" - Open, To Love [ECM]
Ian Smith "Don't Even Think About It" - Daybreak [Emanem]
World Saxophone Quartet "Come Sunday" - Plays Duke Ellington [Nonesuch]
The Vandermark 5 "Auto Topography (for Archie Shepp)" - Acoustic Machine [Atavistic]
Steve Reid "Odyssey of the Oblong Square (Side B)" - Odyssey of the Oblong Square [Mustevic]
Roland P. Young "Velvet Dream" - Isophonic Boogie Woogie [Flow Chart]
McCo "For A.K." - Golden Years of the Soviet New Jazz, Vol. III [Leo]
Sun Ensemble (David Wertman) "Dance of the Mid-East Madness" - Wide Eye Culture [Sunmuse]
Steve Kuhn "Oceans in the Sky" - Remembering Tomorrow [ECM]
The Lounge Lizards "They Were Insane" - Live in Tokyo [Island]
Borbetomagus "Bathed in the Blood of the Lamb (excerpt)" - Experience the Magic of... [Agaric]

Spent an hour before the show really digging through the jazz vinyl archive of WUOG. I had certainly perused the library, but never ravaged. I knew our collection was stellar in terms of bop and cool jazz, but we do have some incredible avant-garde material, too. Last week I played some Anthony Braxton (we have some seriously out of print LP box sets, too) and this week I found some Frank Lowe, Paul Bley, Oliver Lake, and Kenny Wheeler, which brings me to the topic: Why isn't WUOG serviced by the mighty ECM Records anymore? First of all, the German label doesn't have a distribution deal with Warner Bros. like they did in the '70s and part of the '80s or with BMG Classics like they had in the '90s. It's indicative of trend: free/avant-garde jazz wasn't the right kind of challenging for major labels anymore. At one point in American music history, free-jazz was a thriving, even lucrative business in the hands of Archie Shepp, later-period John Coltrane (much to the chagrin of his bop admirers), and Pharoah Sanders. But as the late '70s and '80s rolled around, Coltrane - basically the poster boy even though most sax players were already beating him at his own game - had died, people lost interest, and the players in the scene weren't really doing anything revolutionary. I won't say the '80s was a stale or dark time for avant-garde jazz (some incredible records came out in that decade), but we can certainly lay some blame on the lame trad-jazz revivalists like Wynton Marsalis. (Sidenote: Out of this division came specialty imprints like the aforementioned "BMG Classics" that implies avant-garde jazz is only for a select crowd, which might be true in some cases, but it excludes an entire listening audience who might share in that aesthetic.) Plenty's been written on Marsalis's arrogant attitude with jazz critic Stanley Crouch (including a violent breakout between Crouch and pianist Matthew Shipp at a jazz awards show), so I won't delve further (surprisingly his brother Branford would sign David S. Ware to Columbia's jazz label for a couple spectacular albums), but I'd like to think the music never went away, just underground, and became more innovative and challenging in the process. And it's been regaining critical speed somewhat in the past few years with the success of Thirsty Ear's Blue Series (though I could really do without most of their DJ/electronic-jazz collaborations), but there's an incredible wealth of work out there that needs to be heard. (I have a rant about Pitchfork's treatment of jazz for a later time.)

Anyway, with all that said... ECM Records, send WUOG CDs. The Dave Holland and Steve Kuhn reissues, the Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble CDs... just no Keith Jarrett. :)

Triptych Myth

So I don't know about y'all, but I'm extremely excited about the new Triptych Myth CD, The Beautiful, out on AUM Fidelity. I've yet to hear the disc, and since the label's been good about getting material to WUOG, I'll wait until then... but after 2003's unbelievable self-titled debut on Hopscotch, it definitely left me wanting more. The trio's comprised of veteran Cooper-Moore on piano whose sudden explosions on the keys are the stuff of jazz legend, the fierce Tom Abbs on bass, and Chicago Underground member Chad Taylor on drums. After his unfortunately forgettable work on Marc Ribot's should-have-been-mind-blowing Spiritual Unity, I'm going to be really glad to hear Chad Taylor working with these folks again. Simply, Triptych Myth is the most exciting (and stable) trio in avant-garde jazz right now... no, in jazz period right now. They swing hard without convention, but can just as easily play on air with the same "hardness." I forsee The Beautiful as a Top Ten without doubt.

Hat Hut wants your non-Swiss money

So in my daily poking around the interweb, I've come across more ways to spend money. The remarkably consistent Swiss label Hat Hut has posted a sale at JazzLoft: buy two mid-priced CDs and get the third free. Considering most of their output is $20/pop, it's a deal. It gives you a chance to stock up on both the label's avant-garde jazz and modern composition CDs like Matthew Shipp's Gravitational Systems with Mat Maneri, Myra Melford & Han Bennink's Eleven Ghosts, Cecil Taylor's It Is In the Brewing Luminous, and a few from James Tenney.

This Monday night, I'm going to dig into the station LP archive to see what I can find after last week's exciting Marion Brown and Anthony Braxton cuts.

Yur-a-peein'

Besides the online music stores that tempt me with UK imports, out of the links to the right, I spend most of my time at the European Free Improvisation site. What it lacks in design and layout (recalling those bad cut-and-paste HTML codes from Geocities), it more than makes up for in content. The site supplies every free-improviser and avant-garde jazz player of note with an extensive discography and biography. If this information were not enough, Peter Stubley - the site's maintainer since 1996 - also provides articles and interviews (translated into English where need be), MP3s and excerpts, and links to notable websites and an enormous listing of European, Asian, and American record labels with descriptions. While the All Music Guide certainly is a recommended resource, the amount of material at the European Free Improvisation site is invaluable when it comes to things across the Atlantic.

Anyway, I noticed a week ago, Stubley (who constantly updates the site) put up his Best of Half the Year list for 2005. I should mention only one of those releases is not an import to the US: The Peter Brotzmann Chicago Tentet's Be Music, Night on Okka Disk, which I happen to own. Looking at his list, I'm most intrigued by the Roger Smith (guitar) & Louis Moholo-Moholo (percussion) album, The Butterfly and the Bee on Emanem Records. I've heard clips of Smith's work and could only imagine what he and Moholo-Moholo cooked up.

Speaking of, Stubley also posted an article on Moholo-Moholo translated from the French magazine Improjazz.